By Jim Bastian

Journal Sports Writer

NEW ULM - If there is such a thing as a moral victory in your first game of the season, the New Ulm Eagle boy's hockey team had one Tuesday night.

New Ulm had just 10 skaters and was missing its top two returning scorers, and the Eagles fell 3-1 to New Prague in non-conference play.

Junior goaltender Blake Burgau stopped 28 of 31 Trojan shots while Zach Munce scored the lone New Ulm goal on an assist from Aaron Pfaff.

New Prague goalie Joe Morris recorded 28 saves in the game.

Eagle coach Erik Setterholm had nothing but praise for his team's effort in the game.

"The only thing that I can say is that was one heck of an effort by the 10 skaters that we had and our goaltender that we had on the ice tonight," he said. "They played their hearts out tonight and the game was winnable. Our team played well - all of them."

New Prague, expected to finish near the top of the Missota Conference this season, turned an Eagle turnover in their own end into a 1-0 lead when Chris Meyer put a rebound by Burgau.

The Trojans added two goals in the second period for a 3-0 lead going into the final period.

"We wanted to win that third period," Setterholm said. "We played a lot of young guys tonight and they are going to make mistakes. But we said after that second period that we wanted to win that [third] period. We won that period 1-0."

The goal came on a scramble in front of the Trojan net and came when Munce and Pfaff teamed up for the initial goal of the season.

While the Eagles won that final period, they faced a task of playing shorthanded with a lot of inexperienced players on the ice that forced Setterholm to mix-and-match during the game.

"I could not match any of our lines up and our power play, we could never have a power play unit," he said. "Our power play struggled tonight -we had chances [the Eagles were 0-for-5 on the power play and did not get a shot on goal when they had a 5-on-3 advantage for just under a minute]."

He was happy with his team's discipline in the game as they were only whistled for one penalty.

"That is great and something that we want to keep doing for the rest of the season," Setterholm said.

And Burgau played a solid game in the nets. He stopped a 2-0 New Prague rush in the second period.

"He made some nice saves in the game," Setterholm said. "And he is going to be expected to do that this season and he expects himself to do that as well. He knew that he had to come up big tonight because he was going to face some rubber."

The loss may well be a lesson in how good the Eagles can be when they get back their full compliment of players.

"Most of the skaters that we had on the ice tonight have not played varsity hockey at all," Setterholm said. "Down the road at the end of the year, we are going to have skaters that will have had some pretty extensive ice time."

The Eagle JV lost 7-0 to New Prague.

New Ulm plays LeSueur-Henderson/St.Peter on the road Thursday.