Anderson, penalty kill shine in Bismarck sweep of St. Cloud

Bismarck's goalie dealt the Norsemen some post-regulation payback over the weekend, as Anderson twice shut down St. Cloud in the shootout to earn a weekend sweep for his team, 5-4 on Friday and 2-1 on Saturday.

Anderson made 52 saves in regulation and overtime during the weekend series against St. Cloud, but it was the seven stops he made in the shootout that earned the Bobcats two extra points to move five points ahead of both Minot and Austin with six games to go in their fight to win Bismarck's first division title since the 2015-16 season.

“(Anderson)'s been the backbone of our team all year, and he was fantastic this weekend,” Bobcats head coach Garrett Roth said of Anderson. “Tonight, he shut the door again. I can't say enough about him for what he means to his team.”

Anderson, who has committed to Niagara University, has an argument to be considered the top goaltender in the NAHL. Saturday's win moves Anderson into first in the NAHL with 32 wins, breaking a tie with Rochester's Danick Leroux.

Anderson is also second in the league in goals against average (1.550, first is Lone Star's Ryan Cameron with a 1.287), third in save percentage (.937, behind Cameron's .946 and Minot's Lukas Swedin's .941) and second in shutouts (seven, Cameron has eight), doing so while playing 40 of Bismarck's 53 games this season and has been in net for every game in March thus far.

“Our team is unbelievable, great on the back end, great on the forwards. It makes my job very easy with what they do,” Anderson said. “That's the reason why we have so much success, because of them.”

Anderson started Saturday’s game coming off of a shootout win the night before and didn’t let it get to him. Even when St. Cloud opened the scoring just three minutes and 15 seconds into play, he stayed composed.

“That's all about goaltending. You kind of have to forget about it and just move on,” Anderson said. “That's it, just staying focused.”

After that Anderson didn’t allow another goal until the shootout, and the Bobcats were able to tie the game just two minutes later. Jakub Kopecky buried a net-front goal off a pass from Keanu Krenn to get Bismarck on the board.

“It was a quick face off play. Kopecky called it. ‘He's like, push it through’,” Krenn said. “It was a quick strike and then I made the back door play to Kopecky.”

Krenn had an assist on the equalizing goal, tallying his sixth point (two goals, four assists) in six March games. He credits time in practice for his strong offensive performance.

“Work ethic,” he said. “During the week, we just work on and off the ice."

But Krenn’s impact is felt far past the scoreboard.

“He plays a ton. We matched him up against their top line tonight, and he did a really nice job with his linemates, they were able to shut down their top line after they got the (goal),” Roth said. “He's a Swiss army knife for us, and plays in every situation. He's a heart and soul guy.”

Another key place where Krenn plays is on the Bobcats penalty kill. St. Cloud has the best power play in the league and came into the weekend scoring at a 24.3 percent clip, but the Bismarck penalty kill held them to an 0-for-5 mark on the weekend, sinking their still-league-leading power play to 23.7 percent.

In Friday's game, the Norsemen had a single third-period power play but in Saturday’s game, with the score knotted at one, St. Cloud had four opportunities, two in the first, one in the second and another in the third, and the Bobcats' penalty kill shut it down.

“That was a point of emphasis for us going into tonight to make sure that we were willing to block shots, were able to take lanes away and not give them any backside looks,” Roth said. “I thought we did a really nice job.”

Krenn said it started in the faceoff dot, another place where he has stepped up. 

“Winning that is pretty important, and then up ice, following our structure and making sure we don't get beat up the ice,” Krenn said. “That's been helping us a lot and then in the defensive zone, we're just staying in lanes and blocking shots.”

Sometimes the best penalty killer is the goalie, and Anderson did a good job turning away what opportunities the Bobcat penalty killers couldn't block or clear.

“They have a great power play. They've been executing it a lot, but we figured out a system to kind of lock it down,” Anderson said. “It definitely worked this game and this weekend. Doing those few things helped a lot.”

Despite multiple chances for the Bobcats offensively throughout the game, they couldn’t find the game-winner before regulation ended.

“Their neutral zone was pretty good,” Krenn said. “They're hard on our forechecks, so the breakouts weren't clean, always off the glass. They played well and it was tough.”

Then it was time for three-on-three overtime, and again, neither team could light the lamp. After a nerve-wracking OT period on Friday when the Bobcats were outshot 8-3, Bismarck had more control this time around, outshooting the Norsemen 4-1.

Neither shooting advantage mattered and for the second game in a row, the game went to the shootout. Luckily for the Bobcats, Anderson loves shootouts.

“It's tiring, but it's super fun. I love shootouts,” Anderson said.  “They get my heart rate up, and I love it. Gets the fans going.”

He doesn’t just love shootouts, he is also quite good in them. After Saturday's game, the Bobcats have taken games to shootouts seven times and won six of them, five times with Anderson in net. The Bobcats have only one shootout loss this season, a 3-2 road defeat to Minot on Saturday, Oct. 26, also with Anderson in net.

In total, Anderson has faced 18 shots in the shootout this year and has stopped 16 of the 18. His only two misses came in the first round of Saturday's shootout and in the loss to Minot, when the Bobcats went scoreless in four rounds against Minot and Ian Spencer beat him in the fourth round after Anderson had stopped three prior shooters.

“Tomas has been so good between the pipes for us and in shootouts,” Roth said. “He's so patient and poised.”

Anderson says he likes the one-on-one competition aspect that a shootout brings.

“The one-on-one competition right there,” he said. “That's all I really care about, it's super fun.”

The shootout didn't start on the best foot for the Bobcats. Mason LeBel skated into the zone, held onto the puck, and tucked it past the pad of Anderson, giving St. Cloud the early edge. That didn’t rattle Anderson.

“They scored on that first one. But Evan Hunter was up next, and I knew he was going to score,” Anderson said. “He always scores in those moments, so I kind of shut it down from there.”

Hunter won the game for the Bobcats in the shootout the night before and he answered the call, evening it up for Bismarck. Saturday's opening goal in the shootout was Hunter's fifth shootout tally of the year, nearly equaling Bismarck's other shootout scorers on the season by himself.

While shooters against Bismarck's goalies have been stopped on 23 of their 27 shots in the shootout, Bismarck has been much more automatic. The Bobcats have only been shut out in the shootout once, in their loss to Minot, and have needed just two attempts to win four separate times. Bismarck is 12 for 26 on their shootout opportunities this year, led by Hunter's five. Nobody else on the team has more than one goal in the shootout.

Shot after shot, Anderson made the save. After LeBel, St. Cloud threw Hudson Blue, Kyle Miller, Tim Runtso and Alex Sandhu on the ice, and none could break Anderson. Anderson stayed composed with the shootout continuing past the first three rounds, saying he looked at a number of factors to discern how the shooter was going to attack.

“Depending on how fast they come in or how wide and what they're looking at,” Anderson said. “That's how I predict what they're going to do.”

After Tommy Cronin, Julian Beaumont and Krenn were stopped for Bismarck, it was Alexandr Kim’s turn to shoot. He skated into the St. Cloud zone, went backhand, then forehand, before roofing it over St. Cloud goalie Beck Liden for the winner.

“That was huge,” Krenn said. “That's a little backhand-forehand shot. We wanted that one.”

Krenn said the key to their back-to-back shootout wins was Anderson, with an assist from Hunter.

“Our goalie, he helped us,” Krenn said. “Hunter doing two great moves on back-to-back nights was also huge for us.”

Next weekend, the Bobcats will hit the road to play North Iowa and will hope to continue not only their undefeated March, but what Bismarck is hoping will be a winning streak against the Bulls that has stretched to nearly two and a half season's worth of games.

“We got to keep getting better and that's got to be our main focus is, we can't get complacent,” Roth said. “With the success that we've had recently, we need to keep working hard and getting better every day.”

Notes

After their road trip to Iowa, Bismarck closes the regular season with two home games against the Minnesota Mallards on April 4 and 5 before a home-and-home series against Minot on the final weekend.

Bismarck's magic points number is eight. Four more wins in their final six games, or a combination of wins by Bismarck and losses by Minot and Austin that add to eight, will secure Bismarck the division title and home-ice advantage. The Bobcats are currently four points back of South division champion Lone Star (42-11-4, 88 points) for the regular season NAHL title with four games in hand.