The regular season has come to a close for the Hastings Raiders girls hockey team with their last regular season game played on Feb. 3 when they played host to Hill-Murray. First, the girls travelled to Farmington to take on the Tigers on Jan 31.

At Farmington, the Tigers dominated the Raiders defensively holding them to one shot in the first, four in the second and nine in the third for a total of 14 shots for the game. Conversely, the Tigers had 37 shots on the Raiders. Despite the 13-to-1 shots on goal in the first, the score remained tied at zero. That was the way of the game for the first 31 minutes, until Farmington’s MaKenna Kadrlik finally put an even strength goal past Bree Balster at 14:12.

Farmington took the 1-0 lead to the second intermission and only managed to keep the lead for a total of three minutes and 54 seconds. At 1:06 into the third, Madelyn Schuster tied the game with an unassisted, even strength goal. Kadrlik scored for Farmington 4:17 later to take back the lead for good and at 14:41 Kadrlik completed the hattrick for the dagger. The final: 3-1 Tigers. The Pioneers came to town for the regular season finale and they wasted little time pouncing on the Raiders. They scored five goals in the first period on 20 shots, while Hastings logged three shots. The second period Hill-Murray kept the pressure on but seemed to make some personnel changes. They managed to add 16 more shots and one more goal to lead 6-0 at the end of the second, which ended up being the final margin of victory. Hill-Murray ended up out-shooting the Raiders 47-9.

For the regular season, Hastings was out shot 748-651 and outscored 77-66. The leading scorer was Makayla Berquist with 10 goals. Berquist also led the team in points with 21. Kyra Erickson led the team in assists with 13 and was second in total points with 18. For goalies, Balster had the save percentage lead with .900, edging out Alexis Steinke by .006 who had a .894. Steinke led the team in wins with six and in goals against average of 2.49.

Hastings now enters the section tournament with the eighth seed which puts them against the number one seeded Apple Valley Eagles. They will travel to Apple Valley on Feb. 8 to play at 6:30 p.m.. Apple Valley has outscored opponents 110 to 65 in the regular season, averaging 4.4 goals per game on 35.24 shots per game, so this will be another tough matchup for the Raiders.