Devils Lake goalie Brody Forsberg has been keeping the Firebirds in games all season. Under a new coaching staff led by Landyn Swenson, he’s been a key cog in the machine of the program that Swenson and co. are trying to build.
But despite his best efforts on Friday, and a Fargo North team that applied heavy pressure all game, the Firebirds lost 2-1 in overtime at Burdick Arena. They fell to 5-7-1 with the loss.
“I thought the kids worked really hard today,” Swenson said. “We played our systems really well. Just came a little bit short at the end.”
The first period didn’t see any scoring, despite Fargo taking 11 shots on goal compared to Devils Lake’s three. The Spartans had an aggressive, relentless style of play, but Forsberg wasn’t making it easy on them. Staying alert at all times, he even had a puck get stuck in his shin guard.
Forsberg has been a reliable asset for Devils Lake all season, saving 92.2% of the shots against him.
“He’s a very high-energy guy helping us out on that defensive end all the time,” Swenson said. “Very good goaltender, and he’s just doing his job out there. He’s doing whatever he can to keep the puck out of the back of the net and help our defense out. One of our players we can count on that he’s gonna come and work every single day.”
But his perfection finally cracked three minutes into the second period. Fargo North’s Gavin Connor passed one to junior forward Jack Amundson, who swished one in the net to give the Spartans a lead.
Fargo North kept dominating the possession, but Forsberg didn’t let the goal phase him and kept it a 1-0 game. With five minutes to go in the second period, the Firebirds saw a shot go their way. Senior forward Caleb Schwab scored a goal, tying a game that the Spartans might have thought they had sealed up. Despite Fargo North leading in shots on goal 29-12 after the second period, the contest was tied 1-1, and Devils Lake’s hopes were very much alive.
“He’s a gamer. He’s gonna come to every game ready to go, work his butt off and kind of go from there,” Swenson said of Schwab. “He’s one of our leaders. He’s one of our captains. He’s gonna come get the boys ready and make us competitive.”
It was a new game, in a sense, in the third period. With the score tied and goals being hard to come by, whichever team broke through first was likely going to feel good about their chances of victory. The Firebirds had their opportunities, especially at the 16-minute mark when Fargo North’s Raymond Walen and Maddox Watson both had to sit in the penalty box. Walen was given two minutes for slashing, while Watson was serving four minutes that had carried over from the second period for tripping and roughing.
Devils Lake had a 5-on-3 advantage. But nothing came of it.
The Firebirds’ defense hung in there, and the score remained tied through the end of regulation. Swenson and his coaching staff applauded their players for staying alive, and they appeared to have a boost of energy heading into the eight-minute overtime period.
But all that energy was zapped in an instant. Just 27 seconds into overtime, Fargo North senior forward Max Watson scored the winning goal, making the previous 51 minutes essentially moot with an abrupt end to an otherwise competitive game.
Despite a tough loss, Swenson said he was happy with the effort his team put in. It’s just his first year coaching the Firebirds, after all, along with assistant coaches Sawyer Diseth, Jared Swenseth and Anthony Vorrasi. Swenson, a Devils Lake native, played college baseball for the University of Minnesota Crookston, but he said hockey’s always been his favorite sport. He came back to town for a reason, and he’s trying to build something with this new set of coaches.
“We’re all on the same page, right from the beginning of the season. That’s why I hired them,” Swenson said of his coaching staff. “We all got different things we’re good at, but at the end of the day, we’re working towards one common goal.”
And they’ve made progress, showing they can compete with a tough team like Fargo North that improved to 9-3 with the win. But the Firebirds were still outshot 44-18, giving the Spartans a statistical advantage even with a great goalie like Forsberg at Devils Lake’s helm.
“We’re working on a couple things. We’re trying to decrease the shots,” Swenson said. “And I think that’s drastically gotten better over the year. We’ve changed a couple things up with our systems. But at the end of the day, we’re still working. We’re still improving every single day, and we’ll get to where we need to be by the end of the year.”
