NEW ULM — New Ulm Steel first-year head coach Andrew Kolb felt that his team had much more to give as the Steel lost two straight games to Granite City in the West Division finals of the NA3HL playoffs.

“Maybe we were tired,” he said. “Maybe we were gassed. If you look at our last 10 games, we were 6-4. Going into the playoffs, you should be playing your best hockey. We were not and that showed in the playoffs. I think that we had more to give but it just wasn’t there. Granite City out-worked us, they out-competed us, they beat us in one-on-one battles and in special teams battles.”

The Steel were 0-for-10 on power plays in the series.

“We did not get shots to the net,” Kolb said about the lack of power-play success. “They are not going to be pretty goals — you need to score dirty goals come playoff time. We did not go to the net and we needed to do that.”

The Steel also suffered two key injuries in Friday night’s game when defensemen Trevor Woytcke and Stephen Mordini both suffered concussions and were not available for Saturday’s contest.

“We only have seven defensemen, but I thought that Bayler Kraus and Alec Moser stepped in,” Kolb said. “We had to put [forward] Nick Wieben at defense. Stephen is a key part of our power play and Trevor is an in-and-out power play guy and they each have over 30 points. It was a big loss losing them.”

STEEL LOSE PLAYERS: After each season, teams will lose players because of age. This season will see the Steel lose the corp of their scoring.

“We are losing Alex Nagel (25 goals, 37 assists), Luc Kreuser (9-34), Ryan Smith (16-20), Austin Langworthy (29-31), Stephen Mordini (12-23), Tom Reilly (24-27) and Max Kjome (7-16),” Kolb said.

Nagel, Langworthy and Reilly were the Steel’s top three scorers with Kreuser fifth, Smith seventh and Mordini eighth.

“We talked after the game and we are losing 310 points combined from the aged-out players,” Kolb said. “That is a lot of scoring — we are losing a ton of production up front. It is very difficult to replace those players — we felt that we had some of the top players in the league and it is hard to find that. How do we replace that? Are we going to get 310 points back with our recruits? No.”

But as every NA3HL team does, their scouts have been scouting and in the process of signing players to tenders for next season.

“Right now we have four players who have signed tenders for next year with us and we have 10 available tenders,” Kolb said. “But once the season is over with, you can start trading. We do have guys we are talking to and we may have to acquire some more tenders. We are going to be talking to between 60-70 players this summer. And we have the (NA3HL) draft on Wednesday, April 18th, so we need to have our tenders (signed) in three weeks.”

Kolb said of the four who have signed tenders with the Steel for next season, one is from Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, one is from North Shores, one is from California and one is Michael Smits, who played for the Steel last season and is returning.

NEXT YEAR NOT REBUILDING: Kolb said that despite the loss of scoring, next season will not be a rebuilding year but rather a reloading season.

“We don’t want to rebuild,” he said. “We want to be in the exact same spot next year that we were in this year and that is playing for the divisional playoff title. Rebuilding is not the word. We want to compete and be competitive and get to the Fraser Cup. We will be attending hockey showcase tournaments this summer.”

Both goaltenders — Ryan Kenny and Drew Schenkenberg — can return next season.

“That is a pretty good one-two punch in the nets and probably one of the best in the league,” Kolb said. “But they have aspirations to move to a higher level (NAHL) and they are both number one goalies in this league. I am sure they both want to start.

“We have a lot of younger players and we have the opportunity to return a lot of guys but we will not know until summer — that is just the way it works.”

And teams are built during the year. This past season, the Steel used 19 transactions throughout the year to add players like Smith, Langworthy, Schenkenberg, Jarrett Cammarata, Zach Heiser and Hunter Johnson.