The Raiders Girls Hockey Team had their final two games of the regular season, first against the sixth ranked team in the state, Woodbury, and the season finale was against East Ridge. Woodbury entered the game against Hastings with a 20-0-2 record, East Ridge was 11-12-1 and Hastings entered the week 10-11-2. Both opponents took advantage of the Raiders with Woodbury winning 9-0 and East Ridge winning 5-0.
With Woodbury being the sixth best team in the state, the discussion around the game was simple, it was going to be a tough hill for Hastings to climb. Woodbury has outscored their opponents 125 to 29, almost 5-to-1. They have also outshot their opponents 1092 to 417. Against Hastings, the Royals had 52 shots on goal to the Raiders six which is more than one shot per minute. The Royals scored one in the first, five in the second and three in the third enroute to the 9-0 shutout win.
Hastings committed three penalties for six minutes and Woodbury had one penalty for two minutes. Hastings was only able to successfully kill one penalty. Of the 52 shots faced, Victoria Steinke stopped 43 for a .827 save percentage.
At East Ridge, the 5-0 loss was marginally better statistically. East Ridge outshot Hastings 51-13, of the 51 shots faced, Steinke saved 46 for a .902 save percentage. The biggest difference between this game versus the Woodbury game was the penalties. A total of 12 infractions for 24 minutes and they were split evenly between the two teams. Neither team was able to capitalize on the skater advantage. East Ridge scored two goals in the first, one in the second and two in the third for the 5-0 shutout win.
With the two losses, Hastings finished the regular season 10-13-2. In their 10 wins, they had three shutout wins and scored four or more goals in seven games. Of the 25 games, seven were decided by one goal. The Raiders were shutout in five games, one was the tie game with Simley.
Team Leaders
Games Played: Kacey Plank, Sophie Thorkelson, Josie Hamann, Haley Siebenaler, Olyvia Erickson, Grace Petrich, Anni Schriefer, Jade Schauer, Addie Seleski and Victoria Steinke each played in all 25 Games. Carly Jacobson and Lauren Muhl played in 24 games.
Goals Scored: Addie Seleski – 12, Jade Schauer – 10, Grace Petrich and Anni Schiefer – 8, Olyvia Erickson – 7 and Lauren Muhl – 6.
Assists: Jade Schauer – 16, Addie Seleski – 15, Anni Schriefer – 12, Haley Siebenaler – 11, Grace Petrich – 10.
Points: Addie Seleski – 27, Jade Schauer – 26, Anni Schiefer – 20, Grace Petrich - 18, Olyvia Erickson – 16.
Victoria Steinke was the goalie for the majority of the season for Hastings and because of that was the only goalie to qualify with more than 40% of games played for any of the Hockey Hub’s leader boards. Steinke finished with a .902 save percentage for the year, facing 764 shots while stopping 689 of them. Her goals against average was 3.12 with two shutouts.
With the two losses, the Raiders section fate was sealed as the eighth seed. There was argument to move up to the seventh seed ahead of Eagan based on overall record. Hastings is 10-13-2 and Eagan is 6-18-1. There are two arguments for Eagan to stay in seventh, they played four more section games than Hastings and they recently beat Hastings in their only matchup.
The argument mattered not, and Hastings is the eighth seed, and they are scheduled to travel to Rosemount for the first round of the section playoffs. Rosemount is the seventh ranked team in the state, so Hastings has another difficult game ahead of them.
If Hastings upsets Rosemount, they will travel to the winner of Lakeville North versus Park of Cottage Grove on Feb. 8 and the winner of that game will play again on Feb. 12 at 7:00 p.m.