JOURNAL Sports

Boys hockey dominates holiday tournament

By Bruce Karnick

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Winter break, a time for students to enjoy time with family and friends and a time to enjoy no homework or sports, right? That is partially true. Some winter sports opt to play in a holiday tournament and the boys hockey team did just that. The Raiders went to Doug Woog Arena in South St. Paul to participate in the South St. Paul Premier Tournament December 2729.

The Raiders looked to continue their dominating play that started after the loss on December 16 to St. Thomas Academy. The Cadets issued a bit of a wakeup call to Hastings with a 7-1 victory. The six point loss for Hastings did not sit well with the boys. The game after, they took out their frustrations on Mounds View defeating them 9-2, but the question was, could they keep the fire, the intensity, the chemistry it took for that kind of a win moving forward or was this just an off night for Mounds View?

The first game of the premier tournament was against conference foe South St. Paul. The Packers are having a bit of a down year, sitting at 3-7-0 overall and allowing 3.6 goals per game compared to scoring 1.4 goals per game. Hastings certainly contributed to that soundly defeating the Packers 10-0. In that game, 11 different Raiders earned points. Jake Harris and Colin Stewart led the way with four points. Luke Savage, Stephen Reifenberger and Connor Stoffel each had three, Luke and John Chorlton had two, Logan DeBettignies, Jackson Sweeny, Blake Vnadehoef, and Alex Gelhar all had one. Holden Richardson faced six shots on goal in two full periods and Kadin Harelson face three in the third period to complete the shutout.

In game two, Hastings continued the domination against Bloomington Jefferson. Savage scored the first goal to open the scoring for Hastings, a powerplay goal where he was assisted by Stoffel and Jack Nicklay. Reifenberger scored 1:38 later on another powerplay to make it 2-0 in the first. Savage and Stoffel logged the assist points on Reifenberger’s goal.

The second period, the floodgates opened. Harris scored at 4:32 assisted by Reifenberger and Savage, then Harris scored again at 15:18, assisted by Stoffel and Nicklay. After his second goal, he may have inquired about a certain reporter capturing THAT goal on film, of which the reporter may have replied, ‘guess you’re going to have to get the hat trick to make the paper.’ What does Harris do? 15 seconds into the third period, he scores the hat trick. This time he was assisted by Reifenberger and Eddie Peine and this time, a picture was captured.

The Jaguars did put one on the board, a power play goal, but it was too little too late and Hastings cruised to a 5-1 win in game two to advance to the championship game. Kody Niederkorn stopped 26/27 goals faced for a .963 save percentage. Hastings went 3-for-4 on the power play and successfully killed 2-of-3 penalties.

Head Coach Matt Klein had booked a family vacation prior to the coaching job opening, that gave assistant coach Tom Kuhn a winter break promotion and Kuhn was very pleased with the way the boys were playing heading into the championship game. “It’s a great feeling. The guys are playing together as a team, obviously getting pucks in, that’s a big thing that we’ve been telling them. They are defending the defensive zones and that is always gonna win you games. That’s where we start, that’s where we tell them we start the rest will just follow, again 15 goals for and one against, I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

“Our goalies have been absolute studs for us lately. It starts with them playing well. If they play well. All the guys in front of them are gonna play well, too. I honestly don’t think I can single out one guy, these guys are playing as a group of five when they’re out there. They’re picking each other up on the bench. It’s a team effort no matter what there isn’t just one guy honestly, that I can truly say. They’re all elite players right now. They’re all top guys. They’re all playing great,” added Kuhn Game three put the Hastings Raiders against the Woodbury Royals. The Royals are right about equal with the Raiders as far as both overall record and conference record, so this had the potential to be a great game. 5:37 into the first, Charlie Williams found Brody Larsen who then connected with Blake Vandehoef for the first goal of the game. Then at 8:47, Danny Millner scored his first varsity goal to give the Raiders the 2-0 lead. Millner was assisted by Vandehoef and Nicklay.

Woodbury cut the Raider lead in half at 10:13 in the second but then Hastings poured it on. With goals by Savage and Harris, Hastings had the 4-1 lead. Just as time was about to expire, fans witnessed something in person that rarely happens. Harris had the puck in the far corner and he quickly tossed it to the front for Stoffel and Stoffel popped it into the top right corner of the net. That’s a normal goal, but what was abnormal was the time on the clock. Stoffel’s goal officially scored at 16:59 of the second period. Unofficially, 16:59.5. Yes, there was half of a second left on the clock.

Hastings had the 5-1 lead heading into the third when Jackson Sweeny scored 35 seconds into the third. Harris on the assist. That was the final bit of scoring for the game and the tournament. Hastings cruised to a 6-1 victory and the tournament trophy out scoring their three opponents 21-2.

Kuhn attributes the change over last year to one thing. “I think a lot of the attitude in the locker room is definitely different. They’re more of a family this year from what we’ve been seeing. We were really pushing positivity last year, we kind of ran into negativity and guys blaming each other. We nip that in the bud right away off the start of the year, be positive if not, we’ll have a chat with them and they might not see ice time so they’ve taken it well and I think again it’s just playing for each other is what they’ve been doing.”

At 8-2-1 overall, there are only two teams with better records in the Metro East Conference, Simley at 9-3-0 and Hill-Murray at 8-3-0. The trick of academic based athletics is, the overall record doesn’t mean much if a team is not winning in the conference. Hastings is 0-2-1 according to the Hockey Hub, but this looks to be an error as they recently beat South St. Paul. That should put them at 1-21 in the conference with losses to Hill-Murray and St. Thomas Academy and a tie with Tartan. That should put them in fourth in the conference behind Hill-Murray, Simley and Tartan. They lose the tie breaker to Tartan because of one extra conference loss.

The Raiders will travel to Northfield on January 8 at 7:00 p.m., then Owatonna on January 11 at 7:00 p.m. Their next home ice action is a rematch with Tartan, 7:30 p.m. on January 13.

Jake Harris earned the hat trick against Bloomington Jefferson in game two of the South St. Paul Premier Tournament. Harris is currently the leading Raider scorer for the 2021-22 season. Photo by Bruce Karnick

Luke Savage kicked off the Raiders scoring against Bloomington Jefferson. Savage has been involved with a large portion of the Raider goals this season, leading the Raiders in points. Photo by Bruce Karnick