Dynamite retain old and start new tradition
ST. PAUL, MINN.—
The girls from Duluth East, Denfeld and Central who make up the Duluth Dynamite hockey team set out on a mission to reach their first state tournament this season. Having accomplished that, the Duluth team wanted to do more than just make it to the State Fair Coliseum event. They wanted to do something once they were in the final field.
They achieved all of the objectives by beating Mankato East/West 5-2 in Thursday’s opening round.
That sent them against tournament favorite Roseville in Friday night’s second semifinal, which promised to last until nearly midnight, after South St. Paul and Bloomington Jefferson met in the first semifinal. The date with Roseville was a game the Dynamite players hoped for, a chance to replay a regular-season game they had lost 5-4 in overtime against the undefeated Raiders.
But regardless of their destiny in the semifinals or beyond, their first-game success was something the Duluth skaters will cherish.
While the Dynamite are made up of a diverse blend of personalities from the three Duluth public schools, they also had an assortment of emotions going into their first-ever tournament, and they played them out to that opening victory, which hiked their season record to 21-4-1.
Leah Wrazidlo, a senior forward from Denfeld, scored two goals to lead the attack; Sanya Sandahl, a senior goaltender from Central, was victimized by two quick goals in the second period but returned to form to stabilize the Dynamite; Tresa Lamphier, a senior center from Denfeld, and Meghen Stotts, a sophomore center from East, each had a goal and an assist; and Becky Fisher, a freshman defenseman from East, had two assists.
In the process of breaking from tradition, the Duluth girl also maintained their tendency to leave coach Jack Shearer almost baffled by seeming to play alternately outstanding and lackadaisically, as if measuring their opponent and then playing accordingly.
Linemates Wrazidlo and Lamphier, for example, are the top two scorers on the team, but felt entirely different going in.
“I wasn’t nervous at all, until after my first shift, then it hit me,” said Wrazidlo. “The first goal was nice, because it got us going. I was OK after that.”
Fortunately, it came early, with Wrazidlo scoring by deflecting in a Rose Babst shot at 4:13 of the first period.
Lamphier was asked if she felt a little bit of jitters before the game.
“Not a little,” she said. “A lot.”
Lamphier, who had scored three straight hat tricks for nine of the team’s last 13 goals in the Section 8 games, got a weird goal at 5:17 to make it 2-0 over Mankato. She skated up the right side, crossed the blue line near the boards, then launched a high flip. “I was just trying to get it in deep,” she said.
Typically, though, she put it on goal. The high flip landed at the feet of goaltender Nitara Frost, and short-hopped between her pads.
“That one was kinda cheesey,” laughed Lamphier.
Junior winger Rachel Goodwin, from East, scored at 9:59 of the first period, skating hard up the slot and finding a loose puck, which she quickly deposited in the net.
Up 3-0, it appeared Duluth was headed for a rout. Instead, the Dynamite seemed to ease their intensity in the second period. Sandahl was left unprotected at 3:13 of the second period, and Mankato star Amy Egli sped around the defense and scored.
It didn’t seem too critical until, at 8:16 of the middle period, Kelsey Fitzgerald broke in for Mankato and nudged the puck to Jessica Steffen, who seemed to lose control in the slot. The puck squirted to the left, and ninth-grader Nicole Hottinger got off a quick shot to cut the margin to 3-2.
“It went off my right skate, right to their other girl, who scored,” said Wrazidlo. “We definitely let up when it was 3-0. We’ve done that all too often.”
That was coach Shearer’s point exactly.
“I think we got the 3-0 lead and then turned complacent,” said Shearer. “We do that. We’re so doggone up and down. We are consistent about being inconsistent.
“But the big thing was, we came here and we wanted to win the first game to stay on the championship side of the tournament, and we did that.”
Having outshot Mankato 14-3 in the first period, Duluth responded to the suddenly diminished lead by turning up the attack again. Fisher shot from long range, and Stotts banged in the rebound later in the middle period, and it was 4-2 after outshooting Mankato 10-5 in the session.
Again the Dynamite seemed to put it in cruise control with the comfort of a 4-2 lead. They squandered a power play to open the third period, but they made good on another extra-skater chance with 1:38 remaining, when Lamphier got the puck from freshman Becky Salyards for a shot. Wrazidlo pounced on the rebounding puck, angled across the slot from right to left, and drilled a backhander into the lower right corner of the net.
The 5-2 final score was less-decisive than the edge in shots of 34-11 for the game might have deserved. But it was almost as if the Dynamite didn’t want to spend any more effort or scoring than was required, perhaps realizing more would be necessary against stronger foes in the rest of the tournament.
Or, maybe they just didn’t want to give coach Shearer any room to relax.
OPENING SURPRISE
The opening day evening session drew 1,912 fans to the Coliseum, with Roseville blanking Burnsville 5-0 in the final game. Jodi Winters got the shutout, and senior Ronda Curtin scored three goals and her sophomore sister, Renee, added another.
The afternoon session drew a single-session girls tournament record of 4,462, with the feature attraction Park Center’s high-scoring Krissy Wendell against South St. Paul. The Packers surprised No. 1 ranked Park Center by jumping to a 3-0 lead, then holding Wendell to a pair of goals for a 3-2 victory. Ninth-grader Ashley Albrecht opened the scoring and Erika Hockinson made it 2-0 before the first period ended. Hockinson scored again at 9:02 of the second, with both her goals coming on setups by the falling Kelly Kegley, a fifth-year senior playmaking star.
Of more significance was South St. Paul coach Dave Palmquist’s strategy to clutter the middle to block Wendell from her favorite path to the net. It succeeded in preventing most of her shots from getting through, although she scored with two seconds left in the second period and again at 2:03 of the third, after coach John Donovan had moved her up from defense to center to free her from having to skate end-to-end.
“We knew we had the firepower, but they shut us down,” said Wendell. “They had a great defensive team. Offensively, I didn’t think they had that much firepower, but they sure did today. They won every loose puck, and they just outplayed us.”
With Wendell’s 100 goals triggering a 25-0 season, the challenge was obvious for South St. Paul, with the stability of senior Sarah Ahlquist in goal. But the Packers outshot Park Center 26-15 and while Wendell jacked up her goal total to 102, Park Center left the building 25-1 the same as South St. Paul’s more balanced team, which was still in the championship running.
Bloomington Jefferson (21-4-1) had to overcome some flu and mono that had knocked several players either out of the lineup or to reduced roles throughout the Section 6 tournament. Junior defenseman Bethany Petersen, who had missed all but one period of the last three games with illness, staked the Jaguars to an early lead, but underdog Mounds View (15-10-1) came back strong when Lindsey Ogren scored midway through the opening period and Jenny Lovelle converted a set-up from Diane Carigiet in the last minute of the first period, for a 2-1 lead. Jefferson sophomore Emily Naslund and eighth-grader Natalie Turgeon regained the led at 3-2 in the second period, but after Lisa Sullivan tied it up for Mounds View in the third, Naslund scored off the rebound of Petersen’s wraparound try midway through the final period for the 4-3 victory.
“I’ve got about six or seven goals for the season,” said Naslund, last fall’s state cross-country champion. “These two definitely were the biggest.”
To say nothing of the most timely.
Jefferson upsets South St. Paul in 2 OTs
The Duluth Dynamite knew it was a night for upsets, after watching the first state girls hockey tournament semifinal go two overtimes, with Bloomington Jefferson upsetting favored South St. Paul 3-2 at the State Fairgrounds Coliseum.
But that double-overtime first semifinal meant the Duluth entry would have to play powerful Roseville until after midnight in the second semifinal to determine Jefferson’s foe in tonight’s state championship game.
Lindsey Christensen was stationed near the right pipe at 12:44 of the second sudden-death overtime when her Jefferson teammate Sharon Cole fired a hard pass to the crease from deep in the left corner. The pass hit South St. Paul defenseman Ashley Albrecht’s skate and glanced toward the right post.
“The puck was sitting right on the goal line,” said Christensen, a senior who had scored five goals all season. “I couldn’t believe it. I tapped it, and it barely moved. It was on the goal line, and it barely went across the line. It never got to the back of the net.”
No matter. It crossed the line and that was all that mattered. Jefferson, despite being outshot 38-26, got the best goaltending job of junior Dana Hergert’s life, and upset South St. Paul 3-2 to reach tonight’s state championship game.
Jefferson (22-4-1) never led during regulation, but forced the overtime with only 10 seconds remaining in the third period when junior Jessica Brandanger scored for a 2-2 tie amid a six-attacker scramble at the South St. Paul crease.
South St. Paul (25-2), which came into the tournament rated No. 4 by blanking Natalie Darwitz and No. 3 Eagan, and opened by shutting down No. 1 Park Center 3-2, dominated Bloomington Jefferson in the first period, outshooting the Jaguars 6-1, but couldn’t gain more than a 1-0 lead.
Ninth-grade defenseman Albrecht, another of the state’s brilliant junior-high-age players, moved up from defense with the teams each short a skater and banged in a rebound at 8:07 for the lone goal of the first period. It stayed 1-0 until the third period, when, at exactly 1:00, Jefferson sophomore Emily Naslund converted a 1-time deflection of Jessica Brandanger’s goal-mouth pass.
The Jaguar fans celebrated, but not for long. Just 31 seconds after it was tied, it was untied, when South St. Paul’s Jamie Staples moved up from the right point and drilled a 50-footer through goalie Dana Hergert.
The game intensified after that, with each team getting 11 shots in the final period, and more good chances per shift in the third period than there had been cumulatively through the more cautious first and second periods. Packer goaltender Sarah Ahlquist weathered repeated Jefferson scoring attempts, and when Hergert was pulled for a sixth Jaguar attacker, South St. Paul’s Erika Hockinson missed a try at the empty net.
Ahlquist faced a final flurry in regulation, making saves on Naslund and Chrissie Norwich at the crease, but Brandanger knocked the loose puck in from the scramble at 14:50, and, with the Duluth and Roseville players lined up to take the ice for second-semifinal practice, the tournament’s first overtime ensued instead.
CONSOLATION
Krissy Wendell, the first high school hockey player of any gender to score 100 goals in a single season, said it was difficult to come back from her Park Center team’s first loss of the season to play in Friday’s consolation semifinals. “But once the game started, we were OK,” said Wendell.
It was OK for Wendell and the Pirates, because Park Center beat Mounds View 6-5 in a suprisingly close game, in which Wendell scored all six of her team’s goals — a girls state tournament record for a single game — running her season total to 108, with today’s consolation final against Burnsville still to go.
Burnsville also had a surprisingly close game, getting goals from juniors Kristin Kattleman and Kate Barnett in the third period to overcome Mankato 2-0. Sophomore Andrea Smith got the shutout, making saves on all eight shots Mankato generated. That total of eight is the girls tournament record for fewest shots in a game.
Park Center, which entered the tournament ranked No. 1 with a 25-0 record, lost 3-2 to South St. Paul in the opening round Thursday to South St. Paul. Wendell, who had both goals in that one, too, helped raise her team to 25-1 by opening Friday’s game with goals at 0:36, 2:09 and 6:15 of the first period for a 3-0 lead before Jenny Levelle got one for Mounds View. Katie Deschneau scored a power-play goal for Mounds View to open the second period, but Wendell converted a Jessica Horn power-play feed for a 4-2 Park Center cushion at 5:10.
Wendell’s unassisted power-play goal made it 5-2 in the third, and after Jeanne Chapple and Lisa Bush scored for the Mustangs, Wendell ended her record-setting performance with a power-play goal at 10:14. Lindsey Ogren got the final goal for Mounds View, shorthanded at 11:59. The Mustangs outshot Park Center 31-26, but couldn’t contain Wendell.
Burnsville outshot Mankato East/West 29-8, but the Blaze couldn’t puncture Nitara Frost’s goaltending for two periods. Actually, the Blaze (18-5-4) scored twice earlier, but one was disallowed because the whistle had blown, and another for being directed in off a shinpad.
Playoff finality comes too soon
The Section 2A hockey tournament is a Saturday semifinal and Tuesday final from completion, but Thursday night’s Hermantown-Proctor game may prove to have been the deciding game, even though it was “only” a quarterfinal.
There is no such thing as “only” when it comes to state hockey sectional playoffs. Whatever round it is, it’s the harsh reality of win-or-else. Advance, or turn in your gear for the season.
Hermantown had a first-round bye, awaiting its old neighborhood rival. Proctor already had to play a game, Tuesday night.
The Proctor ice arena is a classic old building. You enter a lobby area, where people flock between periods to warm up by the concession stand, or they go upstairs to a meeting room that provides a warm, glassed-in view from one end.
Ah, but in the arena itself, the chill of the ice slaps you in the face as you look out from behind one net. The main bleacher seats are around to the right, the player’s boxes to the left. The walls are covered with aging panels of insulation, to keep the cold IN, not OUT. And there are great, bright lights, the kind of lights that the builders of the sparkling new Cloquet arena should examine and duplicate to improve the dusk-like dimness of their state-of-the-art facility, where the seating area is brighter than the ice surface.
Walking around to the left, toward the players benches, you pass a small, corner perch where the pep band is stationed. As long as there aren’t too many in the band.
There are a couple rows of bleacher seats on that side, although when you walk along the boarded walkway between them and the boards you’re careful, because the walkway is at about a 15 percent slope.
As usual in an old, colorful arena, the ice is good, and therefore so is the speed of the game, and those watching it will enjoy it without need for sanitary, new accessories.
Hermantown and Proctor both branch off into Section 2A, which is good, because it gives Up North teams a chance for another berth in the state tournament, beyond just 7AA and 7A. Hermantown and Proctor are, probably, the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in 2A, although Chisago Lakes has an impressive record, too. But Section 2A extends all the way to Mora, St. Cloud, Princeton and Monticello, and they decided to seed the section on the basis of east and west teams. Hermantown was East No. 1, Chisago Lakes East 2, Pine City East 3 and Proctor East 4. Cambridge is No. 1 in the West.
That meant Proctor — actually Proctor/AlBrook — had to play Moose Lake — actually Moose Lake/Willow River/Barnum/Cromwell — in an opening round game last Tuesday. That was unfortunate as a seeding location, particularly to Moose Lake, a good enough young team to deserve to play a team of more similar capabilities, for a chance at a memorable victory, rather than to face a team as strong as Proctor.
The trouble with such far-ranging seeding is that nobody from one end knows much about the other, and the West end could have teams with .500 records seeded high. Chisago Lakes had merit enough to be seeded high in the East, with an impressive 7-5 victory over Marshall at Pioneer Hall a couple of weeks ago.
Marshall coach Brendan Flaherty admitted afterward that the Chisago Lakes game would be the only one that was a break from conference play, so he played all of his seniors, including his backup goaltender. The 7-5 loss was meaningless, compared to the wonderful gesture of giving his seniors a night to cherish always. It turned out to be more than meaningless, perhaps, inhibiting Marshall’s seeding a bit in 7A and enhancing Chisago Lakes’ seeding in 2A.
Because of their schedule, the Proctor Rails probably should have been seeded No. 2, with the chance to meet Hermantown in the final.
As it is, though, they won’t have to give back any memories from that first-round night in the Proctor Arena, where the chill was broken by the aroma of several platters of barbecued food their parents prepared and carried to a post-game feast upstairs.
The Rails earned the celebration, however brief, because they were flying that night, out on that cold slab of ice.
Aaron Slattengren, a swift, forceful junior, scored on a wraparound after only 14 seconds had elapsed from when Jay Dardis took the opening faceoff. Slattengren then beat the defense with a great pass that sent Dardis, a lanky, creative centerman, in for a 2-0 lead exactly four minutes later.
Slattengren scored on a breakaway to start the second period, and Ryan Morgando and Richie Upton scored 11 seconds apart to make it 5-0 before Joe Danelski, a strapping 6-3, 230-pound defenseman, hammered one in for Moose Lake. In the third period, Jack Hom, Dardis and Matt Ogston added goals as the Rails sent the game into running time for an 8-1 final.
It was an impressive display, as Dardis, a senior center committed to St. Cloud State after a year in the USHL, and Slattengren each scored two goals and four assists in the game. Junior Corey Lonke had 23 saves for Proctor, but everyone knew he’d face a lot more shots against Hermantown.
Still, the Dardis-Upton-Slattengren line would be a challenge for Hermantown’s Jon Francisco-Chris Baron-Andy Corran top line. Hermantown coach Bruce Plante knew that, which is why Plante was there in the chill of Proctor Arena, checking out the proceedings.
The Proctor-Hermantown game would have been a fitting final in Section 2A. It figured to be a great game no matter when, but the quarterfinals were just too early for either one of them to be finished, and to already be savoring memories of more successful nights.
Welch’s last-second goal wins for Hastings
The biggest upset of the state boys Class AA tournament was less than one minute from completion Thursday night at Target Center. But with 15,829 fans on the edges of their seats, Hastings star Dan Welch scored the tying goal with 41 seconds remaining, then he swiped the puck at center ice and raced in to score with one second remaining to give heavily favored Hastings a 7-6 victory over upstart Blaine.
There was no question that Hastings, with its prolific offense, would score some goals in the state Class AA hockey tournament. The question was whether Blaine could keep up.
After the two teams collaborated on a state tournament record three goals in 26 seconds, the question was: How many times could they set that record in the game?
They settled for just the one time, and it will be a difficult chore for the Raiders to duplicate in tonight’s 9:45 semifinal against Elk River, a team that tends to business defensively with considerable more intensity.
The final turnabout came after Blaine’s Adam Holmgren completed a hat trick with Blaine’s third straight goal in the third period, for a shocking 6-5 Bengal lead. The upset of the tournament was at hand, but Hastings coach Russ Welch pulled goalie Matt Klein in the final minute, and then his son took over.
The shootout began, appropriately, on the game’s first shift, when Hastings star center Jeff Taffe rushed all the way and scored at 0:22.
Looked like a laugher, but Blain, not getting the punch line, countered with a goal by Adam Holmgren at 0:55.
No, that wasn’t the record run. Hastings came back for goals by Pete Swanson, then a later one by Nick Husting, and a shorthnaded marker by Erik Aarness at 14:41 to take a seemingly safe 4-1 lead after one period.
Then the fun began. Trevor Frischmon overskated a loose puck at the Hastings crease, but reached around for a behind-the-back tap that slid through Hastings goalie Matt Klein at 3:11 of the second. At 3:19, Matt Van Der Bosch scored with a shot off a pass for Hastings, making it two goals in eight seconds. But Blaine came right back in and Erik Johnson steered a one-handed shot that hit the sitting goaltender Klein and popped over him.
The three goals in 26 seconds broke the tournament record of three goals in 32 seconds, set by Eveleth in 1951.
That flurry lifted Blaine to a mere 5-3 deficit, but the plucky Bengals weren’t finished.
Holmgren threw a power-play shot on goal that skipped past the beleaguered Klein at 2:57 of the third period, and Frischmon, who was in the middle of the action all night, left a drop pass for Nate Hendricks, then scored on the rebound of Hendricks’ shot at 4:43, tying the game at 5-all.
Still, to most of the 15,829, the much-publicized Hastings attack seemed ready to respond. But then Holmgren made his rush, deking through defenseman Ben Tharp at the right circle and lifting his shot over Klein for a stunning 6-5 Blaine lead. Would it be enough for a dramatic upset? Not in this one.
Puck semifinals promise double drama
[NOTE TO EDITORS: THIS IS WRITTEN WITH THE FOURTH GAME NOT YET FINISHED; I’LL SEND UPDATE WHEN IT’S DONE…HASTINGS LEADS 5-3 IN THIRD PERIOD AS I SEND THIS…]
After a day of explosive scoring, surprising plays and strong goaltending, the state Class AA boys hockey semifinals should feature a pair of closely matched and unpredictable games, with Roseau facing Holy Angels, and Elk River challenging the late Hastings-Blaine winner.
Unless Roseau can win its sixth state championship, the tournament will have a first-time winner, because none of the other semifinalists has ever won the title. But all showed what it takes in the quarterfinals on Thursday.
Holy Angels spotted Eden Prairie a goal and then came back to win 4-1 in the opening game, and Roseau broke a 2-2 tie in the third period to beat Rochester Mayo 4-2 in the second afternoon session, which drew a crowd of 15,288 to Target Center. Holy Angels will challenge No. 1 ranked Roseau in the 7:05 p.m. first semifinal tonight.
Elk River battled heavy-hitting Hill-Murray for a tough first half of the game, but emerged a 5-1 victor behind Joey Bailey’s two goals in the first game of the night session in the first round. But the Elks had to wait until nearly midnight to learn whether explosive Hastings could subdue surprising Blaine in the quarterfinal finale.
Hastings jumped ahead 4-1 in the first period, but Blaine battled back to trail only 5-3 after two.
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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