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Fargo South thrived when things were not equal Saturday at the John E. Carlson Coliseum.
The Bruins scored three goals on the power play and had three short-handed scores. Their proficiency on special teams sparked a 9-3 victory against Fargo North in a battle of unbeaten East Region boys hockey teams.
"Our special teams were phenomenal tonight," said South forward Kris Graalum, who scored a hat trick. "Five-on-5 North is a good team."
South (5-0, 4-0 region) scored two power-play goals in the first five minutes for a quick cushion. North (4-1, 2-1) played in chase mode the rest of the game.
"We didn't play very well tonight," North coach Jay Erickson said. "We made a lot of mistakes, a lot of mistakes we haven't made. South is an opportunistic team. They are big and strong and they wear you down."
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The Bruins started to pull away late in the second period. With his team up 5-3, Graalum started a string of four unanswered South goals.
Stationed in front of the North net, Graalum stopped a Jake McDougall pass with his skates. Graalum quickly got the puck on his stick and fired it into the back of the net for his second power-play goal.
South led 6-3 at 15 minutes, 6 seconds into the second period. The goal gave Graalum a hat trick, the first of his varsity career.
"I thought Kris Graalum had a good game," Wilson said. "When he gets a little breathing room, he's a tough player."
South added three goals in the final period, two of which were short-handed and came less than two minutes apart.
"One thing you can't account for so much is the short-handed goals," Wilson said. "This is a pretty offensive-minded team. It can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing."
North hung close in the first period, cutting the South lead to 2-1 and 3-2 on Tanner Bombenger and Ryder Bekkedahl scores. However, both times the Spartans trimmed the lead to one, the Bruins countered with a goal less than two minutes later.
"We'd come back and in a matter of seconds the puck was back in our zone and they were putting another goal in the net," Erickson said. "We just couldn't get any momentum going."
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FIRST PERIOD: 1, FS, Wurden (Powers) 2:51 (pp). 2, FS, Graalum 4:13 (pp). 3, FN, Bombenger (Bekkedahl, Narveson) 11:19 (pp). 4, FS, Graalum (Hooey) 11:31. 5, FN, Bekkedahl (Bombenger) 12:26. 6, FS, Doeden (Powers, Wagner) 14:10.
SECOND PERIOD: 7, FS, Wurden :57 (sh). 8. FN, M. Labernik (LaBounty) 11:13. 9, FS, Graalum (McDougall) 15:06 (pp). 10, FS, Hooey (Sigurdson, Dawson) 15:22
THIRD PERIOD: 10, FS, Powers (Wurden) 6:16 (sh). 11, FS, Dawson 8:00 (sh).
SAVES: FN, Zehren 12-16-10 38. Deichert 9-6-2 17.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Eric Peterson at (701) 241-5513
