The NAU D3 Ice Jacks lost against D3 Colorado Mesa last night at home 4-2. This makes the D3 Ice Jacks’ current season 1-8-0. The Ice Jacks battled through the second period keeping the score 2-1 with Colorado Mesa in the lead, but NAU lost some of their energy in the third and gave up two more goals.
Ice Jacks’ goalie for the night was Jacob Paul who played a great defensive game and stopped 40 shots on goal against Colorado Mesa. However, defense from NAU was lacking and Paul could not cover it all.
“I just felt they were a little weak tonight,” Paul said. “There were definitely some that were stoppable on my end, but it’s a team effort. Motivation could have been lacking a little bit.
We were down 2-1 at the end of the second period, we came out and we just couldn’t put the puck in the net for the first 10 minutes in the third period. We just need to play a full 60 minutes instead of falling down.”
Paul thinks the intensity of this Ice Jacks team needs to come up if they want to win more games.
“I think yelling a little more could help,” Paul said. “I’m a little quiet, sometimes I will scream but it will be at myself if they score. But someone needs to light a fire.”
Throughout the game Colorado Mesa took four penalties which gave the Ice Jacks better scoring opportunities, however, NAU struggled to make clean passes and keep the puck in their offensive zone during power plays. Right wing, Matthew Songstad, wants his team to improve on power plays and be able to capitalize on these key moments in the game.
“We need to work on our break out and our set up,” Songstad said. “We worked on it a lot, and it should come natural, but we just need to get more shots up to get those chances.” Songstad also scored the first goal of the night in the first period with an assist by Reed Harbison, both top leaders of the team in points.
“I was just trying to get the puck out of the zone and hit my winger and he took the puck wide and I just followed it through,” Songstad said. “I was hoping he could get a rebound for me so I could put it away.”
The other Ice Jacks’ goal for the night was by Walker Yancy with assists by Jake Belland and Kai Tomaszewski in the last 30 seconds of the third period.
Tonight the D3 Ice Jacks face Colorado Mesa again at 8 p.m. at Jay Lively Activity Center.