Crookston’s Reese Swanson scored a goal and assisted on two Addie Fee
goals to lead the Crookston Pirate Girls Hockey team to a 3-1 win over Detroit Lakes. The win sealed a number three seed for the Section 8A Girls Hockey quarterfinals, which would pair them with the second seed Thief River Falls, for the fourth time this season.
First Period
Although nobody scored in the first period, Crookston dominated, and much of the play was in the Laker’s end. All the Pirates’ lines had some grade-A chances but were stopped by Laker goalie Leah Honer. Honer came into the game playing in all the Lakers games this season with a 1.93 goals-against average and a lofty saves percentage of almost 94%, which is superb. “It seems we have a lot of great goalies in Section 8A said Moe, and we’ve played them nine times, and they have all been good. We have to get in front of them, create some traffic, screens and get in front and bury any rebounds, which we had enough in the first period to score a few goals.” Crookston dominated the period outshooting the Lakers 10-4.
Second Period
All four goals in the game were scored in the second period, three of them by the Pirates. Almost six minutes into the period, Freshman Reese Swanson breezed into the Detroit Lakes zone, walked right down the slot, and blistered a shot that beat Honer and gave the Pirates a 1-0 lead. “That was a pretty goal by Reese,” said Moe, “she used her speed and dynamic shot to get us on the board first, which was important.” Crookston would score two goals later in the period, the first was Swanson working on the far board in the Lakers zone, spotted the eighth-grader, Addie Fee, in front, slid a hard crisp pass across to Fee to one-timed it past Honer, and the Pirates lead 2-0.
“Addie was robbed earlier in the period,” said Moe, “she had a rebound, and it looked like a sure goal, but their goalie made a great glove save, and I’d say that was the best save I’ve seen this year.” Swanson and Fee would strike again on a power play with 53 seconds left in the period, and again it was Swanson keeping the puck in the Lakers zone, circling and found Fee again in front with a slick pass and Fee putting a quick shot and like the first goal it was an upper shelf. “Along with Aleah (Bienek), the center for those two, they were communicating, and I was telling the girls that is an important aspect of the game we haven’t been real good at and have to do it more,” said Moe. Crookston lead 3-1, and it looked like that would be the second-period score, but right off the faceoff, the Lakers leading scorer, Emma Coley, got the puck into the Crookston end and snuck one past the Crookston goalie Kailee Magsam, just 12 seconds after the Pirate score and they went into the locker room with a 3-1 lead. “It was nice to have the lead,” said Moe, but we left a few goals out there in the first two periods.”
Third Period
Crookston probably had their best overall play for two-thirds of the third period, continually putting pressure on Detroit Lakes, line after line. Breakaways for Nora Peterson, great chances for her linemates Catherine Tiedemann and Brekken Tull. Speaking of Tiedemann, Cat is now the All-Time leader in games played in a career as she was playing her 145th game as a Crookston Pirate overtaking Lexi Wangen, who had 144, and next in line is Erica Wheelhouse with 136. “That’s a great milestone for Catherine,” said Moe. “She has been playing since she was a seventh-grader and has been an instrumental force in Pirate Girl’s Hockey and has been a great leader as a captain for many of those years.” Later in the period,
Crookston took some penalties, including two in a row, gave Detroit Lakes a five-on-three advantage, took away the Pirate momentum, gave Detroit Lakes a chance, two goals down, and used their timeout. The Pirate’s power play might be sputtering all this season, but their penalty kill has been outstanding and continued tonight. “I was hoping we’d be up four or five to one sometime in the second period,” said Moe, ” so I could get our fourth line some more ice time on varsity, but the closeness of the score and the penalties didn’t allow that which was too bad. We did get them in for a couple of shifts, but we wanted to give them more.” Crookston outshot Detroit Lakes 14-3 in the third period and 32-11 in the game. “It was a nice win, and we’d like to play from start to finish the way we played most of this game,” said Moe.
With the win, Crookston improves to 8-9-1 and, in all likelihood, solidifies a number three seed for the Section 8A Tournament. “Yeah, we had to clinch that with this win tonight,” said Moe. “We should be playing a week from tomorrow in a quarterfinal at Thief River Falls for the fourth time this season.”
Detroit Lakes drops to 8-7 on the year and they wrap up the regular season on Friday hosting Thief River Falls.
The Section 8A coaches will seed the five teams on Friday at 10:00 AM by Zoom. Warroad will be the number one seed, Thief River Falls the two seed, Crookston three, and then either East Grand Forks or Detroit Lakes four or five. The tournament starts this Saturday with the #5 seed at the #4 seed. The semi-finals will be on Tuesday, March 16, with Crookston at Thief River Falls and the winner of the 4/5 seed at Warroad.
Crookston will have a week off before their next game, which will be the fourth time they’ll play Thief River Falls this year, and they’ve lost the first three by identical 3-1 scores. “We’ll have a week of practice and do some scrimmaging with the four lines, going two lines against the other two, maybe get Stacy (Olson) and Emily (Meyer) out there to be the fourth set of
defensemen,” said Moe.
JV – Crookston won 12-0
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Total | |
| Crookston | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Detroit Lakes | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
1st Period
No scoring
2nd Period
5:49 – Crox – Reese Swanson (9) (Unassisted)
13:20 – Crox – Addie Fee (5) (Reese Swanson)
16:07 – Crox – Addie Fee (6) (Reese Swanson) (PP)
16:19 – DL – Emma Coley (Unassisted)
3rd Period
No scoring
| Saves | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Final |
| Kailee Magsam- Crox | 4 | 3 | 3 | 10 |
| Leah Honer- DL | 10 | 8 | 14 | 32 |
