In a battle between two standout goalies, Sioux Falls West was able to find the back of the net, while the Aberdeen Cougars could not.

The West Flyers secured a 3-0 boys’ hockey victory Sunday afternoon at the Odde Ice Center.

Sioux Falls goalie Lewis Jerke turned back every Aberdeen shot, while Carson Hundstad had a strong showing in net for the Cougars, but it wasn’t quite enough.

“These are two of the top goalies in the state, so we knew it was going to be like this. But the only thing that matters is we can’t score goals,” said Aberdeen coach Chris Medill. “Two goals in two games, we’re not going to win hockey games like that, no matter how well our goaltenders play. If we don’t give them any support, it doesn’t matter how good they play. I mean it’s a feather in the cap to them, for the effort they keep bringing us, but we have to figure out how to score goals.”

The Flyers scored the only goal they needed in the second period on a perfectly executed play as Beckett Halde approached to Hundstad’s right, before delivering a centering pass to Jack Campbell who powered a shot past Hundstad before he could react.

“It’s a good shot,” Hundstad said. “Bad bounce, can’t do much about it. Stop the next one.”

The textbook goal is something that Medill would like to see from his players. He said there were chances against the Flyers.

“We have to play the same way. In order to get to score on good goaltending, you gotta get the goalie moving. You’re not going to beat either of these guys with a head-on shot. We just left too many opportunities on the table,” Medill said. “There was at least three situations where our puck carrier should have dished the puck to a wide open guy, and instead we tried to take a short-angle shot, a bad-angle shot. We’re leaving opportunities on the table because either we’re being selfish or we’re not aware of what’s going on around us, and then we need to work on our communication. So we have an idea of what we need to do to fix it, now can we, is the next question.”

Sioux Falls added a bizarre empty-net goal in the third when the Flyers caught Hundstad out of position trying to get his gear back on, and then added a final goal with four minutes remaining.

Hundstad finished with 35 saves and was still stopping point-blank shots in the closing minute of the game. He was quick to credit the rest of team for helping him out.

“Teammates in front of me making sure I can see the puck,” Hundstad said, “and help me out when I need it.”

Hundstad did his best to keep the Cougars in the game, at one stage having multiple Flyers literally surrounding the Aberdeen goal, yet preventing a score; on another occasion deflecting the puck which got stuck on top of the goal.

“We couldn’t have gotten any more from him than he gave us. It was everything,” Medill said. “When you play good teams, they’re going to find a way to score goals, and that’s just what they did.”

The Cougars did have some solid chances to score, most notably from Llleyton Kleffman in the third period. However, he was turned away twice by Jerke, his former teammate on the Team South Dakota squad.

“That goalie’s really good. I’ve played with him before,” Kleffman said. “He’s hard to score on.”

The Cougars, who handed West one its two losses on the season in a prior matchup, were outshot 38-23, but had some good looks among those two dozen attempts.

“I’d say over half were good quality shots,” Kleffman said, “and none of them dropped.”

Aberdeen, which has a three-day tournament coming up this weekend in Wisconsin, will try to get going offensively.

Kleffman said a key will be to “just work harder and try to score.”

Aberdeen is in a hotly contested battle for seed points heading down the final stretch of the season. The Cougars have two key games against Yankton coming up later this month.

“We gotta really bear down and keep our heads on the grindstone,” Hundstad said. “Get some wins coming up. We need Yankton. We need those two Yankton wins for sure.”

Each game is a key one with so many teams battling for a state title.

“Nobody is safe this year,” Hundstad said. “It’s anybody’s game.”

First though, there’s this matter of finding some much-needed offense.

“It’s so tight, and unless we find ways to score goals, we’re just going to fall down the rankings,” Medill said. “We gotta figure it out. We have an idea what we need to do, we need to execute it.”

Sioux Falls West 0 1 2 – 3

Aberdeen Cougars 0 0 0 – 0

First Period: no scoring.

Second Period: 1, SFW, Jack Campbell (Beckett Halde), 2:15.

Third Period: 2, SFW, Hayden Gorra (Alexander Carlson), 6:26; 3, SFW, Ashton Eining (Halde, Campbell), 4:05.

Shots on Goal: Sioux Falls West 38; Aberdeen Cougars 23.

Goalies: Sioux Falls West, Lewis Jerke (23 saves); Aberdeen Cougars, Carson Hundstad (35 saves).