Sheridan Hawks Hockey Team Sweeps Rapid City Ahead Of Off Week

The Sheridan Hawks haven’t had many home games so far this season, but made the most of it this past weekend.

Josh Serino put together a 2nd period hat trick on Friday to help the team shut out Rapid City 5-0, and then 4 different players scored on Saturday to complete the weekend sweep 4-2.

Serino says as far as Friday’s game was concerned, he credits the teams’ transition game as well as being in the right place at the right time.

“Just pretty much all my goals just came off good D-zone plays and then turned O-zone. We were just working hard and it just popped out to me.”

The Hawks are about 1/3rd of the way through their season schedule, and have already completed about half of their entire road schedule for the season.

Coach J.J. Santagata says the team welcomes the break and it’s a good time to practice and improve on a few things.

“Watching more film, from our games this past weekend and then just fine tuning little things, making sure the guys are having fun, and showing up the rink and are ready to go, so nothing really changes for us, besides that we’re just off. We didn’t get one at all last year, so it’s definitely nice to get one, break it up. We’ll give the guys time to rest and after this off week, we’re just 0-0-0, so it’s just a new slate of games, that we just got to take care and do our job.”

The Hawks will practice Wednesday (October 30th), then take the rest of the weekend off and get back to work on Monday.

The next games are on Friday and Saturday, November 8th and 9th at Bozeman, MT.

The next home games are on the following weekend vs. Cody.

In other team news, Vincent Leaf got called up this week to practice with the Minot Minotauros in North Dakota, who are a part of the NA2HL.

Rapid City at Hawks Recap: (Courtesy: Sheridan Hawks)

Star-powered scoring and a hat trick boosted the Sheridan Hawks to a shutout victory over the Badlands Sabres on Friday evening.

The first period was a tightly contested matchup, with the stalemate broken by Elijah Farris scoring his sixth goal of the season, assisted by Logan Hume. Josh Serino scored his 13th and 14th goals of the season in a two minute span in the second period, with Vincent Leaf picking up his ninth a few minutes later.

Serino finished the hat trick scoring the final goal of the game late in the second period.

The Hawks had three point nights from Serino, Leaf, and Elijah White, with Serino and Leaf further cementing themselves as top-5 scorers in the league.

John Simon was credited with the shutout, stopping all 28 shots faced.

On Saturday night, four separate goal scorers powered the Sheridan Hawks to a 4-2 win over the  Sabres despite Badlands getting on the board first with a goal from Kyyan Jahner. 

But just over three minutes later, Kiefer Dunham would score shorthanded on a Hawks penalty kill to keep the game deadlocked after 20 minutes.

In the second, goals 36 seconds apart from Logan Hume and Logan Sidlauskas would give the Hawks a two goal lead. 

It was Sidlauskas’ first goal in the NA3HL. 

Badlands didn’t back off, however, and would cut that lead in half just before the end of the second.

Just past the midway point of the third, Vincent Leaf would seal the deal for Sheridan with his tenth goal of the season.

Badlands would hunt to get back into the game, but Ryan Rainey would shut the door with six stellar saves, part of his 21 of the night.

The Hawks have a bye weekend this weekend but return to the ice on November 8 and 9 when they travel to Bozeman to take on the Ice Dogs. 

They return to home ice on November 15 and 16 to host the Yellowstone Quake when it’s the Hawks annual Military Appreciation weekend.