Pirate Girl’s Hockey offense is flat again in 5-1 loss to Mound-Westonka

The Crookston Pirate Girl’s Hockey team only mustered 11 shots on goal while Mound-Westonka/Southwest Christian White Hawks put 39 shots on net with five going in for a 5-1 victory at the Gardens in Warroad in the Hockey Town U.S.A Holiday Classic Girl’s and Boy’s Hockey Tournament(s).

FIRST PERIOD
After having only 12 shots on goal yesterday in a 6-0 loss to Warroad, the Pirates were looking to show more offense this afternoon against Mound-Westonka! It didn’t happen.
A Pirate mistake on trying a cross-rink pass in their own zone was picked off by Elizabeth Callahan, a junior and a beast. She skated in a couple of strides and blew a top-shelf shot past Pirate goalie Kamebelle Freije for a 1-0 lead just three minutes into the game. “I thought we came out right away and played pretty well,” said Crookston head coach Reed Olson, “We just had trouble controlling the puck in the offensive zone.” The Pirates Parker Strand, a senior from Mayville, N.D., was serving a penalty and just stepped out of the penalty box at the same time the Pirates were coming into the Mound-Westonka zone and Strand saw this and hurried in with them, caught a pass from Jocelyn Field and was in alone and beat the White Hawks goalie, Savannah Blohowiak to tie the game at 1-1 almost half-way through the period. “That was a nice play,” said Olson, “Jocelyn led the charge, and it was a great pass to Parker, who buried it. Parker had a pretty good game today.” Precisely three minutes later, the White Hawk’s Brelynn Koehler had a nice pass to her in the slot in front of the Crookston goal and nailed a shot up high again to make it a 2-1 game in favor of Mound-Westonka. In a bit of a backbreaker, Mound-Westonka scored one more with 24 seconds left in the period on a beautiful passing play led by Callahan. She was near the top of the circle to the left of the Pirate goal, and she showed she was taking a shot but was making a pass to Gisella Harder, who was standing on the right and swatted the back door pass for a 3-1 Mound-Westonka lead after two periods of play. “We’ve been talking a lot about the back door passes, and we’ve given up a number of them this season and just have to get better at defending it.” Crookston was outshot 15-4 in the first period!!

SECOND PERIOD
There was no scoring in the second period despite the Pirates having three power plays goals. They had a five-on-three power play for about 47 seconds then a five-on-four and managed two shots on goal early in the period. “We were certainly flat in the period,” said Coach Olson, “we just couldn’t get going. We must figure this out before we start up again in January.” With the Pirates playing primarily two lines, they get caught many times with their number one power play unit just finishing a shift, who have to take a break for the first half of the man advantage. The tougher schedule of playing ranked teams has shown some weaknesses that the Pirates have to work on as they play some loaded teams, like Albert Lea, tomorrow morning. Albert Lea is ranked 11^th in Class A, and they beat #8-ranked Mound-Westonka on Thursday in overtime.

THIRD PERIOD
Mound-Westonka would score two late goals in the final period. The first was Harder putting a nice shot that found an opening with six and a half to go in the game to make it 4-1. About as late as you can get, the White Hawks scored with 4.5 seconds left in the game when Callahan added her second goal to beat the buzzer and make the final 5-1. “The game theme is we didn’t have enough juice today,” said Olson, “we were very stagnant. We couldn’t really get anything going. That happened again today, and we can continue that against these very good teams we are playing. Crookston was outshot 14-3 in the third period, 18-4 in the first period, and 7-4 in the second period for a total of 39-11 in shots favored Mount-Westonka/Southwest Christian. In the last two games, Freije had 80 saves, with the Pirates outshot 91-23!!
Crookston is now 7-4-1 on the season, while Mound-Westonka improves to 8-6. The Pirates play Albert Lea at 11:00 AM tomorrow morning which will be on KROX RADIO starting with the pre-game at 10:30 AM, and Mound-Westonka will be Warroad at 1:00 PM to wrap up the girl’s tourney.

Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Final
Crookston	1	0	0	1
Mound-Westonka	3	0	2	5

1st Period
3:18 – M-W – Elizabeth Callahan unassisted
7:21 – Crookston – Parker Strand (3) (Jocelyn Field)
10:21 – M-W – Brelynn Koehler (Georgia Harmer)
16:36 – M-W – Gisella Harder (Elizabeth Callahan, Hazel Sturgis)

2nd Period
No Scoring

3rd Period
10:39 – M-W – Gisella Harder unassisted
16:55 – M-W – Elizabeth Callahan (Gisella Harder, Ellison Lundquist)