sports

PIRATE BOYS HOCKEY RALLIES TO BEAT FARGO NORTH IN OVERTIME

December 28, 2018

The Crookston Pirate Boys Hockey team trailed by a goal after the first period, but Eric Delorme scored a goal in the third period and added another in overtime to give his team a 2-1 victory over the Fargo North Spartans in the first day of the Thief River Falls Ralph Englestad Holiday Classic in Thief River Falls.

First period –
Crookston had four or five quality scoring chances in the first period and dominated the first six or seven minutes of the game before things evened out the rest of the period. At one point, Crookston had outshot Fargo North 7-3 and the three shots they gave up weren’t considered high scoring chances for the Spartans. Crookston played solid defense the entire period and had several nice poke checks and they were able to use the body perfectly on several odd-man rushes. The Pirate offense struggled a bit in the second half of the period and that allowed Fargo North to get some quality scoring chances including a beautiful goal from Caleb Fritel who rifled a wrist shot from the slot into the back of the net for a 1-0 lead going into the first intermission. “I thought their goalie played really well,” said Pirate Coach Josh Hardy. “We had some great individual plays, but we didn’t play great team hockey.”

Second period-
Crookston dominated the second period from the first minute of the period when they had a shot on goal and kept the pressure the rest of the way. Crookston had 17 shots on goal and about half of the shots were high quality scoring chances and as impressive as that was, the defense played even better and limited Fargo North to one shot on goal in the period and Fargo North took a 1-0 lead into the second intermission.

Third period-
Crookston played well for most of the third period and it was even for most of the period. The first of two big plays in the period came with 7:52 left in regulation when Eric Delorme took the puck along the boards and he skated across center ice and into the zone and meandered through the Fargo North defenseman and fired a wrist shot into the net to tie the game 1-1. “He can do that….he has that kind of skill,” said Coach Hardy about Delorme. “It was a nice play and was big for us to finally get on the board.” The second big play was with 1:45 left in regulation when Fargo North had a 2-on-1 and Caleb Fritel was all alone on the doorstep, but Crookston’s Jack Ricord came up with a great save to keep the game knotted up at 1-1 and that was the score going into the end of regulation, forcing overtime. “Jack made some big-time saves for us and that was one of them,” said Coach Hardy. “I thought Jack had a very good game for us and it was nice to see.”

Overtime –
13 seconds into overtime Logan Wardner went into the corner boards hard and was injured and stopped play for several minutes while he was tended to. After about 10 minutes the officials asked the teams to go to the locker room. 20 minutes or so after the injury, Wardner was carted off on a stretcher and the teams came back on the ice to finish the overtime period. It appeared that Wardner suffered concussion-like symptoms and also had the wind knocked out of him. “I think Logan will be okay, but we will say some prayers for him and hope he will be okay,” said Coach Hardy. “You never know how a team will respond after something like that and I thought we responded well.” The next seven minutes of overtime had quality scoring chances for both teams, but it wasn’t until there was less than a minute left in overtime when Crookston’s Delorme picked up the puck in front of the Pirate net and took off down the ice, blowing by Fargo North players and he skated into the zone along the far boards and got into the far circle and backhanded a shot by the goalie to give Crookston a 2-1 victory with 46 seconds left in overtime. “Eric will probably kill me for saying this, but he actually tried to shoot it high with the backhand and he whiffed on it and it slid in,” said Coach Hardy. “It was nice to get a win when we played pretty well and we deserved it.”
Crookston improves to 2-7-1 on the year and will play Eveleth-Gilbert on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. Fargo North drops to 2-8 on the year.