NEW ULM — Three years ago, the New Ulm Steel raised eyebrows around the NA3HL when they won 17 straight league games.

This Friday night, the Steel host the Granite City Lumberjacks, who enter their New Year’s Eve meeting with the Steel riding a 22-game winning streak. The puck drops at 7:10 p.m. at the New Ulm Civic Center.

In fact, Granite City comes in with an eye-popping 26-1 season record.

Their only loss came to Mason City on Oct. 1 by a 2-1 score.

And the Lumberjacks have dominated opponents to the tune of outscoring teams 158-36.

“They play a good, physical hard game,” Steel coach Erick Bromberg said. “They are good on both ends of the ice — they just come at you in waves and they defend really well.”

And they have five players who have scored 10 goals or more this season, led by Ben Anderson with 18 goals and Kullan Dalkawa with 16.

Three years ago, Bromberg was a player on that Steel team that ran off 17 consecutive wins.

“I am a little biased — I felt that record would never get broken,” Bromberg said. “But now I am eating my words. Now it is broken and it has been broken by five right now. It is pretty impressive, especially for our (West) division. It showed at the Showcase that our division is the best in the NA3HL. We won two out of three and the rest of the teams went unbeaten.”

Bromberg said that in a winning streak, it is just the confidence of knowing that you are going to win coming into that game.

“Right now, Granite has everything — they have the tools and they have that swagger to them,” Bromberg said.

Right now, the Steel (10-19) are only 8 points out the fourth and final playoff spot in the West behind 14-11 Alexandria.

“There is a lot of season left and now the message to our kids is that they need to be Road Warriors,” Bromberg said. “If you look at our schedule, we play only one home game in February. We got to

Mason City and then Granite City back-to-back there. Not getting swept is huge. Friday’s game will be a good measuring stick for us.”

Friday night’s game sponsor is the Liquor Mart.