While technically Saturday night’s last game of the regular season didn’t impact the upcoming postseason schedule, it was evident from the effort on the ice to the crowd in the stands the contest still meant plenty.

The Aberdeen Wings grabbed a 4-3 NAHL hockey victory over the Watertown Shamrocks in front of a large and loud crowd at the Odde Ice Center.

“We want as much momentum as we can heading into playoffs,” said Aberdeen’s Brody Dustin, “and having those fans supporting us the whole way through, it was a sold-out crowd tonight, so that was a lot of fun.”

While both the Wings and Shamrocks were already locked into their playoff positions, sweeping the weekend series was important, and there was no way that Aberdeen was backing off once the puck was dropped. The Wings wanted to take confidence and momentum into their opening-round playoff series against Bismarck.

“We approach it every weekend, it’s going to be competitive. We want to be competitive,” said Wings coach Scott Langer. “You don’t want to take any nights off, because I think if you take some nights off, especially this time of the year, you lose a couple of those games this weekend and that’s sitting in your head all week. We have to have a big week. We have to have an exciting week and we have to be ready to go to Bismarck, so I thought this weekend was very important.”

Watertown, which will face Austin in the playoffs, scored the game’s first goal, but like they did in Friday’s victory over the Shamrocks, the Wings rallied to record a victory. Dustin scored off a faceoff just after the media timeout in the first period to tie up the score.

“It was great faceoff play,” Dustin said noting the play was drawn up during the break in action. “Deuce (Jonathan Doucette) had a nice faceoff win, came right back to me, just tried my best to get the puck to the net and luckily for me it went in.”

The goal shifted the momentum in the contest, and the hosts never trailed after that.

“They got the first one there. … We found a way to come right back and scored that goal and get it even and once we did you could tell there was a lot of enthusiasm on the bench,” Langer said. “I like the way our guys managed that game.”

After the teams traded two goals (Aberdeen getting a power play goal from Cooper Anderson), Sam Scheetz put the Wings on top for good with a stellar move that resulted in a goal late in the second period.

“I just cut middle and kind of faked a shot and the D kind of froze, so once I made the move, it’s just me and goalie and just had to put it in at that point,” Scheetz said. “Once I put it in, it was pretty good goal.”

Scheetz said he has attempted the move before this season, but it never quite worked, until Saturday night.

“I tried it a little bit. It hasn’t really worked this year,” Scheetz said, “but this one worked, so it felt good.”

Owen Pitters tacked on one more goal for the Wings in the final period, before the Shamrocks scored the final goal of the night.

Scheetz said winning the last two games of the regular season was important to give the squad a boost heading into the upcoming series against Bismarck.

“Obviously, we still wanted to win these last two and go in the playoffs with a good feeling and confidence and feel good about ourselves,” Scheetz said, “so we did that tonight and now we get ready for Bismarck game 1 and 2.”

The Wings have won the last five games against the Bobcats, so that alone should give the local squad confidence.

“We’ve done good against them this year in the regular season, but the playoffs are a different season,” Scheetz said, “so we just got to go in there in game 1 and 2 with kind of what we have done, and even better, because you can’t mistakes in playoffs, because those will hurt us.”

The Bobcats own the home-ice advantage in the best-of-five series. While the Wings have had a lot of success against Bismarck this year, Langer said winning on the road is still a tough task.

“They’re really good at home. You’ve got to give them that credit. They really do a good job there at home. We’re going to have to be really good and we know that,” Langer said. “Yeah, we won the season series against them and I think that’s important for our guys. We won 37 games and we’re sitting in third place. A lot of times, that’s good for a home-ice advantage, but it’s been a competitive division. We have to play our best game.”

The Wings are looking forward to the start of the series and then returning home to play in front of their loyal home fans.

“Going into the game, we have a good game plan heading into next week” Dustin said, “and we’re going to do everything in our power to steal a couple of games and bring it back home in front of our fans.”

After 59 games of the regular season, the playoffs are now here and the Wings are heading into them on a high note thanks to a three-game winning streak.

“The only way to go into the playoffs is to go in on a high note. I think that happened,” Langer said. “Obviously, it was great to see such a big crowd out there, too. Hopefully they’re excited to come out and support us when we get back here in games 3 and 4.”

To see a complete box score, click on the following link:

https://www.aberdeenwings.com/game-center/?game_id=2404733&season_id=11108