In a Catholic school showdown featuring two of the state’s top players, the Red Knights came out on top of the Fire in a 7-5 offensive fueled matchup. Holy Family’s Shane Gersich, who verbally committed to play college hockey at the University of North Dakota earlier this year, is the one of the nation’s top-ranked sophomores. Another highly recruited sophomore, John Peterson of Holy Family, also has been getting attention from colleges around the country. With the scorers present, it was safe to predict the game would be offensively driven, and it lived up to expectations.

The Fire gained an early lead when Gersich fired a shot past senior Red Knight goaltender Andrew Sprang 5:05 into the game. But BSM would respond quickly, as junior Evan Fleming skated into the offensive zone and sniped a wrist shot over the glove-side shoulder of Fire goaltender Derrick Lacombe. Peterson and the Fire came back and scored two straight goals, and looked to have full momentum going into the second period until Grant Besse scored with just six seconds left in the period.

The second period was all about the second-ranked Red Knights, as they scored 3 goals, taking the lead 5-3. Senior T.J. Moore scored a hat trick despite a fantastic effort by Lacombe, who ended the night with 39 saves.

Following the victory over Holy Family, a top-20 ranked team, the Red Knights will face Shattuck-St. Mary’s – a perennial hockey powerhouse – at home on February 6th. “One of the fun things about being independent this year is that we have some of these great games down the stretch,” coach Ken Pauly said.