This past weekend was not our best weekend of hockey. We played two games against Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WIAC) opponents. We played UW-River Falls to a 2-2 tie on Friday night and then were able to bear UW-Stout 4-3 on Saturday night. Sounds like a good weekend right? Fortunately, we got out of the two games without a loss, but we definitely did not play our best hockey. We got out-shot Friday night 40-18 and on Saturday night 35-21. This made for SJU Hockey getting out-shot a total of 75-39 on the weekend. To put this in perspective, the first weekend of the season we put up 70 shots on net and only gave up 48. This brings me to the subject of this blog post.
In my opinion, we have the best goaltenders in the country. I have a ton of confidence in our goaltending, and weekends like this past weekend are the reason why. Returning to the team this year are junior Andrew Lindgren and sophomore Mac Berglove (you can see their bios below by clicking on their pictures). Andrew is a returning All-MIAC goaltender and Mac was a finalist for the All-MIAC Rookie team. Lindgren has a career .919 save percentage and a 2.24 GAA. This includes his .931 save percentage in 2017-18 and a 1.92 GAA in 2017-18. Mac has a career .926 save percentage and a 2.29 GAA. This includes a .935 save percentage this season and a 2.00 GAA this season. These two guys are playing with a lot of confidence and they give us a chance to win every night. The best thing about these two guys is that we get them both back for another season after this, so the future goaltending for SJU is solid for years to come.
With all that said, we also added a great goalie this year in freshman Michael Magnuson. Michael played last season for the Phoenix Jr Coyotes in Tier I Midget AAA. Mike played high school hockey for Cretin-Derham Hall and has really pushed Mac and Andrew to keep working hard. I am very excited to have Michael here for the next four years.
Looking forward to this week, we are ready to jump into MIAC hockey. We have two games against Hamline University. We play them at 7p.m. on Thursday in St. Cloud and then again on Friday night at 8p.m. at the Tria Rink in St. Paul. This is going to be a great test for our guys and the quest for a MIAC championship has to start on Thursday. We have the team and the family to get this done, and it starts this week. Our focus has to be one game at a time and I am looking forward to seeing how our guys respond after a hard week of practice and a performance from this past weekend that is below our expectations.
Hope to see you at a game this weekend.
Go Johnnies!
