Mitch Calvert
The Muskie boys’ hockey team wasn’t able to rest on its laurels through the Christmas break, taking part in the annual Hilltopper Holiday Classic in Duluth on Dec. 29-31.
The black-and-gold opened the tournament with a 5-2 loss to the eventual champion Appleton United squad (Wisconsin) and thus were relegated to the consolation side for the rest of the tournament.
Fort High made the most of it, however, winning back-to-back games over New Ulm, Mn. (5-4 in overtime) and Proctor (6-1) to claim fifth place.
Host Duluth Marshall fell to Appleton United 3-0 in the championship final while Superior beat Edgewood (Madison, Wis.) 4-1 in the bronze-medal game.
The Muskies had opened the scoring against Appleton on a goal by Ryan Shortreed, but quickly gave up three unanswered tallies and couldn’t recover.
“First time back in 10 days, and just a slow start cost us, but we got better as the weekend went on,” Muskie coach Shawn Jourdain noted. “I think if we played like we did in our last game as we got our feet, it could’ve been a lot better.
“We seem to play better as we go along in tournaments,” he added.
Matt Goldamer had the other goal for the Muskies in their opening loss, but veteran forward Matt DePiero said the loss wasn’t for lack of effort.
“It might have been a bit of rust, but Appleton had a really good hockey team,” he remarked.
“I think we played fairly well, a few little breakdowns that I think had we been playing [leading into the tournament] we would’ve made smarter decisions at certain times, but overall, I think we played well all tournament,” he added.
The Muskies rebounded with a 5-4 overtime win against New Ulm in their next game, with the game-winner coming off the stick of Goldamer.
Donovan Cousineau added a pair of goals while Blake Wepruk and Mike Jourdain netted singles.
The black-and-gold then closed out the tournament with a convincing 6-1 win over Proctor, getting another pair from Cousineau while Jourdain, Zach McCool, Kyle Herr, and Brett McMahon added the others.
“In our last game, we rolled four lines and they all played well, which is nice to see,” Shawn Jourdain said.
Despite missing four defencemen (Cody McCool, Robbie Rea, Ryan McDowall, and Josh Scott) in their 6-1 exhibition win over Kittson Central here back on Dec. 19, all of them returned to action for the Duluth tournament.
The bad news was another injury to Rea (neck and back area) will force him to the sidelines for at least two weeks.
Jourdain said he liked how the Muskies improved with each game, but did notice a few things that need to be corrected in practice this week.
“We’ve got to learn to find that late guy coming in. A lot of times last weekend, the late guy was there but we didn’t get it [the puck] to him, and we have to somehow learn to be more patient on our power play, as well,” Jourdain stressed.
“The last game we were better, we got three power-play goals, but we had so many chances to win games earlier with our power play and special teams, and weren’t able to do it.”
The Muskies hosted Ely in exhibition play last night (the result was unavailable prior to press time), which was a team they had drubbed 12-0 on Dec. 9 in Ely.
Fort High sports a NorWOSSA-best 6-1 record, with their next league action coming here Jan. 13 against the Dryden Eagles.
“Anytime we play Dryden, it’s always a tight game,” DePiero said. “They have a good team, and the emotions of the rivalry are always there.
“Dryden is always going to be tough, especially once we get into playoff time because it’s a whole different thing,” he added. “We need to keep doing what we’ve been doing, and not try to do too much necessarily.
“Just keep working as a team and keep plugging away.”
Despite a first half of the season that saw the Muskies exceed expectations and pile up wins, DePiero warned against getting too confident because hard work has got them to this point.
“We need to stay focused on our goals, which is obviously getting to OFSAA, and not get too big of heads because of the season we’ve had [so far],” he stressed.
“We still have some pretty tough teams to play coming up, the game against the Falls [on Jan. 19], and winning NorWOSSA.”
