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Rollercoaster Ride Continues

By Pat Rupp, 01/16/20, 1:45PM CST

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Rollercoaster Ride Continues

by Pat Rupp

Farmington’s consistent inconsistency continued Tuesday night with a 5-4 South Suburban Conference loss to Eastview at Schmitz-Maki Arena.

The defeat was the third straight for the Tigers who have been the epitome of streaky all season. They opened the 2019-20 campaign with three straight losses then won four consecutive games before dropping the next two. An impressive seven-game win streak followed before the recent three-game slide. All of it adds up to an 11-8 season record.

I think the streaks are mostly attributable to playing a pretty solid conference and non-conference schedule,” coach Jon Holmes said. “None of the games we have played have been blowouts and because they are all so close they just fall one way or the other.

“In our journey so far we have not developed the consistency in playing the defensive zone the way we know how.  We have put ourselves in quite a few one and two goal battles…
The biggest thing that we don’t do though is getting the puck on the net.”

The Tigers found themselves in a familiar position against the Lightning, down 3-0 after one period.

“So the irony is that we came out ready to roll,” Holmes said. “We absolutely dominated and did not even allow them a shot or a skate-by into our zone until we were whistled for a penalty and they scored.
“We went back to dominating and then got whistled for another penalty and they scored again. Their third goal was a huge mental mistake by us, and boom– the first period was over.”

Izzy Zwart (from Sam Moehle) scored shorthanded and Claire Enright added an unassisted power play goal in the second period but Eastview had two of its own to make it a three-goal deficit heading for the final intermission.

Enright added her second of the night and Carly Lancaster (from Jayden Seifert) accounted for the only other scoring of the final period, leaving the Tigers a goal short on the final scoreboard.

Five Farmington penalties resulted in five power play opportunities for the Lightning and the visitors made the most of them with three goals.

“On the penalty kill we just lost sight of what we were trying to do and got caught out of position,” Holmes said. “This has been the case in other games, too. We just turn our brains off at times and have out of body experiences where we know we should be doing something but for some reason we’re just not executing.”

The South Suburban loss to Eastview dropped the Tigers to 8-5 in league play, two games behind league-leading Apple Valley and at the top of a five-team scrum vying for second place.

Saturday the girls entertain Prior Lake at Schmitz-Maki before heading west to play Lakeville North next Tuesday night at Ames Arena.

 

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