Kalamazoo, MI – South Dakota’s team of 14-and-under hockey players will play for the 2022 USA Hockey Tier II 14U National Championship on Monday, April 4 at 9:00 A.M. central in Kalamazoo, MI. They play in pool 2A and will face the Alaska Oilers, a rematch of the tournament’s first round game.
Team South Dakota (Team SD) won quarterfinal and semifinal games on Sunday to qualify for the championship game.
In the quarterfinal, Team SD beat the Granite State (NH) Wild 8 to 4. Team SD’s line of centerman Cameron Ritter of Rapid City, left wing Carter Sanderson of Pierre, and right wing Carson Myhre of Aberdeen led the way.
Collectively, they scored 7 of Team SD’s 8 goals, with Sanderson notching 4 and Ritter 3. Ritter and Myhre both picked up playmakers for having 3 or more assists, with 3 and 4, respectively.
“Our line was very good about getting pucks deep, pucks behind the [defense],” said Ritter. “We just got to work on our forecheck; the first guy [crashed] hard, the second guy was hard, the third guy in the slot, [he] looked for the pass and shot it on net.”
In the semifinal, Team SD topped the Portland (OR) Winterhawks 5 to 1, outshooting them 40 to 17. Team’s SD’s line of centerman Riley Linstad of Brookings, left wing Jackson Heller of Brookings, and right wing Colton Merchen of Rapid City carried the team.
They scored 4 of Team SD’s 5 goals, with Linstad picking up a hat trick and Merchen adding a goal. Merchen and Heller had playmakers as well, notching 3 and 4 assists, respectively.
“We watched the first line in the first game go really hard, and that inspired us to go hard in the second game, which led to my hat trick and us winning the game,” Linstad recounted.
Goalie Carson Hundstad of Aberdeen won both games, stopping 22 of 26 Granite State shots and 16 of 17 Portland shots.
“In the first game I think we woke up and we didn’t play our best effort, but we got the job done,” said Hundstad. “In the second game against Portland, we really kicked it into gear; we needed to get to the championship game and we did it.”
