As the beginning of the playoffs nears, the end of the hockey season approaches. After a rocky season start, there is hope for the playoffs with the team ending the season strong. With their last game being a tight 7-6 loss against Howell, the team will have to continue practicing harder and stronger to start off the playoffs with a win.

“I would say we’ve started working a lot harder,” junior Evan Lassanske said. “I think that’s made us just better. We’ve just been able to hang with teams that were supposed to kill us a lot better than we would’ve at the beginning of the year, and [we’ve] just became a better team altogether.”

Throughout the season, the team has faced a few unique obstacles to overcome with missing players due to a variety of unexpected issues.

“We’ve had injuries and lots of players not being there every game,” senior Ashton Clark said. “We’ve come together as a team and talk about it, and decide to give it our all for these last few games to make it worth it.”

Regardless of injuries, illness and other challenges, the team has still been putting up a fight while playing tougher teams towards the end of this season, including tying FHHS in the Gold Cup. They will be playing St. Mary’s in their first game of the playoffs.

“The season’s been pretty rocky,” varsity coach Paul Bruemmer said. “We’ve had our good times and our bad times. I think we’ve been playing much better in the last month of the season than when we started which is good. I think we are kind of going to the playoffs on a bit of a roll, so hopefully we can carry that through the playoffs and do well.”