FINAL PERIOD ONSLAUGHT GIVES LADY TIGERS 7-4 WIN OVER IRISH

The Farmington Tiger girls’ hockey team was probably wondering how it could be trailing the visiting Rosemount Irish with less than a half a period remaining at Schmitz-Maki Arena on Wednesday night.  Although they had thoroughly outplayed and outshot Rosemount, FHS was down 4-3 to their neighbors with 6:54 left in the game. 

Never mind that the Irish was on a five-game losing streak and had a 5-13-1 overall record and was a prohibitive underdog to the host Tigers.  Instead of playing scared, Jon Holmes’ club kept their composure and proceeded to score three goals in a span of 2:45 to claim a 6-4 lead before Jenna Gerold added an a final even strength goal with 2:36 left to furnish the final margin of 7-4.

Farmington hailed a hurricane of shots on Irish goaltender Bridget Heffron in the final stanza.  In all, they fired 27 on goal in the final 17 minutes and 59 overall for the game.  Heffron, a freshman for the youthful Irish, was heroic in the net for Rosemount and finished with 52 stops.  FHS goalie Abbie Bollig, meanwhile gave up four goals on 15 Rosemount shots. 

“The game didn’t exactly go as we drew it up the day before,” lamented head coach Jon Holmes of the Tigers.  “But in the end, the bear was poked hard enough to get angry and finish it.  The shot discrepancy pretty much summed up how the game went.  Finding the intrinsic motivation right from the start of every game regardless of how it stacks up on paper is a tricky art.”

The triumph improved Farmington’s South Suburban record to 8-3, good for second place behind league-leading Eagan (10-1) while Lakeville South is third at 7-4.  The Tigers are now 14-5 overall.  They will continue a four-game homestand with conference games against Apple Valley (Jan. 20 at 3 p.m.) and Burnsville (Jan. 23 at 7 p.m.) 

The Tigers led 2-1 after two periods and junior defenseman Cassie Knutson extended the lead 2:59 into the final period with an assist from Marissa Agerter.  However, the Irish responded with goals by Kiersten Browning and Britney Topor less than a minute apart to knot the score at 3-3.  At 10:06, Ava Nygard put Andrew Conboy’s team up by a goal and the pressure was on the highly-favored Tigers.

Just 46 seconds later, senior forward Emily Rubins scored on an assist from Knutson to knot the game at 4-4.  Rubins then scored her sixth goal of the season about two minutes later with Carly Lancaster assisting to give the home team a lead they would not relinquish.  Ellie Moser scored her second goal of the game and her 23rd of the season with an unassisted tally just nine seconds later to make it 6-4 with 4:09 remaining.

“When Rosemount got the go-ahead goal, you could see the change on the bench almost instantaneously,” said Holmes.  “Instead of trying to do things individually, our players started to play according to our preparation and training level.  All in all, it was another conference win and we did what we had to do when necessary but our goal is to not let that happen again.”

Moser, who will play for Bemidji State next season, opened the scoring with an assist to Rubins midway through the first period when FHS outshot RHS 14-5 to take a 1-0 lead.  In the middle session, freshman forward Carly Lancaster put the Tigers up 2-0 on the first shift with Marissa Agerter assisting.  Irish junior Emma Ginter made it 2-1 when she tallied a power-play goal 10 minutes left.  That score held up throughout the rest of the period despite an 18-3 shot advantage by Farmington. 

“We actually came out strong in the first five minutes of the game,” remarked Holmes, “but when things didn’t start falling for us in terms of goals, the girls started trying to do things by themselves and that’s when the train started going down the wrong track. It was like a bad wind-up toy where one person tried to do everything by themselves and when that didn’t work out, someone else would try to wind it up.”

Agerter, who leads Farmington in assists, finished with three helpers while Rubins also tallied three points on the strength of her two key goals and an assist.  Lancaster had two points with a goal and an assist, as did Knutson.

Rosemount, which was 0-6 in the league playing a partial schedule, had scored only four goals in their first six conference games with three shutouts and had also allowed a whopping 39 goals.  For a team averaging just two goals a game, they made the best of their opportunities. They had only four players with more than two goals on the season. Eighth-grade forward Whitney Tuttle, their leading scorer, had three assists for the Irish while Ginter had a goal and two assists. 

FHS continued its torrid pace on the power-play with three goals in five chances while Rosemount was 1-3.  The Irish took five penalties while the host team found its way to the “sin bin” three times.