The Bluejay hockey team made some inroads to collecting their first victory of the season in a pair of Valley contests, but still came up short.
Merrill lost 5-1 to D.C. Everest in last Tuesday’s game at the MARC, then suffered a 7-2 defeat at Wis. Rapids on Thursday in a battle of winless squads.
“No way Rapids should score seven goals against us,” MHS coach Chris Marlowe said. “Going in we thought we had a good chance with them. We played them pretty tight for much of the game. A game like that, when both teams are winless, it becomes that much more important to get on the board early.”
Instead the Raiders tallied one 4:25 into the first period and made it 3-0 with goals 3:27 and 7:23 into the second.
“We got refocused between periods and scored a quick one, but they scored their fourth one and it was kind of a backbreaker,” Marlowe said.
Merrill’s Dylan Koss converted a power-play pass from Emily Heckendorf just :30 into the third. Rapids scored twice more to make it 5-1, before Koss netted one with help from Jared Hoffman and Travis Kleinschmidt with 14:40 gone. But Rapids scored two more in the next 35 seconds.
“Part of our problem is you throw in injury (Lucas Kleinschmidt) and sickness (Adam Kohnhorst), and we’re not deep enough to handle that,” Marlowe said. “We’re throwing two lines against other teams’ three lines and it’s hard to compete for three full periods. We ran out of gas.”
Saves-MHS-Lucas Mikulasik 8-16-23-47. WR-Cole Paulsen 4-7-6-17.
Evergreen
The Bluejays scored the only goal of the third period, but by then they trailed 5-0 since D.C.E. had notched two in the first and three in the second.
“Everest is real good in the offensive zone,” Marlowe said. “They’re very well-coached and disciplined.Our biggest problem right now is not spending enough time in the offensive zone, but we’ve been working hard on shooting, forechecking and preventing the other team from breaking it out of their defensive zone.”
Heckendorf scored 4:00 into the third on an assist from Kohnhorst. Five different players scored for Everest.
Saves-MHS-Lucas Mikulasik 14-20-16-50. DCE-Jared Enkers 8-2-5-15.