Nationals win a thriller

It took six games, five minutes of overtime and a shootout, but the Glacier Nationals, of the North American Tier 3 Hockey League finally got a win.

In front of a fired up crowd at the Havre Ice Dome Saturday night, the Nationals defeated the Yellowstone Quake 4-2 in a shootout to earn their first win of the 2014-15 season. The game went to a shootout after being tied at 1-1 at the end of regulation and after a five-minute overtime period.

The win improved the Nationals’ record to 1-5 and gave them their first win in the Frontier Division of the NA3HL.

The Nationals, playing the second game of a back-to-back against the Quake, fell behind early when Yellowstone’s Mike McMullen scored with 14:45 remaining in the first quarter to give the visiting team a 1-0 advantage.

From there, the game would remain scoreless until the third period, despite a number of good opportunities by both teams.

Nolan Slager of the Nationals and Sean Leahy of the Quake, each did an outstanding job between the pipes for their respective clubs and with under five minutes remaining in the game, it looked like the McMullen goal would be the difference in the game.

Yet, Nationals veteran Karson Frisk, the lone returner from a season ago, had something to say about it and with 4:29 left to go in the game, he found the net on a breakaway, tying the score at 1-1 and giving the Nationals their first goal of the weekend.

Each team desperately tried to score the winning goal, but neither team was able to attain it, so the game went to overtime. In the extra session, it was much of the same and after the Nationals had a pair of shots ricochet of the post, a shootout was needed to determine the victor.

Slager stopped the first shot attempt by the Quake, then Sam Shaheen scored to put Glacier ahead 1-0 in the shootout. On the second attempt by the Quake, Slager stone walled Will Landsverk but the Nationals missed their attempt and it remained 1-0.

McMullen found the next on the third penalty shot for the Quake but so did Branden Jester of the Nationals and it was 2-1. Following, a key save by Slager, Gavin Lubin scored on the fourth attempt for Glacier and when his shot crossed the line, the game was over.

“I think we started off a little slow this weekend but it’s always exciting to get the first win,” Nationals head coach Jeff Heimel said. “We started slow and got down, so we had to battle back. They got a pretty lucky power play goal tonight in the first period, so I really felt we were outplaying them for the majority of the game. It was more of a matter of when we were going to score not if.”

Slager got the win for the Nationals by stopping 38 of the 39 shots he faced during the game and two of the four that he went up against in the shootout. Frisk scored the only goal, while Tristan Klewsaat had the lone assist.

“(Nolan) played spectacular tonight,” Heimel said. “When you get into a situation like this as a coach you want someone who is going to say, I want to be the No. 1 goalie and I think he made that statement tonight, he wants to be the No. 1 guy and he played like it.”

On Friday night at the Havre Ice Dome, in the first game of the back-to-back, things did not go so well for the Nationals as they fell the Quake by the score of 5-0.

Yellowstone poured it on early with three goals in the first period by Landsverk, Buck Scougale and John Scherer to give the Quake a 3-0 lead.

In the second period, Scherer found the net again as did Sean Pilet to make the score 5-0, which would end up being the final score.

With the split, the Nationals improved to 1-5 on the season and now have two points in the standings. Yellowstone, on the other hand is now 1-4-1 on the season but has three points in the standings compared to just two for the Nationals because of their win on Friday night and overtime loss on Saturday night, which earns them one point.

Glacier will take the ice again this Friday night when they host the Billings Bulls inside the Havre Ice Dome. The first puck will drop at 8 p.m.