Pirate Girl’s Hockey shut out by Warroad 6-0

The Warroad Warriors Girl’s Hockey team limited Crookston to 12 shots on goal while throwing 52 shots at Kamebelle Freije to defeat the Pirates 6-0 at the Hockeytown Holiday Classic Girl’s and Boy’s Hockey Tournament in Warroad.

FIRST PERIOD
The Crookston Pirates were shorthanded for today’s hockey game against the Warroad Warriors. First of all, you DON’T want to be shorthanded when you play the #4 ranked team in the State Class A polls. Even so, the Pirates played pretty well in the first period despite only having four shots on goal. Both teams started the period on power plays, and although the Warriors showed off a neat powerplay, the Pirates kept things away, and Freije was standing tall. The game was scoreless until about four and a half minutes to go in the period. Both teams were skating off penalties, and on a four on four, the Warrior’s Jaylie French had the puck just inside the Crookston blue line, moved up the slot, made a nice move around a Pirate, and was about the hash marks, and rifled off a shot that beat Freije to her stick side top shelf to make it a 1-0 lead which is how the first period ended. “Yeah, we started out pretty good,” said Crookston head coach Reed Olson, “we did a good job of making them shoot from the outside for the most part, plus we had a lot of hustle.”

SECOND PERIOD
The second period saw things fall apart for Crookston. They were outshot in the period, 25-2, outscored 3-0, as it was total domination by Warroad! Crookston took two more penalties in the period, “that has been a common theme for us,” said Olson, “we just take too many and against good teams like this, it’s going to hurt you.” Warroad scored three goals in the last 4:47 of the period, the first was a short handed effort by Kaiya Sandy, who was to the right of the Pirate goal and started walking in and both Pirate defensemen disappeared, and Sandy had a one on one shot almost on top of Freije to score and make it 1-0 and the first ‘shortie’ the Pirates have given up this year. Over a minute later the Warriors scored a power play with some outstanding passing that finished with Sandy threading a perfect pass from the right of the Crookston goal through the crease and waiting was Katie Comstock, a senior who will be going to Bemidji State next year to play hockey and she had a wide open net to pop it into to give Warroad a 3-0 lead. The with 1.9 seconds to go in the period, Warroad added one more. After Freije made a couple saves, she was down on the ice and the puck looked like it landed on her and Taylor Reese tipped it in to make it a 4-0 lead after the second period. “We didn’t play very well in the second period,” said Olson, “they were all over us, we couldn’t anything going in the offensive zone. When your goalie is making 22 saves, we were lucky we only gave up three and should have been two.”

THIRD PERIOD
Warroad would add some insurance, which they didn’t seem to need, but Reese scored her second of the game about half way through the period for her 12th goal of the year. They capped it off with a minute and a half to go on another power play goal by French for her 11th goal of the year and it finished up 6-0. Warroad was 2-4 on the power play along with a shorthanded one. They peppered Freije with 15 more shots in the period for 52, the most against the Pirates this season. Crookston didn’t have many chances, but Parker Strand, Emma LaPlante had some close in chances to name a couple. “We sure didn’t play very well in the second and third periods,” said Olson, “we’ll have to shake this off and get ready for the #5 ranked team tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully the girl’s will be able to play our type of game and get back into the flow.”

Crookston is now 7-3-1 on the year and 0-2-1 in their last three games, all against ranked teams. The Pirates will play Mound-Westonka tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 PM and that will be on KROX RADIO starting at 12:30 PM with the pre-game from the Gardens in Warroad. Mound-Westonka was playing Albert Lea at 8:00 PM tonight in Warroad. The Pirates will finish off the Classic playing Albert Lea on Saturday at 11:00 AM.
Warroad improves to 8-3 on the year.
JV – Warroad won 12-1

Team	1st	2nd	3rd	Final
Crookston	0	0	0	0
Warroad	1	2	3	6

1st Period
12:27 -Warroad – Jaylie French (Karlee Kalbrener, Reagan Haley)

2nd Period
12:13 – Warroad – Kaiya Sandy (Taylor Reese) (SH)
13:37 – Warroad – Katy Comstock (Kaiya Sandy, Jaylie French) (PP)
16:58 – Warroad – Taylor Reese (Katy Comstock)

3rd Period
8:12 – Warroad – Taylor Reese (Kaiya Sandy, Sam Earhart)
15:29 – Warroad – Jaylie French (Kaiya Sandy, Katy Comstock) (PP)