The Grand Forks Central boys hockey team saw its best test of the season Thursday night against Fargo Davies.
The Knights, though, were talented enough to stave off an upset.
Four different Central players scored goals and goalie Kaleb Johnson made 19 saves to lead the Knights to a 4-1 win over Davies at Purpur Arena.
Lucas Kanta, Gunnar Gibbs, Grant Johnson and Tyrese Murph scored goals for the Knights, who improved to 3-0.
Central hadn't played a game in eight days and missed a couple of practices this week due to the recent blizzard.
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"I think not being on the ice kind of affected us," Central coach Grant Paranica said. "But that's making excuses. To me, the story was Davies skated right with us and played a terrific game. Kaleb had to come up with big saves or it could've gone either way very easily."
The Knights dominated the opening period, with goals by Kanta and Gibbs. Central outshot Davies 14-5 in the first.
Central made it 3-0 when Grant Johnson scored at 3:39 of the second period.
But the Knights took a five-minute boarding penalty midway through the second period to give the Eagles some momentum.
Davies capitalized on the advantage with a power-play goal at 9:43 of the second. Logan Macziewski hit home a rebound of a Mason Opheim shot to cut the lead to 3-1.
The Eagles, who dropped to 3-2 with both losses coming to the Grand Forks schools, had multiple chances to cut the lead to one goal but couldn't cash in their chances.
With four seconds left in the game, Murph scored for the final margin.
"We're learning," said first-year coach Scott Peterson, who previously led Grafton-Park River. "We're getting a little better. We played a pretty good team and when we made mistakes, they made us pay for it.
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"We have to get our noses a little dirtier to finish those opportunities. We have to get to the hard places to get the puck in the net."
The Knights, who have scored 22 goals in three games, travel to West Fargo on Tuesday.
"We have to get mentally stronger," Paranica said. "We took some bad penalties and that got us down in the hole."
Davies, which hosts Grafton-Park River on Tuesday, received 41 saves from goalie Jared Winter.
"At the end of the day, Grand Forks Central is a great team with a lot of talent, but great teams can beat great talent and that's our goal," Peterson said.
