The Luverne boys’ hockey team fell to New Ulm 5-2 Thursday night at the Blue Mound Ice Arena during the final regular season game before section play begins this week.
The Cardinals came out blazing fast in the first period when Owen Sudenga received a breakout pass and chipped a pass around a New Ulm forechecker that ended up in Brock Behrend’s hands.
Behrend and Blaik Bork came in on a 2-on-1 that resulted in a pretty backdoor pass to Bork to give the Cardinals a 1-0 lead just 35 seconds into the game.
New Ulm responded with two first period goals in the next five minutes to take the 2-1 lead into the first intermission.
New Ulm outshot Luverne 20-6 in Period 1. Luverne goalie Tyler Arends made 18 saves.
The second period saw a lot of action but only one goal.
There were 28 total shots on goal between the Eagles and Cardinals. New Ulm capitalized on a Luverne penalty and got a power play goal past Arends to take the 3-1 lead in the game.
Luverne outshot New Ulm 17-11 in the period.
The final period started with Behrend cutting the Eagles’ lead to 3-2 when he buried the puck with assists from Sudenga and Patrick Kroski.
The Eagles would get two more goals midway through the final period to increase their lead to 5-2 and escape Luverne with the victory.
Third period shots on goal were in favor of the Eagles 10-5 and 41-28 in their favor for the game. Arends ended the game with 36 saves.
The Cardinals drew the No. 3 seed in the Section 3A Tournament that starts Thursday night when the Cardinals host the No. 6 seed, the Worthington Trojans.