Royals Boys Solid Defensively Against Buffalo

BUFFALO, Minn-- A special presentation of MyFoxHockey.com played out Monday night in Buffalo a a large crowd assembled for the double header Monday night at the Buffalo Civic Center. The evening featured the boys and girls from both schools squaring off with a special "on location" presentation of Minnesota Hockey on Demand. The Rogers Royals won a convincing 5-2 game over the Bison as Brandon Bistodeau delivered the natural hat trick in the second period to give his team a 3-1 lead that they never relinquisehd.

In game one, the Royals girls captured the opening game 1-0 ending a 7 game losing skid to the Bison. The boys teams were in the same position as the Bison were 4-0-2 in their last four six meetings with Rogers and more impressively, had lost just one game in the Mississippi 8 conference over the past two seasons where they had posted a 24-1-1 record. The lone defeat for the Bison was at the hands of the St. Michael Albertville Knights last year.

The Royals were unimpressed with the Bison domination of the Mississippi 8 and they brought their quick and physical game to the table while suffocating the Bison offensive attack. Buffalo's Buzz Tryggeseth opened the scoring at 12:50 of the first as he fired a shot at the Royal net. Goalie Mark Schoephoerster went to the butterfly to make the save. He clipped about 90% of the puck with is pad. The energy of the remaining 10% carried the puck across the line as it snuck through for the 1-0 Bison lead.

Despite outshooting the Bison 9-3 for the first period, the Royals trailed 1-0. It did not matter to Bistodeau who scored on a rebound in the crease area at 1:49 of the second to tie the game at one. Just :20 later, it was Bistodeau again as he wired a shot from the right side high over the blocker of Morningstar for the 2-1 lead.

Bistodeau struck on the power play for his 10th of the season and 4th on MyFoxHockey.com on a beautiful redirect from low in the slot as the puck eluded Morningstar's five hole. The shot originated from Caleb LeClaire high at the point.
With an 18-7 advantage in shots after two periods and the makings of controlling the game in the neutral zone and offensive zone, the Royals went to work in the third period.

They tallied twice more as it was Matt Limoseth's turn as he scored two hard working goals on rebounds in the goal mouth area to lift his team to a 5-1 lead. The goals were number's 9 and 10 on the season for the hard working forward. Late in the game, the physicality picked up and Limoseth was whistled for an elbowing major with less than three minutes remaining in the game. The Bison connected on the power play as Justin Ostgard scored on a blast from Josh Gaughan.

The Royals improved to (7-4-2, 2-0-1) and are 6-2 in their last eight contests. The Bison fell to (4-9-1, 3-1-0) on the season.