By Nick Gerhardt
With section realignment moving New Prague up to Class 2A Tuesday’s game against Northfield served as the only rematch of last year’s Section 1A title the teams will get this season.
Similar to last year’s result, the Class A No. 8-rated Raiders emerged with a 6-2 victory at Northfield Ice Arena behind a big first period.
Northfield walloped the Trojans 6-0 in the section title game with a four-goal first-period barrage. On Tuesday, the Raiders emerged from the first period with a 3-1 lead and a dominant effort.
“The start of the first period was big,” Northfield head coach Mike Luckraft said. “We kind of got on them early. We made a mistake and let them get one to tie it 1-1. The next two were big and kind of gave us a cushion.”
Luckraft shuffled lines ahead of the matchup with New Prague in the hopes of creating balanced scoring across the lines. The move paid off quickly as Andrew Winter, who got elevated to the top line Tuesday, scored the game’s first goal 3 minutes, 59 seconds into the game when he sniped the blocker side upper corner for a 1-0 lead with senior winger Kam Kaiser assisting.
“That’s what we’re trying to do is build up the confidence in some of the guys,” Luckraft said. “If we can have two really strong offensive lines and slot in a third line that’s great defensively and tough to play against, we’ll put ourselves in a position to have success.”
The Trojans (5-2) evened things at 5:35 when senior forward Will Seymour scored with assists from senior center Eric Berg and junior forward Thomas Christensen.
Winter assisted on senior forward Barrett Bradley’s go-ahead goal at 8:55 of the period. Bradley knocked in a rebound that came off a Winter shot to make it 2-1.
Kaiser struck for a goal of his own on the power play to make it 3-1 at 16:13 of the period. Senior center Jake Geiger and sophomore defenseman Bridger Riley assisted on the goal.
The Raiders (7-1-2, 3-0 Big 9) added a goal in the second period with Geiger knocking in a rebound at 7:23 of the second period for a 4-1 lead. Senior defenseman Samuel Boardman and Kaiser had the assists. Northfield outshot New Prague 19-4 in the period as the Trojans took four penalties in the period.
Senior winger Cayden Monson slotted into the second line Tuesday, like he did last season to help balance the lines and he picked up a power-play goal in the third period with an assist from Riley to make it 5-1 at 5:34 of the period. Junior winger Griffin Kennelly added a goal at 10:53 with assists from Bradley and Boardman to make it 6-1.
The Trojans got a goal back with 4:19 to play while on the power play. Junior forward Connor Williams knocked in a puck with assists from Seymour and senior forward Braeden Woitas to make it a 6-2 game.
Max Frank stopped 14 of the 16 shots he faced to pick up his third victory of the season.
Northfield finished with 45 shots on goal for the game as the Raiders bounced back from a pair of ties in their past two games against Osseo and Spring Lake Park.
Northfield faces Mankato East (5-3, 2-2 Big 9) Thursday in Mankato.
