The Raiders entered their second week of games with a record of 0-1 and they finished 2-2. First was a big 5-1 win over Waconia at home on Dec. 5, then a 7-1 win on Dec 7 against Simley to open conference play with a win. Finally, Saturday, they took a trip to West St. Paul to take on the Warriors where they fell 3-2.

The first two games of the week for Hastings were all Raiders. The games were very similar in energy and opponent strength, both Waconia and Simley seemed to be on down years for the program and Hastings handled them as they should, essentially dominating the entire game on both ends of the ice.

Ryan Clemens had the goalie duties against Waconia where he stopped 16-of-17 shots on goal for a .941 save percentage and offensively, Hastings took 33 shots scoring five.

Jon Harris scored the first two of the game, both in the first period. His first was assisted by Blake Vandehoef and his second was assisted by Mason Boeff and Lukas Niederkorn.

In the second period, Connor Zgoda was assisted by Vandehoef and Harris to give the Raiders the 3-0 lead. Waconia scored their only goal of the game late in the second period to send it to the final intermission 3-1.

The third period saw several firsts. Luke Wahlstrom scored his first varsity goal, as did Ben Thome. Hopefully, we will be seeing their names on the stat sheet a lot this season. Wahlstrom was assisted by Brody Carlson and Sawyer Zaruba. Thome was assisted by Will Savage and Thomas McGinnis.

The 5-1 win evened the Raiders record for the season at a win and a loss with two games to go for the week. The win occurred with no team scoring on the powerplay. Hastings had three penalties for nine minutes with one of the penalties being a major. Waconia had four minutes on two infractions.

Against Simley, the game finished 7-1 in favor of the Raiders. Jon Harris picked up another goal, Connor Zgoda grabbed two, and Blake Vandehoef finally scored his first goal of the season by completing a natural hat trick. Vandehoef scored all three of his goals in a row, scoring goals four, five, and six of the game for the Raiders and all three goals were in the second period. As a reward, he and his fellow starters were given reduced ice time for the last period. Having a 6-0 lead in high school hockey means running time in the third period, it also means you can give your starters a rest if needed.

Simley did score in the third period before two more firsts happened for the Raiders. Brayden Krauth logged his first varsity goal and Brooks Smyrski logged his first varsity win in goal by stopping 15-of-16 shots for a .933 save percentage.

Penalties were about the same for Hastings, serving six minutes on three infractions. On the other hand, Simley struggled to stay out of the box serving 12 minutes on six infractions. Hastings scored two powerplay goals of the five different times they had a man advantage and they stopped both of Simley’s powerplays.

There were a lot of assists in the game too, Harris had three, Johnny Teigland had two and Boeff added one. The amazing piece of the night? Not only did Vandehoef score three goals, but he also logged three assists. He assisted on all three of the first-period goals and then scored all three of the second-period goals giving him six points for the night and having him involved in six of the seven Raider scoring plays.

Hastings wished they could have carried two of the 12 goals they scored in the first two games of the week with them to West St. Paul, but sadly they could not. Instead, they scored two more against the Warriors. Unfortunately, the game details had not been submitted as of press time so the only thing to report for game three of the week was the outcome. Hastings fell 3-2 to the Two Rivers Warriors.

The Raiders will host Farmington on Dec. 14 at 7:00 p.m. then travel to Aldrich Arena to take on Hill-Murry on Dec 16 at 2:00 p.m. One of the toughest tests of the regular season will be Dec 19 against Lakeville North at home at 7:00 p.m.