The Crookston Pirates Girl’s hockey team won their fourth straight game beating Detroit Lakes 3-1 in a Section 8A game played at the Crookston Sports Center.
Eight-grader Morgan Nelson opened the scoring in the first period. Kylee Meier sent a pass that deflected off MacKenze Epema and found Morgan Nelson’s stick. Nelson put her shot in the net, giving Crookston a 1-0 lead. “That’s an eight-grade defenseman, and there’s not a lot to her (physically),” explained Crookston head coach Tim Moe. “She’s tiny, but she plays so smart. On her goal, it was a nice play by Kylee Meier down in the corner. We’ve been working with the kids a lot on cycling the puck and not just throwing it out front. Kylee did a nice job keeping her head up. She was looking for Kenze Epema and, it was just a little out of Kenze’s reach, but Morgan (Nelson) was there backing her up and put a nice shot through a screen there.” Pirates goaltender Grace Koshney stopped seven shots in the first period protecting Crookston’s 1-0 lead. “It was a fantastic start for us,” added Moe. “We would’ve liked to have scored a couple more goals in the first and, we had opportunities, but their goaltender played pretty well.”
The Pirates and Detroit Lakes skated evenly through the second period until the Lakers scored a late goal to tie the game. With 17-seconds to play in the second period, Ella Hess sent a pass along the boards to Sara Freeman. Freeman skated towards the net on a tight angle, firing a puck off the goaltender’s stick into the net, tying the game at 1-1 after two periods. “We talked after that second period about how it doesn’t really matter if you dominate most of the period,” said Moe. “If you forget to play defense, you can get beat. We hadn’t been giving that up earlier in the period and, we didn’t give up (those shots) in the third period. We don’t want to give up shots on net.”
Crookston battled throughout the third period surviving multiple penalties. The Pirates killed three Detroit Lakes’ power plays in the final period. Crookston dominated the final 17 minutes outshooting Detroit Lakes 12-3. The Pirates finally experienced a breakthrough with 2:44 to play. Nora Peterson skated onto the puck in the right-wing circle, skated into the slot and deked onto her backhand flipping the puck into a wide-open net after misdirecting the Detroit Lakes’ goaltender giving the Pirates a 2-1 lead. “Nora’s a kid who can be a game-changer,” explained Moe. “I thought last year, being new on the team and maybe not sure, deferred a lot of the time. She has the skillset just to go out and dominate. To see her out there this week, step up and take control has been great.” Peterson added another goal with 1:21 to play. Peterson skated off the bench and onto a loose puck firing a shot from just inside the blue line under the pads of the Lakers’ goaltender, increasing the Crookston lead to 3-1. “When you shoot the puck hard, good things happen,” added Moe. “That was an instance where she got the puck off her stick quickly. It wasn’t quite a one-timer, but it was pretty close. If you get the puck off your stick quickly and the goaltender is moving, you’ll have an opportunity to find an opening.” Grace Koshney stopped all three shots she faced in the third period as the Pirates closed out the 3-1 win. “I’m so proud of the kids, first of all,” explained Moe. “We’re talking to them after the Bemidji game about how they’ve trusted the process and what the vision was for the program. The goal was to build the skill level up, and I thought the last couple of years we’ve done that in practices where we were coaching towards the future. They trusted the process, and we’ve added some talented eighth-graders. The compete level has gone up too. You even see it in practice. Every drill they’re competing hard against each other. You can see the aggressiveness on the ice right now and the kids working hard to make that nice play and get better each time because if they don’t, they know there are kids behind them waiting to get an opportunity. That’s nice to see. The competition level is the biggest difference from what we’ve seen within this team the past couple of years.”
Crookston improves to 5-5. The Pirates return to the ice on Saturday when they travel to Fergus Falls for a 4:30 P.M. puck drop. Detroit Lakes drops to 1-9.
| Scoring | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Final |
| Detroit Lakes | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| CROOKSTON | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
1st Period
7:11 – CROX – Morgan Nelson (Kylee Meier, MacKenze Epema)
2nd Period
0:17 – DL – Sara Freeman (Ella Hess)
3rd Period
2:44 – CROX – Nora Peterson (unassisted)
1:21 – CROX – Nora Peterson (MacKenze Epema, Catherine Tiedemann)
| Saves | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Final |
| Leah Honer – Detroit Lakes | 15 | 10 | 10 | 35 |
| Grace Koshney – Crookston | 7 | 11 | 3 | 21 |
