Some nights, the puck just doesn’t like you. 

Teams battle the temperamental rubber disc and its whimsical bounces, and when you hit a half-dozen pipes and have a pair of goals waved off, any team could be forgiven for letting frustration set in on the bench. 

Moorhead would rather use those instances to exercise an impressive level of poise. 

“I think it’s all mindset,” junior defenseman Ethan Frisch said after the Spuds eked out a 4-2 win over Lakeville North on Friday night at Bloomington Ice Garden, a game speckled by the Spuds’ oh-so-close chances. 

“If you let that stuff get to you, stuff you can’t control, I think that’s when the team starts going down.”

The Spuds, ranked No. 3 in the latest Class 2A state coaches’ poll, outshot the Panthers 43-17, but the usual high-octane attack was slowed by a Lakeville North defense that put a premium on clogging the middle of the ice. 

“(Lakeville North) did a really nice job playing physical and kind of slowing us up through the neutral zone,” Moorhead head coach Jon Ammerman said. “They took advantage of their opportunities to make it a game.”

With the Spuds’ top line of seniors Carter Randklev, Cole O’Connell and Jack Stetz held quiet for much of the game, the Spuds (1-0) found supplemental scoring from seniors Parker Dronen and Ryan Stafford. 

Dronen and Stafford were joined by Frisch in a three-goal second period for the Spuds, erasing the 1-0 lead Lakeville North’s Spencer Schneider handed his Panthers on a power play in the first period. 

The Panthers (0-1) pulled within one at the 7:11 mark of the third period on a goal by senior defenseman and Bowling Green commit Garrett Daly, but Stetz nailed an empty-net shot from the top of his own face-off circle to ice the game. 

Frisch, a North Dakota commit, admitted that Stetz’s shot did little to calm him during the game’s final moments. 

“It was a little nerve-wracking,” Frisch said. “I don’t know if I liked it right away,” he added with a grin. 

Despite taking the loss, Lakeville North sophomore goaltender Caleb Mayer turned in a spectacular performance, turning away 40 shots in his first taste of varsity action.

Due to an injury sustained during the second period, Moorhead senior forward 2016-2017 leading scorer Carter Randklev did not play in the third, an absence that Ammerman described as a precautionary decision.