The Sauk Prairie Eagles varsity hockey team needed a big effort to keep itself in the conference championship hunt tonight (Friday) and did they ever come through at the SPARC Ice Arena in Prairie du Sac.
The Eagles avenged its earlier loss to the Beaver Dam Golden Beavers in a big way, outshooting its guest 49-17 on its way to a dominant 5-1 Badger North Conference win.
Nick Mast opened the scoring with its first of two goals in the contest with the lone marker of the first period, then sandwiched his other between a pair of Riley Jelinek goals in the second period as the Eagles opened a 4-0 cushion heading to the final 17 minutes.
The only shot of 17 to elude Jordan O’Connor in the Eagles goal came with 5:38 to play in the contest and Hakan Peterson matched it with the final Eagles goal 25 seconds later.
With the win, the Eagles boost its record to 15-2 on the season, but more importantly, 6-2 in Badger North Conference play, behind only the Waunakee Warriors who have just one loss suffered earlier this week.
The Eagles will play at Waunakee on Thursday for a chance to pull even with one game to play while also preventing the Warriors from winning outright. In their previous meeting, at SPARC on Jan. 7, the Warriors turned in a 2-0 shutout, the two goals coming 18 seconds apart in the middle period.
Since then, the Eagles have eight straight games, scoring five or more goals in seven of those games.
In between the game at Waunakee, the Eagles will play a non-Conference game at McFarland on Tuesday night.
With his pair tonight, Jelenik has 27 on the season – good enough for eighth overall in state, while his 67 points in 17 games, leads the state.