The winter sports season is upon Raider Nation, and it started with a dominating performance from the Hastings girl’s hockey team. The Raiders traveled to Rochester’s Graham Arena Complex for a Saturday matinee against Rochester Mayo.

The Spartans had already played a game this season, falling to Albert Lea 2-3. For Hastings, it was the first game of the season under new Head Coach Jim Joseph.

“We've been talking about a lot of different things in practice leading up to this first game,” said Joseph. “We gave them a few things to focus their attention on today. One focus was shooting and creating chaos in front of the net. They did a great job of that, and we'll keep adding and building from there.”

The chaos referred to was getting rebounds and turning those into second and third shots. The Raiders crushed that goal after tallying a total of 46 shots on the net. The shots came equally through the game; 15 in the first, 16 in the second and another 15 in the third.

Scoring was not an issue for the Raiders either with Makayla Berquist scoring the first goal of the season at 2:57 in the first period. Kyra Erickson and Kylie Gruden were credited with an assist.

“It felt great,” Berquist said after scoring two on the night. “The support and energy on the bench are really great, all positive, it’s been really fun.”

That fun clearly translates to the ice. The Raiders were high energy for the majority of the game, flying all over the rink, executing great tape to tape passes, superbly defending their third of the rink and keeping the puck away from senior goaltender Alexis Steinke. Steinke only faced 13 shots in earning the shutout win.

“Alexis kept us in the game those first four or five shifts and she gave us a good chance. She kept Mayo off the board when she needed too and then we turned the momentum a little bit. Then we get the power play goal, then we got a short-handed goal and were able to carry that momentum throughout the game,” explained Coach Joseph.

“She did amazing,” added Berquist on her teammates play. “It was a huge help.”

A huge help also came from the Raider defense with the lack of second opportunities for the Spartans. The defense took some of the pressure off Steinke and put it right back on the defense of Mayo with quick recoveries of rebounds in the Raider end and good transitions to the offensive side of the ice.

“I think when we look at our shot chart, I haven't seen the final after the third period, but each the first and the second, we had a lot of shots and rebound chances and girls crashing the net. That's one of the things we were looking for today. The Rochester goalie was great today and there were a lot of second and third chances. We were fortunate enough to get five, but man, she was tough back there.”

The short-handed goal Coach Joseph mentioned came at the 16:21 mark of the first period off the stick of Gruden who was assisted by Erickson.

“Short-handed goals are huge,” said Joseph. “It gets everyone on the bench so excited. The way that those two girls pressured that puck, I think it was Kira Erickson who pressed the puck on the boards and just chipped one into the middle and Kylie won a battle in front and banged in the loose puck, it was great. It motivates the bench so much when you do those things.”

After the first period, Coach Joseph kept his conversation with the team simple.

“We have a few keys to the game that we talked about before the game. I'll just remind them of those so their focus stays on those couple of key concepts that we wanted to touch on today,” he said.

Hastings came out firing again in the second and third with Emily Thuet scoring her first of the season at 9:08 of the second, assisted by Berquist and Erickson. Libby Knoll joined in on the fun, scoring her first at 15:18 of the second stanza. Knoll was assisted by Ava Hoffman and Jorja Riches. Berquist finished the bookend on the day scoring the last goal of the game, her second, with 11:02 off the clock in the third. She was assisted by Erickson. Erickson logged four assists on the day helping the Raiders with the first win of the season.

The Raider offense produced 46 shots on goal scoring five and defensively Steinke blocked 13 of 13 for a 1.000 save percentage.

Up next for Hastings is a road trip to Detroit Lakes and Fergus Falls on Friday, Nov. 18 and Saturday the 19th after a trip down to Red Wing on Tuesday, Nov. 15. The Detroit Lakes game is at 7:00 at Kent Freeman Arena and Fergus Falls is at 2:00 p.m. at the Fergus Falls Community Arena. The Raiders will jump right into local play on Nov. 22 when they host East Ridge at 7:30 p.m.

Mikayla Berquist scored the first goal of the Raider season, a powerplay goal, to kick start a 5-0 win against Rochester Mayo. Berquist also had the last goal of the game. Photo by Bruce Karnick