If you attended a Henry Sibley girls hockey game earlier this season, chances are it was not only a nail-biter, but probably a heartbreaker.

Only 11 games in, the Warriors had suffered six one-goal losses, including three in overtime.

“We were hoping we could have pulled some of those out,” coach Mike Haedrich said. “It was pretty frustrating losing every one of them.”

But Haedrich saw the silver lining: The competition level was high. Last year, the Minnesota State High School League bumped the Warriors up to Class 2A, which in turn gave them a new home in Section 6. With such late notice, this is the first season in which they have been able to schedule Class 2A teams to bump up their nonconference schedule in hopes of earning a higher seed come playoff time.

With less depth than most of the big programs, Haedrich knew what his team would be up against. While the players went through a gut-wrenching stretch to start the season, they’ve also pleasantly surprised themselves. Many losses have come at the hands of strong programs such as Cretin-Derham Hall, Irondale, Hopkins and Eagan.

“We hung in there in all those games when were probably underdogs in all of them,” Haedrich said. “It’s a good tribute to our team that we were able to hang in there with all of them right to the end. You’re never happy with losing, but it’s fun to know that we can play with them.”

Since starting the season 1-6-1, the Warriors have since shored up their record to 7-8-1 and went into the middle of the week on a five-game winning streak after recently coming off a Schwan Cup Red Division championship.

The 4-2 holiday tournament championship victory over undefeated Orono signaled a turning point for assistant coach Dave Cosgrove.  Down 2-1 with three minutes to play in regulation, senior captain Tara Baago and sophomore forward Jessica Goldberg scored within a span of seven seconds to regain the lead and secure the come-from-behind victory.

“More than anything, more than the win, it’s the mental thing that it does to a team. Knowing you can come back from being behind. That’s so important,” Cosgrove said. “Later in the year when you face elimination a lot of teams fall apart, whereas I think this is real good for us mentally.”

About one quarter of the way into the season, the coaching staff rotated Rachel Friberg and Dani Gish on the top two lines to try to spark some scoring and stop the losing streak.

“It’s kind of one of those deals where you try to get everyone going and we were losing, so we had to try something,” Haedrich said. “Both of them started scoring, and it worked out well.”

Friberg, Baago and Lauren Ahern jelled immediately as team’s top unit. Friberg scored in Tuesday’s 4-2 win — another thriller — over Mahtomedi, with Baago burying the game-winner shorthanded.

“Maybe earlier in the year we were losing these overtime games, these one-goal games — we didn’t have the confidence,” Cosgrove said. “I think we might have turned the corner there.”