Sports

Jacks open 2012-13 hockey season with home and home

By Tyler Ohmann

10/30/2012

A handful of Lumberjack alumni welcomed the new recruits this past weekend as the Dakota College at Bottineau opened their 2012-13 hockey season.

The former Jacks hockey players led the Killarney Shamrocks, a Canadian senior team, to a pair of 6-3 victories in a home and home series.

Killarney used the power play to open the series with a win in Bottineau in Friday night’s Lumberjack hockey opener. The Shamrocks scored four times with the man advantage in the 6-3 victory.

“One part is that the coach didn’t have his team ready for the penalty kill,” said Jacks Head Coach Travis Rybchinski. “The second part is that they had a couple snipers who could put the puck in the net.”

The first of those came at the end of the first period when former Jack Tyson Friesen broke a 1-1 tie on the first Killarney power play of the game.

Former Bottineau Braves star Logan Millican tied the game for the Jacks with his second goal of the game early in the second period. It was Millican’s Jacks debut, and he didn’t expect to start with a two-goal performance.

“It was pretty good, it was kind of surprising, I didn’t really expect to come out and do that,” Millican said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do with the team.”

However, the tie didn’t last long as Cody Gross broke the tie later in the period for the Shamrocks.

The Shamrocks extended their lead with two more goals in the period. The game-winner came with 7:53 left in the second as Dan Benupre scored the second of four power play goals on the night for the Shamrocks.

“When you have three guys that have that many points that they’ve had in their past leagues you know you can’t keep giving them opportunities,” Rybchinski said. “We took some poor penalties, but on the other end I didn’t think we backed down on situations.”

Another former Lumberjack notched a power play goal in the second as Kenny Lybeck pushed it past Jacks goalie Dylan Snyder.

“Those are pretty good guys, they’re older, but they still came out and played, and they are skilled and smart,” Millican said. “I didn’t really know what to expect from them, but they’ve all played good hockey.”

Each team added one more in the third period. The third goal for the Jacks came off the stick of captain and sophomore Seth Serhienko. Serhienko assisted in the first two Millican goals and finished with three points on the evening.  Millican notched his third point of the game as well as he assisted on the play.

“I just didn’t think, and I played my game, and everything worked out,” Millican said.
Rybchinski was glad with the play from the Millican/Serhienko line, which reunites two former linemates from high school.

“I thought they created a lot of scoring chances with their speed,” Rybchinski said. “We just need that more consistently over the whole game.”
Rybchinski was satisfied with the effort and the direction of the Jacks on the night.

“I liked our effort,” Rybchinski said. “We just needed to be a little better at times.”

Killarney was led by Lybeck, who had four points (one goal, three assists). Also strong for the Shamrocks were Tanner Anderson (goal, two assists), and Friesen (goal, two assists).

“Obviously we can’t take penalties like we did, especially when a team has a good power play,” Rybchinski said. “I thought we worked hard and we have a lot of different things we need to work on, but as long as we learn something from it, these games will be beneficial.”

The Jacks’ penalty kill was much improved in the second game against the Shamrocks in Killarney on Saturday, though the game still ended with the same result—a 6-3 loss.

DCB took an early lead in the game as Swedish import Robin Danielsson scored on the power play at 9:04 in the first period. Lee Jenkins and Serhienko assisted.

The Shamrocks evened the score later in the period as Bryce Lamb scored the first of two goals in the game. Isaac Friesen got the first of two assists on the play.

Killarney jumped out to a lead early in the second period as Gross scored on passes from Isaac Friesen and Bryce Lamb.

Cole Reisenauer, the DCB sophomore, tied the game at 14:42 as Mike Adams and Zach MacDonald each earned helpers on the play.

The Jacks jumped out to their first lead of the season nearly five minutes later as Serhienko notched his second goal of the weekend. Preston James and Chris Watkins assisted.

After that the Shamrocks took over as they would take the lead back in the period on scores from Bryce and Jayden Lamb. Former Bottineau star Justin Blue assisted on the Jayden Lamb goal.

Gross and Jayden Lamb would each score again in the final period to give Killarney the 6-3 win. James Schultz assisted on both goals.

“We played pretty inconsistent and we lacked leadership. Some guys are on their own page and we need to be all together,” Rybchinski stated.  “We were a little intimidated with  their size."

Millican said the Jacks have a lot to work on.

“We’ve got a lot of things to work on,” Millican said. “We have to work harder, especially down low, and penalty kill for sure we have to work on that.”

Rybchinski hopes the weekend was a good barometer for where DCB wants to go this season.

“The weekend was used for evaluations to see where we are,” Rybchinski stated. “We have a long way to go but there were a lot of positives, and many of our younger guys played better as the weekend went along.”

The 0-2 Jacks play a home series next weekend with games at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Saturday against the North Dakota State University Bison club team.