Boys hockey: Ready for a rematch

• First-round win

The Irish boys hockey team beat Henry Sibley in the first round of section play.

Talk about it

Rosemount boys hockey coach Scott Macho expected the Irish to received the No. 9 seed in the Class 2A, Section 3 tournament.

Record-wise, Rosemount fit into the final spot in the seeding. Henry Sibley earned the eighth seed and the home game that comes with it.

While the final seeding didn’t surprise Macho, he thought the Irish deserved better.

“They did have a better record, but if you look at the level of competition that we play against night-in and night-out, I think we play a much tougher competition,” Macho said. “It would have been nice to get the home field. The home atmosphere always makes you feel more comfortable. We wanted that home game, but it’s kind of hard to argue when they have more wins. The only thing we had to stand on, you look at the schedules and we played a tougher competition the entire season.

“We actually were a little upset we received the nine seed.”

Rosemount made their frustration known by going on the road and beating Henry Sibley 3-0 on Tuesday to open the playoffs. The win puts the Irish (3-22, 0-19 Lake) into a quarterfinal game at Eagan.

Eagan — ranked No. 10 in Class 2A — beat Rosemount 4-1 in the regular season finale.

It was the third straight game in which the Irish faced a top-10 ranked team, and the third straight contest the end results improved.

“I think the biggest thing is we have finally been getting everybody back in the lineup,” Macho said. “I was actually pretty pleased with how we played against Eagan. We did not stop throughout the entire game.”

Stefan Booth scored an unassisted power-play goal for the Irish and Justin Frank made 39 saves in goal.

Frank was on top of his game again in the playoff opener against Henry Sibley. Frank made 23 saves for a shutout.

Rosemount blistered a season-high 40 shots on goal.

Andrew Anderson and Jared Newman scored goals in the second. Josh Lowe added another goal in the third. Sam Bishop had two assists. Peter Herman, Cory Pederson and Luke Haase also had assists.

“We played good enough to beat them, but we still have some things to tighten up before we play Eagan,” Macho said. “It was nice to see us generate more offense. Their goaltender played very, very well. We still had some missed opportunities and the final score could have been higher than it was.”

Tags: boys hockey, school district 196, sports, rosemount, irish, prep