Oct. 26/27 vs Winkler Royals

Well the Jacks got there season rolling with a couple games against the Winkler Royals out a Manitoba. Overall it was good to get some games in and evaluate the personnel we have here wearing the Lumberjacks Jersey. Saturday night we got of to a poor first period and before we knew it we were down 3-0. Then we settled in and were playing some decent hockey. Then the third period hit and we ended up having another poor stretch and they scored 5 goals in that period. Sunday was a good effort by the boys. We were committed to our defensive coverage for the most part. Alum Marlin Froese was a beast all weekend for the Royals and set up the game winner for them with 1 second left. It was a tough way to lose but I think it was a great learning experience for the guys that we will take with us in future games. Get out to the Lumberdome next weekend as we welcome the NDSU Bison to the Bottineau.
LONG LIVE THOSE LUMBERJACKS!

February 10 vs WSC Game Two

Well the season is over. Tonight we lost to WSC in the Region 13 play-offs and will not go to NY to play for a National Title. I knew this team was better than its record and I thought we showed it the second half of the game.  We battled hard and competed and left it all out there on the rink. That is all a coach can ask for is guys to play hard and that is what we did.  We had some ups and we had some downs this year but I commend this group for sticking with it right to the end, it would have been easy to give up and we didn't.  We lost 6-4 tonight and were down 4-1 in the third and gave up an empty netter.  Thank you to the students who showed up we appreciate the support and to Coach Dano and Coach Cory for getting them fired up with the Slap Shot Regatta.  Good Luck to our sophomores.

Feb 6th

Tonight did not start the way we wanted and before we knew it we were down to the big Tetons who dominated the first five minutes and the whole game for that matter. We could not match up with there speed and size. I thought we could have battled harder but when you are down that many early it is tough to get anything going. I did think we never gave up. I thought we had outstanding contributions from our sophomores in Nick Sutton, Robin Danielsson, Seth Serhienko and Zach McDonald. Up front Logan Millican was our best player and made things happen. Hopefully we will have 2 more chances at these guys and please come out on Sunday and support the Jacks. Final score tonight was 10-1.

January 27

Well tonight was one of the most difficult nights as a coach for the Lumberjacks in my 11 years. Losing sucks! Losing badly sucks even worse!! We have hit rock bottom tonight. We were down to 12 skaters and were playing the top ACHA Division I team in the country. We knew from the start it might be a tough night, and it was. There are many questions to be asked and what ifs for our season this past year. Being the leader of this program I have to learn from these situations this year and do better from these lessons. As a coach the worst is when you feel you have lost your team and they are not responding to you and trying for you. I have felt this is true a couple of times tonight, and the score indicated that. It is very disheartning when these players have been beat bad more than once.  Sometimes it has been becasue they did not play hard or stuck with our game plan, but a lot of it is the competition. Bottom line is some of these defeats are because we are playing teams that are that much better than us, much better. We need to find that competition level that makes it good for both teams. This year it was not there and I take responsibility for that. You ask yourself are you doing enough? What more can we do? Why did we have so many guys bail on our team? Tonights game and last weekend in Kenora it was Men versus Boys, and we were intimidated, and short staffed, not to mention badly outskilled. I have told the boys and I truly believe we are not as bad as a team as our record has indicated or as the scores have been, and I think we are going to still have success.  What will that success be? The past month have taught me not to take things for granted and to be thankful what you have and what you had.  I have coached many great people and we have some on our team currently. I am lucky to be a Lumberjack, now we have to get our program back on track and make current, former, and future Lumberjacks  proud to be a part of the Lumberjack family. The only way to get out from our rock bottom tonight is to work. Lets get the hard hats on and work boots and get better everyday.

January 24

Greetings Jacks fans. The boys have been trying to get healthy here this week. We went to Kenora and were shorthanded and lost twice. We are battling some injuries and a flu bug. Then we played on Wednesday against WSC. We stuck to the gameplan and tried to conserve energy and got some good goaltending at times. Playing only 13 skaters I was very happy with the courage our guys had as we probably should have had some guys not playing as they were not feeling good. I just hope we can play those guys with a full lineup but it does not look like we will be able to. We still have a lot of work to do but last night was the first time in a long time we had everyone on the same page and we had Kyle Volk score two goals. We are in tough this weekend against Minot State but we will try our best, that is all we can ask for.

January 15

Tonight we got beat by a very good hockey team. They are not a Junior College type team. When they have the scholarships - how do you compete? We gave them too many oppurtunities on the Power Play and I think they were 6-8 on the PP. You cannot compete like that shooting yourself in the foot. They should be good - they have 16  players on scholarships - we have 5 players on a scholarship. When you have that and the fact that most if not all of there players are 21 or older and we are much younger the scores are going to be lopsided. We make no excuses and they are a better team. We have a lot of work to do and we will continue to try be the best program we can. Hopefully it can result in some more wins and championships in the future. We are not going to roll over and we still have much to accomplish this season.

Finlandia and Gustavus JV

We went 1-2 on the weekend and I wish it was 3-0 but overall it was a better weekend for us. We saw flashes of good, and bad but not ugly.  We will now enter the gauntlet of our schedule playing WSC, Kenora, and Minot St. It will be a good test for this young squad and we have to learn from our experiences and get better every day. The biggest thing we learned this weekend is that we need to compete for 60 minutes > every shift. Most of the goals we gave up this weekend we would want those shifts back and we might have been 3-0. Our biggest thing we really need to work on right now is our mental game. We need to focus on the task at hand and being a good teammate. We saw 3 differant NCAA Division III games this weekend and it was good to see that level of hockey and how hard those student-athletes compete. It was very satisfying seeing Troy Chandler (Jacks '12) playing at Finlandia. He kept his team in it but they could not get the equalizer and lost 3-2. Two more wins would have made this weekend better but hopefully we learned from the close losses and that will help us down the road.  I BELIEVE IN THIS TEAM!!! Long Live Those Lumberjacks!