Park boys hockey: Wolfpack beats buzzer, Farmington

Park’s Joey Pierre provided the heroics in the Wolfpack’s 3-2 non-conference win over Farmington last week.

Pierre, a senior forward, scored the game-winning goal for Park with 12 seconds left on the clock, capping a streak of three straight goals by the Wolfpack and completing a comeback from a 2-0 deficit on Thursday, Dec. 22, at Cottage Grove Ice Arena.

The win put Park over .500 for the season with a 4-3-1 record. Farmington is 3-4-1 on the year.

Park had 50 shots on goal in the win – 16 in the third period alone. Pierre, who leads the team in scoring with 11 points, scored twice in the final frame, with assists from Spencer Diedrich and Chris Peterson, respectively.

“The guys realized going into the third period, there’s only 17 minutes left. You never want to lose to a team that you shouldn’t lose to,” Park head coach Jay Moser said. “We got back a little bit, getting the puck on net. We were trying to be too pretty, trying to make too many passing plays.”

Despite a scoreless first period, Park made use of Farmington’s weaknesses and outshot them 17-1.

“Farmington wasn’t a very deep team,” Moser said. “We came out and were able to establish good pressure in the first period. That pressure resulted in quite a few shots. We kind of went after them. They gave us some time and space and we took advantage of it.”

Park players began to question their strategy in the second period, allowing Farmington to make good plays of their own. A pair of power play goals from Farmington early in the second period put them in the lead, 2-0.

“We started to get a little nervous,” Moser said. “It’s very common when you’re all over a team – the shots were 17 to 1, but the score was 0-0 – you start to get out of your game plan a little bit. We spent a lot of time in the penalty box. That will always hurt. We gave them power plays; it’s an equalizer. [They got] a couple goals, a couple deflections. It gave them momentum. The last thing you want to do is to give a team that’s below you hope.”

Park chipped away at the deficit, however as Luke Nelson’s powerplay goal at the end of the second period made the score 2-1 with 1:56 remaining in the second period.

“Collectively we came through as a team,” Moser said. “We definitely need to improve on our scoring. We weren’t going to the net like we usually do. [We] have to get back to driving the net hard, creating traffic in front of the goalies, and playing three periods with effort, get back to playing our game.”

Next, Park plays at Chanhassen on Thursday, Dec. 29. Game time is 7 p.m.

Tags: sports, hockey, park, wolfpack, prep, updates