TIGERS PAY BACK EAGAN. WIN FOURTH STRAIGHT

By Pat Rupp

Farmington stretched its winning streak to four games with a solid 6-3 South Suburban Conference win Tuesday night at Schmitz-Maki Arena. The victory served as a little pay back for coach Jon Holmes’ team who came up empty in a 2-0 loss to the Wildcats last month.

“It’s nice to see us put some ‘W’s’ on the board and have us find ways to transfer our control of play onto the scoreboard…Offensively, it would have been statistically impossible to continue dominating play and have so few goals to show for it.

“We still have not the hit the opposite side of the coin where we are getting more goals than good chances, but hopefully things even out over time.”

The Wildcats struck first just two minutes into the contest but the Tigers clawed back with three scores of their own in the opening period, one each by Morgan Michell (from Madison Kadrlik and Kenna Kadrlik); Kenna Kadrlik (Abby Gehrke) and Jayden Seifert (Sadie Long).

Morgan’s goal came on a breakaway and was the first of her short varsity career; Seifert’s score came on the power play.

Another power play goal, this one by Brenna Fuhrman (Long) early in the second period made it 4-1 but the pesky Wildcats scored twice in the closing two-plus minutes of the second to make it a one-goal game with 17 minutes to play.

Sam Moehle (Fuhrman and Carly Lancaster) added to the lead early in the third and Long added an exclamation point to the win with an empty-netter on assists from Moehle and Lancaster.

Oddly enough, the teams had almost identical shots-on-goal numbers with Farmington finishing with a narrow 24-22 edge.

“That can be a deceiving stat,” Holmes said. “You have to take into consideration the number of shots taken and where they are taken from. Most of this season we have had the advantage in all of those categories but we didn’t always cash in on the opportunities.”

One aspect of the win that especially encouraged Holmes was the fact that six different players scored goals.

“This is something this team is very capable of,” he said. “We have a lot of players who can and should be scoring. This was very promising to see.”

The win raised the Tigers’ season and league record to 6-5-1 and set the stage for Saturday’s South Suburban Conference showdown at league-leading Burnsville. The Blaze are 9-2-1 with one of the wins a 4-2 triumph at Farmington earlier in the season.

“I think we match up well with them,” Holmes said. “They play and compete hard for sure. We controlled much of the play the first time we played but again had trouble scoring.”