BOYS HOCKEY: Cardinals down sloppy Trojans

WORTHINGTON — Two short-handed goals, along with three goals in the first and third periods, allowed the Redwood Valley Cardinals to cruise to an easy win over a sloppy Worthington Trojans boys hockey team.

“This was a team we were definitely capable of skating with tonight, but we just didn’t show up to play,” Trojans coach Nate Grimmius said. “We couldn’t skate with the puck, handle the puck and our positioning wasn’t good either. Overall, it just wasn’t a good night.”

The Trojans held it close in the early-going of the first period, but the Cardinals scored two goals in 7 seconds to jump out to a quick 2-0 lead. Colin Fuhr put the first tally past Worthington goalie Alex Purdy at 7:37, then Niko Berge sniped a shot past Purdy from the top of the circles to nab the second goal.

Redwood Valley’s Logan Sandgren capped off the scoring for the Cardinals at the 3:33 mark with an assist from Austin Kretsch to take a 3-0 lead.

The Trojans came out fired up in the second, peppering the Cardinals goalie and coming up with a couple early chances on-net. However, Worthington’s burst of energy didn’t last long.

“We had a nice discussion after the first period about our intensity,” Grimmius said. “We came out and we had some really good chances right away in the second period, but we couldn’t keep the intensity up.”

After holding off the Trojans’ initial burst, the Cardinals went to work again with Hunter Breidenbach picking up a goal at 15:56 to increase RV’s lead to four. Then, Jacob Prouty netted the Cardinals fifth goal with 9:40 left in the period.

“In the second period, we came out with a little intensity, but is dissolved pretty fast,” Grimmius said. “There was just a lack of effort tonight.”

The Trojans finally put a puck behind Cardinals goalie Jordan Houle when Alex Kremer took off down the right-side boards to put one in the net at the 5-minute mark of the second.

“We had chances tonight, but we just didn’t capitalize on them,” Grimmius said. “We were able to get a few goals, but overall we didn’t capitalize when we had our chances. We were missing the net, missing our passes and taking too long to shoot the puck.”

Redwood Valley put up three more goals, two with a man in the penalty box, in the third to hit the eight-goal mark, but a power-play goal by Andrew Johnson with 5:27 left in the game gave Worthington its second goal.

Once again, the Trojans were outshot by their opponent. This time, Purdy faced 31 shots in his first start of the season. The Trojans were only able to put 23 pucks on Houle.

“We didn’t help him at all, defensively, so it makes it pretty tough for a goaltender to be all on his own back there,” Grimmius said. “Our defensive zone play was lacking tonight and we had no breakout at all.

“No one was in position. No one could catch a pass when the pass was there,” Grimmius said. “And we had a lot of turnovers defensively in our own zone.”

With the Trojans facing their first road game of the season Thursday at Windom, Grimmius knows his team will need to get back to the basics to help find success.

“We need to get back and work hard in practice,” Grimmius said. “We have to work on all the fundamentals of hockey, including passing and positioning. We’ve got to start at ground-zero and work our way back up.”

RV 3 2 3 — 8

WHS 0 1 1 — 2

Daily Globe Reporter Jordan Willi may be reached at 376-7335.