The shorthanded, 12th-seeded Bluejay hockey team knew that the Olympic-sized rink of Greenheck wasn’t conducive to their victory chances, and it showed when host D.C. Everest ended their season with last Tuesday’s 10-1 regional win.
“We started well,” MHS coach Chris Marlowe said. “We skated well the whole first period and we generated some shots. We had some good scoring opportunities but didn’t capitalize early like we would have liked.
“We ran into a little penalty trouble and we can’t afford that. We need as many legs as we can have on the big ice. They ran four lines at us and we ran 2-1/2. Everest is a good team. I felt they could have backed off a bit. They came hard right to the end. They scored a goal with very little time left.”
Merrill trailed 3-0 after the first period, then cut it to 3-1 on a Dylan Koss power play goal (A-Adam Kohnhorst, Emily Heckendorf) 4:32 into the second period. But the 5th-seeded Evergreens doubled their tally in a span of 3:21 of the second and later bumped it to 7-1 heading into the third.
D.C.E. closed it out with three in the third.
“We fought hard,” Marlowe said. “Lukas (Mikulasik) played well for us and kept us in it for a couple of periods. We brought in Justin Gille, our freshman back-up, and he played really well, too. It gave us a glimpse what we can look forward to and I think we’ll be fine in net for a while.”
Everest out-shot MHS 66-11 in the game.
The Evergreens were paced by 2-goal, 2-assist games from Alex Yde and Alan Sackmann. Sam Joswiak gave two goals and an assist.
Everest (14-8-3) also defeated 4th seed Northland Pines 5-3 on Thursday, setting up Tuesday’s game with the state’s #3 and top-seeded Wausau West (21-3).
Saves-Merrill-Lukas Mikulasik 21-22-*-43; Justin Gille *-*-13-13. D.C.E.-Jared Enkers 7-2-1-10.
Merrill capped off a 1-18-1 season.
“We didn’t have a lot of success win/loss-wise, but we became better players and had a lot of fun in the process,” Marlowe said. “We showed our character through never giving up. We knew what we were up against. There’s a lot of really good hockey in the central part of the state. We went into every game with the same mentality that we were going to compete.”