Nationals look to continue their recent winning ways

The first season of Frontier Division junior hockey in Havre is starting to wind down. And the Glacier Nationals are making big strides.

The Nationals, of the NAHL Tier 3 Frontier Division, are on a three-game winning streak, and they’ll try to make it four in a row when the take to the ice at the Havre Ice Dome Friday night.

Standing in the way of the Nationals’ first four-game winning streak is the Great Falls Americans. The two teams have developed quite the rivalry, and in the most recent salvo, the Nationals have got the better of the Amercians. Last weekend, Glacier beat Great Falls 2-1 in Great Falls.

But it isn’t just the Americans the Nationals seeme to have figured out now, it’s the entire division. Glacier has gone 6-5 since the beginning of January, the Nationals’ best winning percentage of the season. In that time, the Nationals have swept Bozeman and Yellowstone and beaten Great Falls twice. Interestingly, Great Falls, which is in first in the Frontier standings, will be a playoff team when the regular season ends in two weeks.

Glacier’s strides have also come at both ends of the ice, but mostly on the defensive end. The Nationals have improved a ton at killing power plays in the last two months, and they’re getting solid work from goal tender Ryan Lund who has started 30 games for the Nationals, who are 9-25-5 on the season and have surged into fifth place in the league standings.

Offensively, Glacier is paced by Joshua Larson’s 14 goals and 16 assists. In 26 games this season, Larson has recorded team highs in both categories. Karson Frisk has another 13 goals for the Nationals, but what’s been good as of late, has been Glacier’s depth. On the second and third lines, the likes of Brandon Huntington, Dustin Foran, Brett LeBeau and newcomer Dekker Gosnell have really started to play well in recent weeks, and that gives the Nationals a much more potent scoring threat throughout the course of an entire game.

Another plus for the Nationals as they enter the final stretch of their first season in Havre is the fact they play six of their final eight games at the Havre Ice Dome. After Friday’s game against the Americans, the Nationals will visit the Helena Bighorns Saturday night, but after that, Glacier plays four in a row at home, and finishes the regular season at home against Billings Feb. 28. So expect the Nationals to finish this season a definite hot streak if they continue to play the way they have in recent weeks.

Friday night’s game between Glacier and Great Falls starts at 8 p.m. in the Havre Ice Dome. Saturday’s game at Helena will start at 7:05 p.m. Glacier is home next weekend to host the Bozeman Ice Dogs twice.