The West Anchorage Eagles defeated Juneau-Douglas High School 6-1 in the first round of the ASAA First National Cup hockey state championships.<\/p>\n
The game between the runner-ups in the Cook Inlet and Mid-Alaska Conferences was the first of four to take place Thursday at the Curtis Menard Sports Complex in Wasilla.<\/p>\n
JDHS goaltender Cody Mitchell saved 18 shots in one and a half periods of work. Freshman Dawson Hickok saved 17 shots in relief.<\/p>\n
West goaltender Connor Batman made 15 saves in the win.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey definitely put the pressure on early and they were just pretty persistent,\u201d JDHS junior defenseman Blake Bixby said.<\/p>\n
[PHOTOS: JDHS v. West Anchorage<\/a>]<\/p>\n Sawyer Courrier scored two goals late in the first period and the Eagles led 3-0 by the end of the frame.<\/p>\n Courrier quickly spun around from a stationary position in front of Mitchell and put the puck past the Juneau goaltender with 6:48 left in the period.<\/p>\n Just over a minute later, the Eagles forced a turnover in the JDHS end and Chase Schwamm scored in close on Mitchell. The rally continued with 5:18 left in the period when Courrier gathered a loose puck in the slot for his second of the game.<\/p>\n JDHS head coach Luke Adams said his seniors encouraged the team in the first intermission not to give up.<\/p>\n \u201cIt kept everybody focused so it\u2019s always good to have that (leadership) in the course of a game like that when things aren\u2019t going your way,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n The message seemed to get across and JDHS controlled the first three minutes of the second period. Junior Bill Bosse scored on his own rebound after his one-timer 10 feet in front of Batman was stopped.<\/p>\n The Eagles regained a three-goal advantage just two minutes later though. Bryce Welch fired a slap shot from the left point through traffic that found the upper reaches of the net. Gavin Thaggard added another goal less than two minutes later.<\/p>\n Following the Eagles\u2019 fifth goal, Hickok replaced Mitchell in net.<\/p>\n Hickok would only give up one goal over the final 24 minutes of the game.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a good effort,\u201d Adams said. \u201cIt\u2019s the state tournament and we\u2019re playing teams that have a lot of experience. West has won state the past two out of three years so that\u2019s just a different caliber of team we\u2019ve seen all season. Credit to them \u2014 they\u2019re good and they made a lot of good plays when they needed to.\u201d<\/p>\n The highest JDHS can finish now in the state tournament is fourth place. The Crimson Bears return to the ice in Wasilla Friday at 2:30 p.m. against the loser of Thursday night\u2019s Wasilla-Service game.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a really resilient group and that\u2019s one of our strengths right now. There wasn\u2019t any finger pointing in the locker room today and we still have another shot tomorrow to get a win,\u201d Adams said.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nolin.ainsworth@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The West Anchorage Eagles defeated Juneau-Douglas High School 6-1 in the first round of the ASAA First National Cup hockey state championships. The game between the runner-ups in the Cook Inlet and Mid-Alaska Conferences was the first of four to take place Thursday at the Curtis Menard Sports<\/a> Complex in Wasilla. JDHS goaltender Cody Mitchell […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":21453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-21452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21452"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=21452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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