The Alexandria Blizzard hockey team has rebounded nicely from a 0-5 start to the season by winning four of its last five games.
Alexandria (4-6, 8 points) was coming off a weekend sweep of the Milwaukee Power (4-6-0-1, 9 points) from Oct. 15-16 before splitting two games with the Willmar WarHawks (5-4-1, 11 points) and New Ulm Steel (4-7, 8 points) this past weekend. The Blizzard beat New Ulm 4-2 on Saturday night after a 5-2 loss in Willmar on Friday.
Alexandria dominated possession of the puck against New Ulm, outshooting the Steel 62-25. That included a 24-6 advantage in the first period, but the Blizzard still had nothing to show for it at that point. Michael Debrito opened the scoring at 5:42 in the second period off assists from Wyatt Johnson and Joe Gronholz, and Zachary DeMarce added a goal at 19:12 to send Alexandria into the second intermission with a 2-1 lead. Ethan Moerke and Johnson assisted on DeMarce’s goal.
New Ulm tied the game at 2-2 early in the third on a Colby Nickel goal, but the Blizzard closed with two more goals. Justin Wasvick made it a 3-2 game off DeMarce and Johnson assists at 9:49 before Matt McIntyre added an empty-netter at 19:55 off a Logan Lukasezck assist.
Joey Greilich got the win in net for Alexandria with 23 saves, and Zach Foster took a tough-luck loss for the Steel despite 58 saves.
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It was a good bounce-back performance from Alexandria after the first period downed the Blizzard the night before against Willmar. The WarHawks scored four goals on just nine shots in the opening frame on the way to the 5-2 win.
Debrito had a first-period goal for Alexandria off assists from Benjamin Tschida and Gronholz. Tschida scored Alexandria’s second goal at 11:44 of the second period off Debrito and Gronholz assists.
Andrew Tuttle took the loss in net for the Blizzard after allowing the four first-period goals. Greilich had 25 saves on 26 shots faced over the final two periods, while Cooper Olson got the win in net for Willmar with 32 saves.
Alexandria is back at home on Oct. 29 against New Ulm at the Runestone Community Center before the two teams head to New Ulm on Oct. 30 for the second game of the series. Both games start at 7:10 p.m.