JOURNAL Sports

Raider Boys Hockey extends streak to nine in a row

By Bruce Karnick

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The Raider boys have been unable to crack the top 10 list on the hockey hub, but they have to be getting close. With a nine-game winning streak heading into two games against Rochester teams and a 13-2-1 overall record, Hastings is playing excellent hockey right now.

What looks to be holding them back are their two losses against conference opponents. Hill-Murray is currently ranked third in the state, and they gave the Raiders one of their two losses early in the season.

Hastings traveled to Owatonna on Jan. 11 and won that 4-1. Jack Nicklay, Stephen Reifenberger, Jake Harris and Joseph Iovino all scored for Hastings in the win. Kody Neiderkorn saved 17 of the 18 shots he faced. Hastings spent eight minutes in the penalty box on four infractions.

Tartan came to town looking to win the rematch from the 3-3 tie earlier in the season. This game popped from the first drop of the puck. The game featured big hits and fast action everything fans of hockey look for in a game. Connor Stoffel opened the scoring 3:45 into the first period, assisted by Jack son Sweeny and Harris. His celebration after the goal sent a message that Hastings was ready to make Tartan work.

Two minutes into the second period, Stoffel repaid the assist to Harris with the help of Nicklay, and Harris put the puck into the lace. Tartan cut the lead in half at 9:40 and Logan DeBettignies took the wind out of the Tartan sails 23 seconds later. Debettignies was assisted on his powerplay goal by Sweeney and John Chorlton. Hastings took the 3-1 lead into the third.

The third period saw a lot of back-and-forth action. Tartan pulled their goalie with roughly three minutes remaining. Hastings had a few chances to officially ice the win. With 45 seconds remaining, Sweeney logged the empty-net goal. Sweeney had a little help from his friends, Luke Chorlton and Stoffel.

The Raiders were not done scoring. With the game clock ticking away, Blake Vandehoef scored, thanks to River Mc- Dowell and Eddy Peine. The final: Hastings closed the door on Tartan 5-1.

Holden Richardson stopped 16 of the 17 shots he faced to earn the win. After the game, he explained what is working so well for the Raiders right now.

“We’re just clicking. The defense is taking care of the rebounds, the forwards are blocking shots and if they let us see it, we’ll stop it. That’s just how we roll,” said Richardson.

Richardson was stopping what he could see, even denying Tartan on a breakaway in the first.

Having a high-scoring offense builds the confidence in the goalies too, he explained.

“We know we can score, so we don’t worry about that. We just worry about stopping the puck and playing it behind the net,” he said.

Head Coach Matt Klein likes the way his team is playing selflessly and how that is working so well for the Raiders. “We have the ability to be happy for someone’s play. We’re not asking players to be different. We’re asking habits to be the same and our kids are pretty selfless right now about how things are happening. When you can do that, you’re going to find a different guy most nights. Now, we have some guys that find the back of the net. But how they're getting the puck is coming from different guys and it’s creating some pretty fun shots,” said Klein.

Hosting Simley on January 15 looked to be one of the more challenging games on the schedule. The Spartans were 3-2-0 in the conference and 11-6-0 overall. Averaging 4.12 goals per game is clearly enough to win a lot of hockey games, especially when paired with a 2.41 goals-against average. Prior to last week, the worst loss Simley had was 5-3 against Park. Coming into the game against Hastings, they were on a twogame losing streak, falling to Mahtomedi 2-1 and Hill-Murray 7-1, so they were looking to take out their frustrations on Hastings and get back into the win column.

The game started fast, but this time it only took 1:37 for Hastings to get on the board. John Chorlton and Reifenberger found Luke Savage for the first goal of the game. Savage put another in the net at 7:02 of the first, same assist chain, Reif enberger from Chorlton, but this time it was Luke and not John. Stoffel didn’t want to be left out, so he took a pass from Collin Stewart and Harris and put it in at 11:52. Hastings had a commanding 3-0 lead in the first 12 minutes of the match.

As Klein said, it’s coming from different guys on different nights. Shortly into the second period, DeBettignies found Stewart who then fed Sweeney, and Hastings jumped out to a 4-0 lead. Simley did not take kindly to that and responded at 2:40 with a goal of its own.

At this point, the two teams would trade a few goals. 1:47 later, Stoffel punched in his second of the night assisted by Sweeney and John Chorlton, then Simley scored 24 seconds later to make it 5-2. Stoffel earned his second hat-trick of the year at 14:53, unassisted to give Hastings the 6-2 lead, and it started to look like the game was going to turn into a shootout.

The third period had all the scoring action of a soccer game, each team scoring only once and that was in the first five minutes of the period. Simley snuck one past Kody Nied erkorn to make it 6-3 1:33 into the period, and Stoffel padded his stats with a powerplay goal from Nicklay and Harris.

Hastings won, 7-3, outshooting Simley 36-22. Hastings has outscored its opponents 61-13 in the last nine games and 86-35 this entire season, including a 7-1 loss to St. Thomas. Points-wise, Hastings players have racked up 230 total points on those 86 goals. That means an average of 1.67 players touch the puck before the goal scorer does.

“We’re trying to space out teams in the D zone as best we can and trying to create different avenues and different sets. We’re going low to high D, handle the puck a lot and they’ve done a great job finding guys and getting pucks through. As forwards, that’s something that goes unnoticed because it’s not on the scoresheet, but you know, we try to take the goalie’s eyes away as best we can. When you can take a goalie’s eyes away, maybe the first one goes in, but you know, then they have a harder time reacting what happens next too, and you don’t know exactly where it is. So again, that’s this kind of selfless process that we talked about that a lot of kids are doing a really good job with,” Klein added.

The win over Simley did not help the Raiders move up in the conference standings yet. The Raiders have only faced five conference opponents. They still have not faced Mahto medi or Two Rivers and they have not played South St. Paul a second time. Oddly enough, Hastings will only face the first two once this year, and the Raiders only have three more conference games left. If they win all three, they will end up at 11 points in the conference standings, one shy away from where Hill-Murray is right now with three matches left on their schedule too.

STA has two conference games left, one against Hill-Mur- ray and one against Simley. They will likely finish the sea son with 12 points in the conference putting Hastings at a best-place finish of third in the conference. Simley is the wild card for the final conference standings. They still have four conference games left and could easily win three of those which would bump Hastings to fourth in the conference even if Hastings wins every remaining game of the season.

The boys host Rochester Century on Jan. 22 at 2:30 p.m., a rare matinee game, then Mahtomedi on Jan. 27 for a 7:30 p.m. puck drop.

Holden Richardson comes up huge in the first period when Tartan had a break-away after an errant pass. Richardson stopped 17 of 18 shots, including this one in the Raider win. Photo by Bruce Karnick

Connor Stoffel as he begins his best flex for his celebration of the first goal of the Tartan game, setting the tone for a 5-1 victory over the Titans at home. Photo by Bruce Karnick