Gasparini gets chance to be No. 1
Tony Gasparini insisted that he didn’t feel any difference as he prepared for the long sequence of flights from Duluth to Anchorage. He would say something like that, because Gasparini is always cool and disarming, so he wouldn’t say his was nervous and jittery even if he were.
Gasparini has made a lot of trips before, as a senior goaltender with the University of Minnesota-Duluth hockey team. But every one of them has been as the senior backup goaltender with the Bulldogs. Until now. He and the Bulldogs left home with the game plan that Tony Gasparini would be in goal for both late-night Friday and Saturday games at Alaska-Anchorage.
“I guess this is the first time I ever went on a trip where I knew I was going to play the Friday game,” Gasparini said.
The realization came because junior ace Brant Nicklin sprained his left knee in Saturday’s opening minutes, and Gasparini came in for a sparkling performance and a 2-2 tie with North Dakota. Afterwards, thinking always of his team and his teammate before himself, Gasparini said he hoped Nicklin would be back for this weekend. But Nicklin is still unable to bend the knee freely, so Gasparini gets the call.
“It was nice to see the team play so well in front of me,” said Gasparini, once again dodging the praise for his 28-save performance, which included 17 third-period saves as he held the No. 1 ranked Fighting Sioux to their lowest goal production of the year. “I didn’t have anything like the work Brant had the night before.”
After playing in Grand Forks, N.D., and then in the USHL at Rochester, Gasparini redshirted his first year at UMD. As a freshman, Gasparini — the walk-on son of former North Dakota coach and current USHL commissioner Gino Gasparini — played in one game. He went in when Taras Lendzyk was given a misconduct penalty for the last five minutes of a game against Wisconsin.
Five minutes. One save. That turned out to be Gasparini’s total statistical involvement for both his freshman and sophomore seasons, because in his sophomore year, he didn’t get in for a single minute as a freshman star named Brant Nicklin took over the job and began a sensational UMD career. Gasparini watched silently from the bench, always supportive, never critical, as Nicklin set school records for consecutive starts and saves and all other manner of goaltending achhievement.
That doesn’t mean coach Mike Sertich doesn’t appreciate him. “I almost feel like he’s another assistant coach,” said Sertich. “He knows the game so well, and he notices things and asks questions. I think someday he’ll be an outstanding coach.”
Sertich valued his presence enough to reward him with a scholarship. But he still didn’t get to play much. As a junior, Gasparini got in four games last season, but it wasn’t until the WCHA Final Five — after Nicklin had stunned Minnesota with a best-of-three playoff conquest and then gotten injured in practice — that Gasparini got his first collegiate start. He came through with a magical 47-save performance against St. Cloud State, only to lose 4-3 in overtime when the Huskies scored in the closing seconds, then won in overtime.
No UMD goalie had made as many as 47 saves in eight years, but it happened again last Friday night when Nicklin held on until North Dakota reversed a 3-2 UMD upset bid with 25 seconds left, then won the game with 1.4 seconds showing. On Saturday night, Nicklin twisted his left knee on his second save, and Gasparini got the call again.
In past performances, Gasparini played with great courage, and a lot of luck, throwing himself in front of shots and compromising style points for effectiveness. Maybe those panic performances had an impact on him — he claims they didn’t — but he played with effectiveness and style Saturday to gain the 2-2 tie with the top-rated Sioux.
He discounted the fact that he was playing against the team from his hometown. “It was nice to play against North Dakota, but it was just nice to play,” he said.
“Sometimes when you sit on the bench for a period or two, you might be pretty relaxed and that makes it tough to come in,” said Gasparini. “This time it came right after warmups, so I felt pretty good. I just felt comfortable.”
Nicklin’s mildly sprained ligament prevents him from making the acrobatic moves goaltenders must sometimes make, so the decision was made to leave him home for full rest.
That leaves Gasparini between the pipes, with freshman Jeff Horstman, from Faribault Shattuck, going on his first trip as backup. Gaspo would like nothing better than to turn the season around, even at this late date, for the ‘Dogs.
“I’ve never seen any team work harder and have such bad luck in one-goal games,” he said, and he noted that criticism from fans on the outside or assumptions that there are internal problems couldn’t be more wrong.
“The guys are so close on this team, maybe all the adversity has brought us together,” Gasparini said. “No one has pointed any fingers at other guys, and nobody has complained about Sertie’s coaching — god no. He’s trying things left and right. He changed everything we did in all three zones against North Dakota, and everything worked well.
“I think we’ll stick with some of the new stuff in our defensive zone, because it seemed to make everybody’s work a little easier. It would be great to have a good finish and surprise somebody in the playoffs. If there’s any justice, that’s what will happen.”
Greatest tournament of all — 30 years ago
For all of us who are still teenagers at heart, it seems incomprehensible tht 30 years have passed since the 1969 Minnesota state hockey tournament captivated the entire state with some of the most indelible memories in the glorious, 55-year history of the state’s premier sports event.
That was the 25th year of hockey tournaments, and it had outgrown its wonderful but aging roots in the old St. Paul Auditorium, where teams from Eveleth and International Falls had displayed dynasties in the sport. The last two tournaments in the old, dark, cavernous Auditorium were won by Greenway of Coleraine, led by a pint-sized centerman named Mike Antonovich. They won it his sophomore year, and they won it his junior year.
But the Minnesota North Stars had been born by then, and their owners built a magnificent new structure, Metropolitan Sports Center, in Bloomington. So while tradition might have cried out for the tournament to stay in the Auditorium, logic moved it for 1969 to Met Center, where twice the attendance was assured, proving the tournament was the biggest attraction and could support virtually all other high school league activities. That move also may have influenced St. Paul to build the “new” Civic Center to regain the tournament’s traditional site.
But in ’69 at the Met, the field was magical. The Northern Minnesota teams were intimidating in their immense skill level, and the only time a Northern team failed to win the state title in the tournament’s first 25 years was when St. Paul Johnson won titles in 1947, 1953, 1955 and 1963 — rude intrusions into an Up North tradition.
Greenway was back, with Antonovich as a senior and Tom Peluso a junior, hungry for its third straight title, and nobody would pick against the Raiders. Roseau had an exceptional team, led by players like Earl Anderson, who would go onto stardom at North Dakota, and John Harris, who went on to become captain at the University of Minnesota, and later to play a little golf.
But in those days, the northern area was represented by Region 3, the famous “back door” to assure the proper skill level of tournament play by augmenting Region 7 and Region 8 with another entry, to be determined by a game between the runners-up of Regions 7 and 8. In 1969, Greenway had beaten an Eveleth team with Pete LoPresti in goal in the Region 7 final, and Roseau had beaten Warroad, with a young team led by a tall, dark, and tireless Chippewa Indian superstar named Henry Boucha.
He was called “BOO-she” around Warroad, “BOO-shaw” to those from farther away than Roseau, and “Boo-SHAY” — with a French-Canadian twist — once he made it to the National Hockey League with the Detroit Red Wings. But in 1969, the rest of the state south of Moorhead was close to not ever seeing Boucha play. Turns out, Boucha scored a goal with a blistering long shot with one second to go in overtime to beat LoPresti and Eveleth in the Region 3 final.
The Twin Cities was represented in that tournament by a St. Paul Harding team that had provided the only break in an eight-year regional dominance by St. Paul Johnson; by Mounds View; by a Minneapolis Southwest team led by junior goalie Brad Shelstad and his all-state older brother Dixon Shelstad; by traditional power South St. Paul; and by Edina, a speedy and classy team led by mercurial Bobby Krieger, but carrying the load of never having won a tournament.
Roseau polished off Harding 4-1 in the tournament’s opening game, then it was time for Warroad to take the ice against Southwest. On the opening faceoff, Southwest’s Indians flung the puck deep into the right corner of the Warroad zone. A purple-and-white forechecker raced in at Boucha, the tall, No. 16 defenseman. Boucha seemed unaware, but he was totally aware, and he made an instaneous little move, reversing the puck with a tap off the corner boards, pivoting in a flash to regain possession five feet behind himself, and darted up ice while the forechecker wondered how the puck disappeared.
The crowd, as if one, emitted an audible gasp at the move. Warroad went on to win the game 4-3, and the entire crowd, and the thousands more watching on television, were captivated by Boucha and his youthful henchmen in black.
Edina whipped overmatched Mounds View 5-0 in the first night game, and South St. Paul, comparatively unheralded, got spectacular goaltending performance from Mark Kronholm and upset Greenway 4-3, leaving Antonovich and his fellow Raiders in tears in the dressing room, their quest for a third straight title devastated.
In the semifinals, Warroad overturned its Region 8 title loss by beating Roseau 3-2, and it became evident that the Warriors, with only two seniors, had more than just Henry Boucha — although having Henry Boucha also seemed to be enough. Edina, with coach Willard Ikola letting loose a never-ending stream of swift skaters, buried South St. Paul 7-1 in the second semifinal.
Covering that tournament for the Minneapolis Tribune, my lead on the overview story of the semifinals promised that it would be “The Lightning against the Legend” in the final, with Edina’s overwhelming speed against Boucha’s instant legendary status.
As appetizers, Greenway came back to win the consolation title, beating Southwest 3-2, and Antonovich wound up with seven goals and one assist out of Greenway’s 10 tournament goals to lead the event in scoring. South St. Paul nipped Roseau 4-3 in the third-place game.
Then it was time. Tiny Warroad, with the instantly and totally beloved Henry Boucha, would face Edina for the title. A storybook couldn’t have been written this way; it would have been too unrealistic.
Harsh reality, however, was to come. To most observers, a cruel Edina team knocked out Boucha with a flagrant cheapshot, which left the crowd in an extremely hostile mood. The section at Met Center housing the Edina section seemed to shrink against the boos and hoots of the rest of the world. First off, there was Edina’s vast, West Suburban wealth, against Warroad’s small-town, blue-collar-ethic workers from the northwoods. And they took out the Legend, the Indian kid, as well.
Reality was that defenseman Jim Knutson had a chance for a heavy bodycheck on Boucha in the second period — one of the only times in the game or even the season that Boucha was vulnerable for such a hit — and he made the most of it, with a leaping, extra-forceful bodycheck along the boards. Almost any opponent would have done the same. But on this hit, Knutson’s elbow hit Boucha on the side of his helmeted head. He was knocked out. The shocking thing was that Boucha, who was impossible to stop, didn’t come back. He suffered an ear injury that would send him to the hospital.
However, forgotten in many memories was that Warroad was behind 4-2 at the time. So even with Boucha in the lineup, and rarely leaving the ice as he moved from defense to forward, and then back to defense for moments of “rest,” the Warriors were in jeopardy of losing.
The crowd and the remaining Warriors seemed lifted to an emotional binge in the aftermath of Boucha’s departure, however, and, led by players such as Alan Hangsleben, and Lyle Kvarnlov, Warroad battled back against seemingly hopeless odds to gain a 4-4 tie. There would be overtime. The electricity that filled the place, and had filled it since that first, sudden move by Boucha on opening day, would not leave.
Hangsleben, a sophomore defenseman, incredibly stepped up to fill Boucha’s role of puck-rusher and constant threat. But in the end, the valiant Warriors and the enormous, emotional crowd, was not enough. Skip Thomas scored at 3:09 of sudden-death overtime, and Edina won 5-4. It was a magnificent, incredible finish to what might be the most memorable tournament of all time.
And that’s the sort of thing that brings Minnesota hockey fans and casual observers back, and makes this the greatest sports event in the state, this year and every year. As great as that tournament was, there is always room for a more spectacular one. And this year could be it. We just have to wait and see.
Something is missing from AA tournament
Maybe it’s just a weird year. The 55th Minnesota High School Hockey Tournament for boys will be held in Minneapolis instead of St. Paul, at Target Center instead of the torn-down-but-soon-to-be-rebuilt Civic Center, and fans will find more congestion, less parking and higher prices awaiting them.
But strangest of all will be the unprecedented absence of a Duluth or Iron Range Conference team from the Class AA field.
Hockey fans here in Up North territory can indeed be thankful for the Class A tournament, where Hermantown and Silver Bay can be counted on to carry the Up North colors in prideful fashion.
But in Class AA, Iron Range and Duluth teams, which accounted for19 of the first 36 championships and six more titles in the seven years of two-level tournaments — including both AA and A last year — will not be represented. Hibbing, Duluth East and Greenway were all powerful threats, but they yielded the Section 7AA championship to Elk River last week.
It will be the first time in tournament history that neither an Iron Range nor Duluth area team won Region or Section 7 and therefore will not be represented among the elite field of eight Class AA entries, and no less than Elk River coach Tony Sarsland thinks that’s inexcusable.
“It’s ridiculous that we have to play in Section 7,” said Sarsland, after his team beat Duluth East in the semifinals and Hibbing in a three-overtime classic final. “The Iron Range and Duluth schools are why the tournament is there. They put it on the map. We’re not a Range team, we belong in Section 4. The teams up here, this is what they live for. My heart goes out to ’em. It’s baloney.”
Roseau is about as far north as you can get, but even though the Rams from Section 8 are favored along with Hastings, Elk River and Hill-Murray for the Class AA title, their appearance won’t come close to soothing the pain in Section 7.
Often overlooked as a subsidiary event to the “big school” tournament, this year, the Class A event for smaller programs will carry at least as much entertainment value this year as their larger and more publicized AA rivals.
Hermantown (21-3-1) was state runner-up last year to Eveleth-Gilbert, and will ride into Wednesday’s opening round as one of the tournament favorites, even though folks south of Cambridge may assume that Benilde-St. Margaret’s (23-2) is the favorite. Conveniently, we’ll soon find out who is right, because Hermantown takes on Benilde in the 7:05 p.m. opening round game at Target Center.
The overwhelming choice as Cinderella team for the week is Silver Bay (18-5-2), which is the smallest school (135 students) in the state to have a hockey team, but the Mariners, from the smallest town (1,800), hope the attention on their Cinderella status may cause their skill level and forceful style to be overlooked by opponents.
The Mariners will face East Grand Forks (14-10-1) in the 12:05 p.m. first game of Wednesday’s first round. That second Class A game has ((((Blake (19-5-1)/Breck (19-6)))) meeting upstart St. Thomas Academy (15-10).
Wednesday night’s evening session has the Hermantown-Benilde clash followed by Fergus Falls (15-7-1) against Red Wing (19-4-2).
The Class A semifinals are Friday at 12:05 and 2:45 p.m., and the final is Saturday at 2 p.m.
In Class AA, Eden Prairie (18-7) opens at 12:05 p.m. Thursday against colorful Holy Angels (24-1), the Cinderella team in AA, but a private school that has become a stronghold of hockey in recent years, as Richfield’s answer to Hill-Murray.
Roseau (23-1) takes on Rochester Mayo (22-3-1) at 2:05 Thursday, with the evening session promising a pair of slugfests, with Elk River (22-3) facing Hill-Murray (21-3-1) at 7:05 and Hastings (21-4) favored against Blaine (21-4) in the 9:45 finale to the first round.
Class AA semifinals are at 7:05 and 9:45 p.m. Friday, with the championship game at 8:15 p.m. Saturday.
As usual, the hockey tournament is guaranteed to be filled with surprises and spectacular performances and plays. But if something seems missing, it will be the Duluth and Iron Range entries in Class AA. It would be a good year for a cynic to organize an NIT (Northern Invitational Tournament) at the DECC, with Duluth East, Hibbing, Greenway and Eveleth playing a round robin.
More realistically, University of Minnesota coach Doug Woog put it best, suggesting the high school league should find a way to assure Up North teams a place in the tournament.
“They’ve made some rules to protect the new programs in the southern part of the state,” said Woog. “But they should also make rules to protect the tradition and heritage of Northern Minnesota teams. They can protect the past while looking ahead to the future.”
Mariners storybook trip more than just Cinderella
Silver Bay’s youth hockey program had to work 45 years to become an overnight sensation, but that’s exactly how the Silver Bay Mariners will be regarded when they make their first trip to the Minnesota state high school hockey tournament this week.
The Mariners (18-5-2) won’t have a lot of time to wait, because they meet East Grand Forks in the 12:05 p.m. opening game Wednesday in the Class A quarterfinals at Target Center. But that should be enough time for all the media to focus on the team from the tiny North Shore town and the smallest high school in the state to form a hockey program.
Silver Bay’s emergence as Section 7A’s state tournament hockey team took a lot longer than Silver Bay’s emergence as a North Shore town.
Back in the early 1950s, where the stoplight intersection allows you to turn north and enter Silver Bay, there wasn’t even a turnoff to interrupt travel between Two Harbors and Grand Marais. Just the normally scenic Hwy. 61 curving through the rocky land and pine trees that offered an interlude between breathtaking views of Lake Superior.
That was 1953. In December of 1994, Reserve Mining opened a taconite processing plant right there on the North Shore, where railroad cars from the Iron Range could bring their stuff to be processed and loaded onto Lake Superior freighters in one move. The town of Silver Bay sprang to life around it, virtually overnight.
When the demand for steel receded, and things tightened up on the Iron Range, Silver Bay seemed headed down a one-way road to desolation. Having grown to over 4,000 residents, the majority of them fled to find employment. Population dwindled down to near 1,000, maybe, and homes that had been built new were abandoned, sold on the market for $10,000 to folks looking for summer homes.
Things finally stabilized, with North Shore Mining now the dominant employer, and a state veteran’s nursing home adding to the economic stability, and the neat little North Shore town now numbers about 1,800 population. There are 135 students in the high school, grades 10-12. Not only is that small enough to qualify for Class A, it is the smallest-enrollment school to field its own hockey team, a source of considerable pride in the community.
“I hope people really blow up the Cinderella thing,” said coach Mike Guzzo said. “It’s a great story, and it’s awesome for hockey. It’s a pretty intense time in town, and most people will look at it as a once-in-a-lifetime thing. But we think we’ve got it going the right way, and maybe we won’t drop off.”
If the media get tired of the Cinderella smalltown angle, there’s always John Conboy to dwell on. He’ll be the one who is on the ice more than on the bench, because he plays as much as he’s able, which is plenty. He’s finishing off his fifth year as a regular, and he’s now the captain, defenseman, scoring and spiritual leader of this year’s team.
“Sometimes the more John plays, the better he plays,” says Guzzo. “We jump him up to forward on the power play. But with a big horse like that, you want him out there as much as possible.”
John Conboy has accepted a scholarship to transfer his forceful play to UMD next fall, but for now he’ll be wearing No. 11 on Silver Bay’s blue line. Well…sometimes on the blue line, and sometimes in front of or behind his own net, and just as often hurtling down the ice on skillful puck-rushes which generate a large percentage of Silver Bay’s offense.
Guzzo is amazed at Conboy’s skill, but he hopes that in focusing on the smalltown and Conboy angles, because that focus may cause foes to overlook the fact that this team has a lot of elements all hitting a peak at the right time.
Still, a trip to the state tournament was only a pipe-dream for those who watched the early days, when brothers Donny and John Dumais were the stars. Donny went on to play at the University of Minnesota in the early 1970s. In fact, maybe only a pipe-dream to those of more recent years, when two more brothers, Brian and Brad Johnson, both starred and went on to play at UMD.
But it was not a pipedream to Mike Guzzo, a lifer who grew up in Silver Bay, and played hockey on the 1974-75 team that won the Lake Superior Conference and is believed by many long-time observers to be the best Silver Bay team in the North Shore town’s history. Until this year.
Guzzo is in his 12th year as Silver Bay’s head hockey coach, and he was an assistant for two years before that, helping build and rebuild the team painstakingly in that time. He had one star come along, named Rusty Fitzgerald, but his family moved to Duluth and he wound up helping Duluth East, not Silver Bay, make it to state. Brian Johnson is the all-time Silver Bay points leader with 161, and Rusty Fitzgerald is second with 152, although he left after his junior year. Third in all-time scoring is John Conboy, whose 19 goals, 21 assists and 40 points boosts him to 148 career points from defense.
Doug Conboy was among the pilgrims to Silver Bay. He grew up playing hockey and football in Mounds View, and at Augsburg, where he got his teaching degree 25 years ago and accepted a job to teach and coach at Silver Bay. He’s still there. He stopped coaching hockey but still coaches football. Along with John, a senior, sophomore Jared, is a promising sophomore defenseman on this Mariner team.
But there is a lot more to the team’s success. The goaltender, Greg Buell, is a senior who has a2.10 goals-against and 91.3 percent saves, and may wind up playing junior hockey and advancing to a higher level. “That’s impressive, especially because of our style,” said Guzzo. “We tend to throw the kitchen sink at teams, and we’ve been known to give up a breakaway or two.”
The first forward line is centered by Nic Johnson, a gifted athlete who was quarterback for Doug Conboy’s football team, which included John Conboy as a running back and about eight other of these hockey players. Juniors Sean Buckley and Andy Martinson are wingers on Johnson’s line, and they’ve been responsible for most of the scoring. Johnson has 19-33–52 for scoring stats, Martinson 16-29–45, and Buckley 14-18–32.
But Guzzo’s sensitivity to a small-core program and patience in building has brought along the entire roster.
“Nic and Martinson play together all the time, but we often rotate two left wings on our top three lines,” said Guzzo. “Thomas Christensen (11-10–21) is the other left wing who rotates with Sean. Otherwise our second line has Christensen, who’s 6-3 and 215, with Tanner Paulseth, a sophomore, and Luke Mattila. Luke is a senior who played with Nic and Martinson last year. We broke them up for balance this year, then Luke broke his collarbone. He came back for our last regular season game and the playoffs.
“With Luke out, we were scraping along with two lines so we could keep a junior varsity going. We lost a 1-0 game to Hermantown, and I tried to match two lines with them because we were home team. But I decided, no waywere we going to go anywhere with just two lines.”
Matt Cook, a junior who was a linebacker in football, centers junior Eric Berquist on the right, and either one of the alternating left wings or senior Tracy Pearson.
“Even with a small program, I think it’s important to have a JV,” Guzzo said. “We started the JV a year ago, and we started putting our ninth graders on it. It’s really helped.”
Guzzo trusts the defense to assistant Gary Gustafson, who also is a master juggler. He basically runs five defensemen, alternating John Conboy and Jake Burns on one side. Burns had two goals and an assist in the 4-1 Section 7A victory over Mesabi East. John Conboy and Burns usually play the last shift of each period, and they two usually start each period too. Before a minute is up, Jared Conboy goes over the boards to replace Burns, who then comes back out when John Conboy needs a break, while senior Benji Klemmer and junior B.J. Larson man the other slots.
Big schools with great depth may never have to do that kind of computerized juggling, but the Mariners have made it work for a state tournament trip.
Before this, the closest they got was to be loaded up in a couple of vans for a trip to the DECC to watch the section finals at the DECC. Guzzo wanted his young players to see what could be accomplished, and now they’ve done it themselves.
The trip has consumed the town, where they can’t close the school, but many services are going to be curtailed. It’s also consumed the whole North Shore, from Two Harbors to Grand Marais, where Cook County has made a name for itself in football, but may supply some players from its own youth hockey program to Silver Bay’s hockey team in the future.
The old cliche about the last person leaving town, turn out the lights, used to be a cruel and not unrealistic joke about Silver Bay. It’s true this week, but only because the town is evacuating to watch their boys in a state tournament.
North Shore Mining has contributed to the expenses of a coach bus to take the team to the Twin Cities, and to make sure the kids have a memorable experience. That shouldn’t be a problem.
Berg, Gophers outgun UMD 10-7
UMD’s intention, in the weekend hockey series against their arch-rival Minnesota, was to throw a wrench into the Gopher’s hope of finishing high enough to get home-ice in the upcoming WCHA playoffs. Instead, the Bulldogs fine-tuned the formidable Gopher offense, which scored the last four goals Saturday night to claim a 10-7 shootout victory and a sweep of UMD’s final home series.
Both teams had been scoring under 2.5 goals per game coming into the weekend, but Minnesota’s 14 goals in the two games puts them in position of reaching the top five in next weekend’s series against Wisconsin. The Bulldogs can’t finish anywhere but last, and face a trip to second-place Colorado College next weekend, where they also will undoubtedly open the playoffs in two weeks.
Reggie Berg scored four goals, a personal high for the senior from Anoka, to lead Minnesota, with defenseman Bill Kohn scoring twice. Wyatt Smith, who had the first three in Friday night’s 4-1 victory, scored the first one Saturday and added two assists, as seniors scored eight of the 10 Gopher goals.
Friday night’s 4-1 Gopher victory created three distinct challenges. The Gophers, striving for an upper-division and therefore home-ice playoff berth, had to repeat their conquest by again playing in a manner that their high-level talent warrants. The Bulldogs — both those who were embarrassed by the third-period penalty fest and those who should have been — resolved to come out and spend their energy in a more positive fashion and try, once again, to prove they are better than the last-place status they have guaranteed.
But the biggest challenge was to referee John Seidel, who was a victim of the first-game’s third-period flare-ups, when nothing in the first two indicated what was to come. Obviously, his intention was to call everything as closely as possible to keep a tight rein on the teams.
Nobody could have imagined the result.
Here’s the first period: Penalty to UMD’s Judd Medak; power-play goal by Minnesota’s Wyatt Smith at 3:03. Penalty to Minnesota’s Reggie Berg; power-play goal by UMD’s Ryan Homstol. Coincidental double-minors, 4-on-4 goal by UMD’s Judd Medak. Penalty to UMD; power-play goalby Gopher Erik Wendell. Two penalties to the Gophers, with a 2-man power-play goal by UMD’s Mark Carlson followed by a 1-man power-play goal by Shawn Pogreba. Penalty to UMD; power-play goal by Berg.
Finally, with 2:18 to go, Minnesota scored a goal without benefit of a penalty when Bill Kohn broke in from the point to score. Then Berg scored again, also at full strength. And Ryan Coole got one back for UMD before the period ended.
Whew! The two lightest-scoring teams in the WCHA wound up 5-5 in the first period, with both going 3-for-3 on the power play.
Second period, more of the same. Penalty to UMD in the first minute, power-play goal by Rico Pagel at 1:19. Penalty to Pagel at 1:46, power-play goal by Jeff Scissons at 2:35.
At 3:37 of the middle period, Shawn Pogreba was penalized for cross-checking, which became the first penalty of the game on which no goal was scored. Four seconds after it expired, Colin Anderson swiped the puck and scored unassisted, breaking a 6-all tie in UMD’s favor at 5:41.
But goaltender Brant Nicklin, who made 35 saves in the first two periods, couldn’t hold off the hustling Gophers, who came back for a 7-7 tie when Kohn scored his second, their fifth power-play tally of the game. This time they made it carry over, with Mike Anderson scoring at 15:30 and Berg completing his hat trick by converting a rebound 28 seconds later.
Minnesota skated to the dressing room for the second intermission with a 9-7 lead, and the Bulldogs, having already duplicated their season-high seven goals scored against Air Force Academy, badly in need of a field goal.
Instead, as if arm-weary, the teams quit scoring. The only goal of the third period came with 2:33 to go when Berg broke in, fought off a check, and beat Nicklin at the crease.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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