Road Warriors Edge Sabers in OT

By Pat Rupp

Most sports teams like the playing at home. Familiar surroundings, supportive crowd and an all-around comfortable vibe.

So far Farmington has seen it season unfold in the opposite direction. Thursday night coach Jon Holmes’ team stayed unbeaten (4-0) on the road with an exciting 4-3 overtime verdict at South Suburban Conference rival Shakopee. Conversely, the Tigers are 0-2-1 within the friendly confines of Schmitz-Maki Arena.

“Not sure why that’s happened,” Holmes said with a grin. “I’ll have to study that some more. For now we may do something simple by just switching the jerseys we wear at home.”

Samantha Moehle ended the scheduled eight-minute overtime period with an unassisted goal, her fifth of the season, just 13 seconds after the face-off to extend the Tigers’ modest unbeaten streak to three games.

“This was a great game for us because we stuck with it to the end,” Holmes said. “We had some ups and downs, but we never allowed the setbacks to take us away from our game plan and mindset.”

Moehle’s game-winner capped off what was a back-and forth, entertaining contest.

Farmington got the better of the opportunities in the opening period, but neither team could get on the board until Tiger Claire Enright found the twine midway through the second.

The lead didn’t last long, however, as the Sabers responded with a pair of scores later in the period to set up a nail-biter of a final frame.

“The goals we gave up were phenomenal examples of how things break down in the neutral zone and how seemingly simple mistakes lead to goals or scary situations. Two of their three goals were directly attributable to us not executing routine neutral zone forechecks and getting the puck into their zone…These are good things for us to address now so we can really begin to tighten things down when it comes time to play more games in January when we play some very good teams.”

Grace Auge (from Brenna Fuhrman) netted her first career varsity goal on the power play 28 seconds into the final period to knot the score but once again Shakopee responded in kind to re-take a one-goal lead.

Carly Lancaster’s fourth goal and 10th point of the season (from Fuhrman and Jayden Seifert) re-tied the score midway through the third to set up Moehle’s overtime heroics.

The Farmington win moved the Tigers into sole possession of third place in the South Suburban Conference, a half-game in front of Shakopee.

“Shakopee has had some very good teams the past few years,” Holmes said. “Coming back again and again against them was a big step forward for our young team.”

As has been the case in every game this season the Tigers finished with an edge in the shots-on-goal department, this time by a 28-21 margin. Goalie Ryleigh Furlong finished with 18 saves in securing her fourth win of the season.

Holmes credited upperclassmen Auge, Izzy Zwart and Kelsie Vincent for the play against the Sabers and said he was looking forward to the return of another veteran, Bailey Zimmer, who has been out with mononucleosis.

The Tigers will be looking to break their winless streak at home Saturday when they host South Suburban Conference leader Eagan (7-0) at Schmitz-Maki.

“Eagan is a very solid team and will be a great test for us as we move toward wrapping up the first half of the conference season,” Holmes said.