Photo by Samantha Davis. The Marshall boys hockey team celebrates after Luke Ehlers scored his second goal of the game in the third period against Morris Saturday afternoon in the Thanksgiving Classic Tournament. The Tigers won 3-1 for their first win of the season, and earned third place in the tournament.

MARSHALL — Looking for its first win of the season and earning third place in the Thanksgiving Classic weekend tournament, the Marshall boys hockey team defeated Morris 3-1 Saturday afternoon behind two goals from Luke Ehlers in a down to the wire, gritty game.

“It was a really tough win,” Marshall head coach Michael Weiss said. “We faced a lot of adversity, with some guys getting hurt and some things just not going our way. The boys really battled hard to get this first win of the year.”

At the end of the first period, Blake Grimsley went down after catching a hard elbow to the face, which resulted in a major penalty for Morris.

Grimsley laid on the ice for a few minutes, but eventually got up and skated off without assistance. He did not return to the game.

Weiss said Grimsley was alert and feeling decent in the locker room.

The Tigers entered the afternoon coming off a 5-2 loss to Irondale on Friday in the first day of the tournament. The Dragons fell to Pipe city 3-0 on Friday, which also was their season opener.

There were 13 total penalties given throughout the competitive game. Marshall controlled the offense for a majority of the game, and had 30 shots on goal attempts to Morris’ 18.

Joining Ehlers, Owen Renslow scored the other goal for the Tigers in the first period. Riley Pfannschmidt, Jacob Johnson and Carson Kopitski all had an assist.

McCoy Guenther was in the net for Marshall, and finished with a .944 save percentage after saving 17 of the 18 shots.

The first period posed the game as a close one, with both Marshall and Morris having six shot attempts.

The Tigers were able to get on the board early and secure a 1-0 advantage going into the first intermission with a Ehlers goal assisted off of Kopitski.

“He [Ehlers] really stepped up when we needed him,” Weiss said. “He got those two big goals to jump start us in the first and the third. That was, that was huge.”

The second period experienced a scoring drought up until Morris scored in the final 27 seconds to tie the game up 1-1 after a fastbreak took it all the way to Guenther in the net.

But, the second period amped up the aggressiveness for both teams. There were a combined seven penalties, three on Marshall, and a few scuffles that broke out as well.

“We told our guys to try to stay calm. I thought some of those penalties, we maybe shouldn’t have gotten, but that’s the way it goes,” Weiss said. “Especially when it’s physical like that, they’re [the referees] going to call them to try to get it taken care of. I thought our guys handled it well and just tried to play the game.”

Marshall controlled the puck for a majority of the period, and outshot the Dragons on goal attempts 13-5.

Several Tigers had good looks, including Ehlers, Johnson and Noah Myhre all coming close to scoring.

Morris was able to find its footing a bit more as the period continued on both sides of the rink, only increasing the competitiveness more.

Entering the third period, it was still anyone’s game and both teams were hungry to come away with the win after a scrappy, hard fought battle.

“Stick together as a group and you don’t have to try to do more than you can,” Weiss said regarding what he told the team at the intermission. “Just do what you can and do it to the best of your ability.”

With the physicality continuing, Marshall put the game away towards the beginning of the third period with a pair of goals from Ehlers unassisted who found the puck on defense and took it all the way up the rink himself, and Renslow with a receive from Johnson and Pfannschmidt.

The offensive surge lifted the Tigers for the remainder of the period defensively, and didn’t allow the Dragons to get many open looks.

The tournament hosted a total of four teams, all of which were guaranteed two games to place first through fourth.

Marshall, now 1-2, will next look to keep the momentum going when it travels to Luverne on Tuesday with a 7 p.m. start time.

“We just need to keep trying to get better every day,” Weiss said. “Hopefully we can practice a few things Monday, then we’ve got two big section games to look forward to.”