Thief River Falls scored within the first minute of play to take a 1-0 lead in their game against South St. Paul.  After beating South St. Paul’s goalie Sydney Conley in the first minute in the first minute, it took the Prowlers 47 minutes of game time to finally beat Conley send South St. Paul to the third place game.  Thief River Falls Briana Jorde’s rush within under two minutes left in the game that resulted in the Prowlers third goal finally clinched the game for the Falls 3-1.  An empty netter in the final minute ended the scoring.  Thief River Falls won 4-1.

Blake and Red Wing got into a game of strategy as both teams entered the game with a plan and executed their plans.  Blake leveraged their three lines against the Wingers two lines effectively, Red Wing countered with a passive offense that often left Blake’s goalie Anna Kruesel the player in the middle of a stare down between a Red Wing center in the slot and Blake defender controlling the puck behind the Blake net.  In the end, Blake scored the winning goal late in the second period on an unplanned event resulting in a loose puck picked up by Blake’s Sarah Chute for the score and went on to beat Red Wing 3-0.

Thief River Falls-4 South St. Paul-1

Period One-Prowlers strike quickly

It took the Prowlers 56 seconds to score in Thief River Falls’ semifinal game against South St. Paul.  Thief River Falls’ top line of Emily Bergland, Kora Torkelson, and Kaylee Eskeli scored the opening goal.  Bergland got the score, Torkelson the assist.  The Packer defense stiffened after that and played even on the scoreboard with the Prowlers over most of the remaining three periods.  But the tempo was set on the ice in the first period and kept for most of the game.  Thief River Falls’ offense trapped the Packers constantly in the South St. Paul zone or in the Packer half of the ice.  They outshot the Packers 15-4 in the period.  Conley, who had a great game against St. Paul United in the Section 4A finals, came on strong after that opening goal stemming the Falls attack.  The Prowlers’ top line put six shots on the net; their second line of Sylvia Martell, Kira Johnson, and Morgan Martell put five shots on net.  South St. Paul’s offense had their moments in the opening period.  The offense usually came from a defenseman Anna Barlow rush.  Barlow rushes resulted in her putting three of the four Packer first period shots on the Prowlers’ goalie Francis Marshall.       

Period Two-Pressure builds on the Packers

The first two minutes of the second period were spent with Thief River Falls attacking the South St. Paul net and controlling play keeping the puck in the Packers half of the ice.  A South St. Paul trip two minutes in, put the Prowlers on the power play.  Things looked dim for the Packers, but their defense led by Barlow and Makena Burke kept the Falls attack wide.  The Prowlers got only two shots on the net.  But the pressure was building.  Thief River Falls was methodically trapping and turning the puck in the Packer zone.  The Packer line changes were slower under the pressure and South St. Paul was starting to ice the puck to get a line change.  A TRF checking penalty brought the Packers some relief, but the Packer started their power play by dumping the puck and falling back to neutral zone before they changed tactics and attacked the net.  After the Falls killed the penalty, and with four minutes left in the period, the Prowlers got their second goal.  It started with a Packer slashing penalty.

The Prowlers established puck control in the South St. Paul zone and moved it around the perimeter for the first minute of the power play.  The Packers penalty kill was effective until the Prowlers Morgan Martell caught the Packer defense by surprised.  She stick handled off the end boards to the left of the Packer crease.  The move caught the defense off guard and they failed to re-act.  Martell snapped a quick shot driving the puck off a Packer into the net.  The Prowlers led 2-0.  A Thief River Falls hooking penalty relieved the pressure for the Packers, but they couldn’t set up on the power play constantly chasing the puck in the Packer half of the ice.  The second period ended 2-0 TRF.  Thief River outshot the Packers 22-1 in the second period.  Conley is still the hot goalie despite giving up two goals in the game.

Period Three-Conley stands her ground

The period opened with the Prowlers attacking the Packers net and three minutes later, the Packers scored.  The Packers beat the Thief River Falls’ defense getting the puck into the left crease area where it slid to the right to South St. Paul’s Corbyn Jenkins.  Jenkins one-timed the sliding puck into the net to cut the Prowlers lead to 2-1.  Over the next twelve minutes, the game came down to two things.  Could the Packers generate an offensive rush to score and tie the game and could the Packers’ goalie stand her ground?  The defense in front of Conley was tiring under wave after wave of Prowler attacks that pressured the South St Paul net.  More and more rushes were ending with Conley having to stop shots from Prowler forwards at the top of the crease.  Conley stood her ground over the next ten minutes of playing time.  No penalties were called as the two teams played even.  Conley faced numerous solo and 2-on-0 rushes often generated off play inside the Packer zone.  Players from both teams ended up sliding on the ice in front of her.  With two minutes left in the game and the Packers skaters led by defenseman Anna Barlow starting to gain puck control in the Thief River Falls zone, the Prowlers Briana Jorde picked up a loose puck along the right boards and took off flying along the boards.  Jorde’s speed beat the Packer defense.  She cut across the right faceoff circle into the slot driving towards the left slot.  She fired beating a sprawling Conley through the 5-hole.  It was a great play by both and it was the insurance goal.  The Prowlers led 3-1 and added an empty netter to make the final score 4-1.

The Thief River Falls band was happy.  They are staying another night.  But the Falls players didn’t rush out on to the ice.  The bench did skate out and gather in celebration, but they had one more game to play.  They knew it.    

Blake-3 Red Wing-1

Period One-Strategies

The game started slow.  The first minutes of the opening period resulted in few shots and television timeouts that lengthened the opening period.  Three minutes into the game, one finally saw, that both teams had a game plan.  Blake’s plan assumed that the Wingers top two lines would alternate in the opening period.  The Bears, using their home advantage, matched their #1 line led by Karlie Lund and Carly Bullock with Red Wings #1 line led by Reagan Hayley, That let the Bears double up on Red Wings’ #2 line led by Maddie Hardyman.  Hardyman would face #3 line led by Julia Shepard often on the faceoffs and then find themselves playing the Bears’ #2 line at the end of the shift.

Red Wing's strategy went with a passive defense.  They did not send any forwards low in the Blake zone.  Instead, the Winger forwards would make a line across the faceoff dots and challenge the Bear defense to move the puck.  Often, that led to a staring match between the Red Wing center in the slot and the Bear puck carrier behind the Blake net.  Both strategies worked in the first period.  Both teams played with discipline and held their positions.  Both teams had some reasonable scoring opportunities.  When the period ended the score was 0-0.  Blake outshot the Wingers 12-9 in the period, but as the period was ending, the Bears line of the two “CKarlyies” was began to gain control of the play on their shifts. The opening period ended with both teams still maintaining their disciplined play. 

Period 2 Benches

With the goals switched in the second period, the benches get further away from their goal.  Would each team’s strategies remain the same? For the Wingers, they maintained their composure but were more aware of the shift changes.  And the first two minutes of the second period was spent with Red Wing maintaining their defense and composure as Blake controlled the puck in Red Wings’ zone.  The Wingers’ defense held until they could change, but Red Wing was starting to lose on the line match-ups.  Blake’s #1 line was starting to control play on their shifts.  Red Wing got relief with a rush and a quick three minutes into the period.  Then they returned to play defense in their zone.  They played with confidence, not forcing the play on the breakout.

Blake, on the offensive in the opening minutes did not have to move the puck under pressure from their zone until five minutes into the period.  Five minutes into the period, the Wingers made a subtle change with their defense starting to edge more towards the neutral.  That broke the Blake pressure and the Wingers offense was getting the puck deep and still not forcing the defense behind the Blake net zone.  Red Wing continued to play passively, trapping Blake along the boards on the breakout and moving the turnover into a Winger rush on net.  After a brief furry by both teams, each team drew a penalty and killed the penalty.  

Playing evenly with seven minutes left in the period, Red Wing had its best chance to score when they succeeded in trapping the Bears twice in the Blake zone getting two shots on the net that forced Bears’ goalie Anna Kruesel to make the big stop.  At that point, Blake widen their spacing on their breakout, bringing two skaters low and moving two wings to the RW blue line.  The Blake defenders starting making the long pass as they came from behind the net bouncing the puck off the boards in mid-ice to keep the Red Wing forwards from breaking up the play.   Blake’s wings at the Red Wing blue line would control the puck or the miss would become icing.  If the wing could control the puck, Blake would rush along the boards, but be driven wide.  The Bears had trouble breaking the scoreless tie. 

For all the planned play, with just over a minute left in the period Blake’s Sarah Chutt picked up a rebounding puck at the Red Wing blue line. Turning opportunist, she skated the puck to the slot and using a Blake wing breaking low left as a foil, beat Red Wing’s goaltender from the slot on right side.  Blake led 1-0

On the last shift of the period, Red Wing kept to their game plan and Blake continued to spread and look for a long pass to connect.  The period ended with Blake leading 1-0.  Blake outshot the Wingers 15-5 in the second period.  The Wingers’ defensive strategy worked giving up just one goal and generated some tough shots on the Blake goal.  Blake’s tactics were misfiring, third spread took away the advantage their #1 line had in the game.  The question going into the third period is would either team change tactics.

Blake makes an adjustment

Blake tried to counter the Red Wings passive offense by hitting the long pass.  The Bears’ wings would head to spots on or near the Bears blue line, one along each board.  When they hit the long pass, the Red Wing defense duo could still force the Blake wing wide and take away the 2-on-1 rush.  In the opening minutes of the third period, the Bears made an adjustment.  The wing not getting the puck moved into the center area around the blue line instead of staying wide.  The move drew more attention from the Wingers defense allowing the Blake puck carrier along the boards to beat the single winger defense wide or draw the second defender closer opening up the weak side.  Carly Bullock and Jordan Chancellor teamed up to score twice that way in the opening three minutes of the third period.  Chancellor got the scores, Bullock got the assists.  The two goals put Blake up 3-0 and Red Wing never recovered.  Blake went into cruise mode after that.  Leading by three, they let Red Wing force the play and countered on rushes.  Neither team scored, but Blake outshot the Wingers 20-5 in the period.

What is next?

The big game, 4:00 PM Saturday at the Xcel or on Channel 45.