Brian Kimmes
The men’s hockey club was scheduled to play two games against the University of South Dakota Dec. 2 and 3, but the games never took place. USD called late Friday afternoon to inform SDSU that they would not be able to play.
Without those two games, the Jacks are 6-2 on the year. Forward Jake Gustafson said he feels the team is playing well right now.
“We’ve been playing good the last two weekends of games. We’ve been playing a lot better,” said Gustafson. “All of our lines are scoring, and everyone is really contributing so far.”
Head Coach Marty Schipull believes the toughest teams the Jacks have played so far this year were St. Olaf and Creighton. The Jacks beat Creighton both games, but lost to St. Olaf. Schipull said the team played even with or better than St. Olaf in two periods each game, but the third period did them in.
Roy Sando is leading the team in scoring. He has scored 12 goals and contributed nine assists. Ryan Nelson is second on the team in both goals and assists, with nine goals and six assists.
Dan Ingmanson has five victories as goalie.
The team hopes to finish first in its league and win the conference tournament.
The big goal for the season, though, is to make it to the national tournament. In order to make it to the national tournament, the team needs to play well enough to get rated high enough to get invited to the tournament.
Schipull believes the team has the capacity to achieve both goals, but it is a long ways away yet.
The Jacks next games are at home versus the University of Minnesota Duluth. The Duluth team is a club level above the SDSU club team, so the games will be very challenging.
Schipull knows the games will be difficult, but believes the team has a chance.
“UMD has plenty of good players. It will be an extremely tough test for us,” Schipull said.
“We need to try and play hard and smart so we don’t get into a scoring frenzy. As long as the game stays close we have a chance.”
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