NEW ULM — In the second game of this season, the New Ulm Eagles boys’ hockey team lost a close 2-1 game to Litchfield/Dassel-Cokato so no one saw a 6-0 loss to the Dragons coming Saturday night in a Section 3A semifinal game that ended a promising season at 16-4.

“Litchfield play us tough and a lot of it came down to us not playing teams with the speed that they have,” Eagles coach Ryan Neuman said. “Litchfield and Hutchinson (who gave New Ulm three of their four losses this season) have an advantage over any team in the Big South Conference (where the Eagles went 15-0) when it comes to playoff time in the sections. We were trying to adjust to that speed (on Saturday) and we had a five-minute major penalty on the third shift of the game. Penalties were not even at all.”

For the game, LDC had three penalties for six minutes while the Eagles had eight penalties for 30 minutes. That meant that New Ulm played over half of the 54-minute game shorthanded. Two of LDC’s goals were on the power play.

“Penalties make it tough to get momentum back on your side,” Neuman said. “Usually in playoff hockey, officials try and even out penalties but that was not the case.”

Penalties also affected New Ulm’s offense as the Eagles usually have been averaging over 50 shots on goal per game (again against Big South opponents). But on Saturday, they were outshot by the Dragons 45-19 and shutout for the first time since the 2018-19 season when they lost 6-0 to Mahtomedi in the first round of the state tournament.

“When you are shorthanded that long it is hard to get momentum back,” Neuman said. “But when we did have shots we had quality shots but when we established something we would get a penalty called on us.”

Neuman reiterated that making the jump from conference play to sectional competition is hard to do in a short span.

“The competition that they play in the Wright County Conference is way above ours,” Neuman said. “Yeah we won 15 games in a row. But at the end of the day, we ended up 16-4 and we beat 16 teams from the Big South (including Redwood Valley in the first game of the playoffs) and went 0-4 outside the conference. Litchfield and Hutch have an advantage over us every year.

“You get a five-win Hutch team but because of the competition they play in their conference. Windom (Big South Conference) ran into it this year too as they had a good year (with 12 wins) and they lost to Willmar (Central Lakes Conference) in the playoffs and Willmar had two wins in the regular season.”

New Ulm’s JV only played eight games.

“There definitely need to be some changes made but what they are I do not know,” Neuman said.