Grinding It Out

by Pat Rupp

Farmington overcame the absence of one of its leading scorers, injury, illness and a whopping 10 penalties to eke out a 3-2 South Suburban Conference win at Eagan Tuesday night. The victory was the fourth straight for the Tigers who moved to 4-3 overall and 4-2 in the conference.

 “We have been battling sickness and injury and were playing a few players that were certainly not 100 percent and Claire Enright did not even make it to the game as she was out with the flu… So, to face that much adversity and still grind through the game and come up with a win at Eagan was very promising. I do not think we have won at their barn in a few years.”

The Wildcats opened the scoring with a goal by Maria Cooper at 10:58 of the opening period but the Tigers’ Sam Moehle (from Jayden Seifert and Brenna Fuhrman) scored less than a minute later to knot the score.

Seifert’s unassisted goal early in the second frame gave the visitors a 2-1 lead but the pesky Wildcats re-tied the contest on Jenna Ruiz’s score at 13:06 of the second. Abby Gehrke (from Kiersten Wood) found the net for the game-winner a minute and a half later.

In addition to the combined three goals in the second frame, Farmington began its almost non-stop trip to the penalty box for the rest of the night. The Tigers racked up four infractions in the period and then topped that number with five more in the scoreless third stanza.

“I cannot exactly say what the deal was with 10 penalties,” Holmes said. “I certainly saw a couple but the others left me scratching my head. I thought we finished plays and went through the puck but Eagan was not staying on their feet and we were getting calls against us.”

Miraculously, the shots on goal numbers for the third period were even at 9-9, despite Farmington playing short for more than half of it. Eagan finished the night 0-for-8 on the power play, a credit to the Farmington penalty kill unit.

Tiger netminder Ryleigh Furlong had a busy night between the pipes, stopping 33 of 35 shots sent her way. Eagan won the shots on goal battle by a 35-24 margin.

“I thought we actually had a lot of shots considering we spent an entire period's worth of time on the penalty kill,” Holmes said. “It was absolutely unbelievable. This was one of those games where things were not going our way on or off the ice.”  

Holmes said he's not confident the team’s illness and injury problems will be gone by Thursday, but its penalty issues will be in the rear view mirror Thursday night when the Tigers entertain top ten-rated Eden Prairie in a non-league game at Schmitz-Maki Arena.

 “Our non-conference schedule against quality teams is designed to give us a snapshot of our progress,” Holmes said. “We’ll get to see where we have improved and what things we need to work on the rest of the season.”