Glacier home to face Bozeman

After tough losses to two of the best teams in the Frontier Division, the Glacier Nationals will be looking forward to returning home this weekend to face off against the Bozeman Ice Dogs for a pair of very winnable home games.

The Nationals, who are 9-27-5 overall, have played better of late but took a step back with a 7-0 loss to Great Falls last Friday and 6-0 defeat at the hands of Helena Saturday. Yet, Glacier will have a great chance to get back on track against Bozeman, who the Nationals have defeated twice this season. The action will get underway Friday night at 8 p.m. The second game of the back-to-back will be Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

The last time Glacier and Bozeman met for a two-game set was in Bozeman Jan. 2 and Jan. 3. Each team came away with a victory that weekend but both games ended up going to overtime. In fact, in three of the four meetings between the division rivals this season, the outcome has been decided by a single goal.

And even though both teams are well out of the race for the North American Tier 3 Hockey League playoffs, they each have plenty to play for, particularly the Nationals, who will finish the season with five of six games at home, meaning they will have a great chance to close the season strong and build momentum heading into next year.

To do that, the Nationals will need to find their offense, which was nonexistent against Helena and Great Falls. Scoring has been a struggle all season long for Glacier, but when the team is scoring goals they are usually coming from Karson Frisk, who is the team's leading scorer with 13 goals. Other top scorers for the Nationals include Wyatt Fretheim, Tyler McMahon and Tommy Kaddatz.

The Nationals will also need to play much better on the defensive end and will look to keep Bozeman from finding the net as often as Helena and Great Falls did last weekend. Two key players Glacier will need to neutralize in order to achieve that objective are Gunnar Mogck, who leads Bozeman with 18 goals on the season, as well as Kegan Couture, who is second on the team with 13 goals.

In the net, the Nationals will be looking for some solid play from Nolan Slager, who is 1-8-1 this season in 14 appearances. He is surrendering an average of 5.31 goals per game and has a save percentage just north of 87 percent.

The Nationals and Ice Dogs will begin their two-game set in Havre tonight at 8. With the second to follow Saturday at 7:30 p.m.