Axel Osborn was ready for the shot from St. Cloud Tech's Ryan Heaton three minutes into the sixth overtime Tuesday night. Unfortunately, there wasn't much he could do to stop it.
"The guy (Alex Kennedy) had the puck in the corner and he centered to the open guy (Heaton) in front of the net," Osborn remembered. "He tipped the pass, it went over my arm and bounced into the net off the post halfway up the net. It was a good goal and they deserved to score on it."
Heaton's goal came 2:58 into the sixth overtime and powered the Tigers to a 3-2 victory Tuesday night over the Bemidji Lumberjacks in Section 8-2A quarterfinal action at Nymore Arena.
Osborn and his Tech counterpart, Allen Patten, each played almost 112 minutes and together they faced 123 shots. In the end, however, the tip in front of Osborn that clanged off the pipe proved to be the difference.
"After how hard everybody played, I would have felt pretty bad letting in an iffy goal, but that was a good goal," Osborn said. "I felt that I gave it my all. The entire team did. It was a tough loss, but you can't feel too badly about it because of the way we played. All we can do is congratulate the other team for scoring one more goal than we did. If we were going to lose, giving up a good goal in the sixth overtime was a good way to go down."
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Tuesday's endurance test took a toll on Osborn, and on Wednesday afternoon the senior was still sore.
"Especially in my legs," he said. "Physically, I was tired and feeling it in my legs and upper back during the game, but mentally I felt as if I was still strong. I felt good after the game knowing that I did what I could while I was in the net. Everybody did what they could to win that game. It was a pretty even game the entire way, but Tech won because they were able to sneak one past us."
