(Cutlines for wcha final five final photos…)
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1/ North Dakota’s Lee Goren, Jeff Panzer and Jason Ulmer celebrated as the clinching goal by Chad Mazurak found the Wisconsin goal, and Badger goalie Graham Melanson and teammates Jeff Dessner, Brian Fahey and Andy Wheeler were helpless. The goal gave the Sioux a 5-2 lead in the third period and they won the WCHA playoff championship game 5-3 before 10,437 fans at Target Center in Minneapolis.
2/ St. Cloud State’s Mark Hartigan slid to the end boards after scoring his first of two goals Saturday in the WCHA third-place game. Gophers Dave Spehar (33), Dylan Mills (4) and Erik Westrum (7)surrounded goalie Adam Hauser. The Huskies beat Minnesota 6-4 before 7,129 at Target Center.
Huskies end Gopher season, claim first NCAA tourney slot
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.—St. Cloud State scored three unanswered goals in the first period, then rebuffed Minnesota’s efforts to get back in the game Saturday afternoon, ending the Gopher season with a 6-4 victory in the WCHA playoff third-place game at Target Center.
The victory makes St. Cloud State 23-13-3 and virtually clinched a berth in the 12-team NCAA tournament. Ten teams were set among the 12 before Saturday night’s games were completed: Boston University, Boston College, Maine and New Hampshire from Hockey East, Colgate and St. Lawrence from ECAC, Michigan and Michigan State from the CCHA, and Wisconsin and North Dakota — the teams meeting in the WCHA playoff final. When St. Lawrence beat unrated RPI 2-0 for the ECAC title, and Michigan State beat unrated Nebraska-Omaha 6-0 in the CCHA final, two of the variables were removed, leaving St. Cloud State 11th by the end of the night.
“Twice before in the last four years we’ve been 13th, and somebody won an upset somewhere, which meant the Huskies stayed home,” said St. Cloud State coach Craig Dahl. “It would be great for us to make it, because the first time you do anything is always a good experience, and we’ve got a young team — we don’t lose a single forward this year — and we’ve had a good year.”
Minnesota, on the other hand, was holding out faint hope that a victory over St. Cloud could have allowed their strength-of-schedule status to overshadow the facts of a sixth-place WCHA finish and a 20-19-2 final record to allow a shot at an NCAA slot if all the other combinations allowed it. But the Gophers had to upset Colorado College last weekend to get into the Final Five as the fifth team, then upset fourth-place Mankato Thursday to get a shot at Wisconsin in Friday’s semifinals, and then play again Saturday afternoon.
“The first 10 minutes we had good legs,” said Gopher first-year coach Don Lucia, a Grand Rapids native. “But we couldn’t sustain it. The third game in less than three full days took a toll. St. Cloud deserves to get in to the NCAA. It’s disappointing for me to not make the NCAA tournament, I’ve been there five straight times. But at the beginning of the year I didn’t think we had a chance, then as the season went along, we got closer and closer.”
Brandon Sampair wound up with five assists for the Huskies, although they had trouble putting the Gophers away. The Gophers started out strong with the first goal in each period to stay close all afternoon at Target Center. But three of their goals came during a 3-for-3 power-play game. “We didn’t generate much 5-on-5,” said Lucia.
Jordan Leopold scored at 8:02 of the first period to stake them to a 1-0 lead, but the Huskies came back for three forceful goals to take the upper hand. Big Brian Gaffaney, a 6-foot-5 defenseman, beat goaltender Adam Hauser, former Greenway of Coleraine star, on a wraparound at 10:38, Mike Pudlick rifled in a power-play slapshot at 15:22, and Mark Hartigan scored at 18:33 after some slick close-in passwork by Sampair and Gaffaney.
Sampair’s set-up pass was a work of art, and was his third assist of the period. “That was a little bit of luck,” said Sampair, a former Mahtomedi and Hill-Murray high school star. “I made a move and passed on one of them, and the rest, guys just put it away.”
Nate Miller opened the second period with a Gopher goal at 5:51 to cut the deficit to 3-2, but the Badgers, who outshot Minnesota in every period for a 34-22 total, countered with a power-play goal by Geno Parrish, who got three straight tries from center point before putting it by Hauser.
Former Grand Rapids star Aaron Miskovich opened the third period with a breakaway goal at 3:17, catching a long pass and zooming in to beat Scott Meyer with a good move and a shot between his pads. But Joe Motzko restored the 2-goal edge at 5-3 with a game-breaking move to waltz past Leopold and come in at Hauser, beating him with a backhander at 8:30. Miller got his second goal of the game on a luck break, as he flipped a pass to the crease that went in off a defenseman’s skate, once again putting the Gophers within one, at 5-4.
But that was as close as they could get, and with 21 seconds to play, Hartigan got his second of the game and 22nd of the season into an empty net.
After the game, Lucia said he thought the WCHA should look at eliminating the third-place game, because the CCHA and Hockey East don’t have it, and losing it can knock a team out. It was suggested to Lucia that a team obviously could also make the field by winning the game. “You’ve got all season to play yourself in,” he said.
From that standpoint, the Gophers had all year to engrave a 20-19-2 record and a sixth-place finish, and join the large list of teams not winning the WCHA playoff title and not advancing to the NCAA tournament.
Badgers’ 5-3 victory virtually ends Gopher NCAA hopes
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.—Virtual reality struck the University of Minnesota hockey team Friday night, right about the time Steve Reinprecht’s 50-foot backhander found the open net with 36 seconds remaining in Wisconsin’s 5-3 victory in the WCHA Final Five semifinals before 11,520 at Target Center.
By holding off the Gophers (20-18-2), the Badgers (31-7-1) gained tonight’s 7:05 final against North Dakota, which thumped St. Cloud State 7-3 Friday afternoon. It should be a close, exciting championship game, but as far as the NCAA tournament goes, it’s moot, because both the Badgers and Fighting Sioux are cinches to make the 12-team field. In fact, with Nebraska-Omaha upsetting Michigan 7-4 in the CCHA semifinals, it appears Wisconsin and North Dakota might well get the two byes in the West Regional at Mariucci Arena next weekend.
As for Minnesota, even though coach Don Lucia sounded hopeful that a victory against St. Cloud State in this afternoon’s third-place game might thrust the Gophers into the NCAA field, there appears virtually no chance of that happening. Based on updated pairwise power rankings, the Gophers dropped to 17th with the defeat, while St. Cloud State is 13th, and even Minnesota State-Mankato is 14th.
The selection committee picks 12, with the pairwise rankings one of the pivotal elements, but the question is whether it will choose Niagara, which it probably will as an at-large team, or Quinnipac, which it probably won’t. Those teams are ranked in the top 12. If the committee chooses to pick neither, then the top 14 ranked teams could make it. St. Cloud State probably needs to win today to assure itself of a slot. But the final pairwise rankings will be recalibrated after tonight’s conference playoff finals.
“All we can control is our game against St. Cloud,” said Lucia. “We’ve got to look at it as having one more game, so let’s give ourselves every chance by winning that one.
“We played well tonight, better than last night (a 6-4 victory over Mankato), but now we’ve got the top two teams in our league playing for the title, and maybe that’s the way it should be.”
Minnesota hadn’t beaten Wisconsin in four tries this season, with the Badgers winning 4-3 and 5-4 in overtime in Madison and 4-2 on an empty-net goal and 5-4 in the series at Mariucci. But Badger coach Jeff Sauer didn’t stress that obvious superiority. “What I stressed was that we had never beaten the Gophers in five tries in this building,” Sauer said.
The Badgers responded by taking charge early. Steve Reinprecht, the Badger all-WCHA center, set up Dan Bjornlie in the slot and he fired past Gopher goaltender Adam Hauser at 2:50. It became 2-0 at 8:09, when Matt Hussey intercepted a careless breakout pass, walked in and scored.
The Gophers battled back on a goal by Erik Westrum at 11:46, when he shot from a wide angle to the left and the puck hit goalie Graham Melanson and trickled through. But the Badger power play regained a two-goal lead at 3-1, with amazing freshman Dany Heatley pulling the trigger on a big slapshot from the top of the right circle two minutes later.
Down 3-1, the Gophers got a huge goal back when Johnny Pohl, tripped as he tried to cross in front of the Badger net, snapped a backhander past Melanson while flying through the air, cutting the deficit to 3-2 with just 13 seconds left in the first period.
The only goal of the second period was a weird one, when Wisconsin’s Matt Murray, skating across center ice, fired a slapshot from outside the blue line. The high rocket caused Hauser to duck just a bit and it sizzled over his glove and into the upper right corner to make it 4-2.
On the next shift, Alex Brooks shot from the right point and the puck hit the left post. That was it for Hauser, the former Greenway of Coleraine goalie, who went to the bench on the next whistle, to be relieved by Eveleth’s Pete Samargia.
The game dragged uneventfully through the rest of the second, and droned along into the third. But when the Gopher power play suddenly clicked on Jordan Leopold’s blast from the right point at 7:25, the crowd erupted, and started to chant in support of the Gophers, who were wearing their road maroons as the lower seed.
A minute later, Reinprecht fired a hard pass at the crease from the left corner, and Dany Heatley rammed it in for a Wisconsin goal, but it was disallowed as referee Tom Goddard consulted with league officials in the press box, who ruled that Heatley was in the crease. That caused another big cheer from the crowd, and led to a lively finish, right down to the final minute, with Minnesota’s six-skater closing bid.
The Gophers outshot Wisconsin 41-29 for their effort. But then Reinprecht, the WCHA’s best player, barged up the right side, fought off the desperately retreating checkers, and found the open net with his backhander. That leaves the virtual reality of St. Cloud State needing to win today to gain the NCAA, and the Gophers very likely unable to make the field even with a victory.
NORTH DAKOTA
RIPS ST. CLOUD 7-3
Lee Goren scored two goals as North Dakota broke open a tight 1-1 game and whipped St. Cloud State 7-3 in Friday’s afternoon semifinal of the WCHA Final Five.
The victory puts the Fighting Sioux into tonight’s championship game, while the Huskies could virtually assure themselves of an NCAA tournament bid by winning the third-place game.
Chad Mazurka’s opening goal for the Sioux, at 0:40, was offset when Huskie Lee Brooks countered at 4:37. But the second period started and the Sioux opened fire. Goren scored at 1:01 after a botched 3-on-1 rush, and freshman defenseman Travis Roche blasted another past goalie Scott Meyer at 8:48 for a 3-1 lead. Joe Motzko answered with a power-play goal for the Huskies midway through the period, and it stayed 3-2 into the third period.
Goren connected at the end of a three-pass sequence for a power-play goal at 4:12 of the final period, and the Huskies couldn’t match North Dakota’s firepower, as Bryan Lundbohm scored at 5:19, and Tim Skarperud waltzed around a defenseman and got a shot away that Meyer blocked as he landed on his back, but the puck trickled off him and into the net at 13:43, making it 6-2.
A Huskies goal by Matt Bailey at 15:18 was neutralized when Jason Notterman scored later in the final period to prove the Fighting Sioux offense was untracked and ready for the final.
Once majestic — but weird — Ordean Field needs renovation
Stopping by Ordean Field to watch a ballgame brought back a lot of memories.
The first time I ever saw the place, out on 40th Av. E., between Superior St. and London Rd., there wasn’t any such thing as Ordean Junior High School next to it, which made that massive sports field seem all the more massive. I was a kid, and the world hadn’t yet reached the rebellious ’60s. I was playing baseball all summer on a team located at Portman Square. A kindly forever-young guy named Paul Modeen — who had enough of his own kids to outnumber any team I ever played on — was the playground manager and also our coach. I played a little third base, a little shortstop, and catcher for a season or two.
A grade school buddy and I who both lived in Lakewood would get dropped off at Portman each morning. My mom dropped me at about 7:30 a.m., with a bag lunch, and she’d pick me up at 5:30 p.m. We’d play ball all day, stopping for our official practice, and then resume sandlot invent-a-game style. I knew the batting order of every team in both the American and National Leagues, and I couldn’t get enough baseball.
We had a fair team, but a great group of kids. Dick Fisher, Bill Savolainen, Larry Conrad, Terry Jeglosky, Jon Birch, Don Hilsen, Jon Birch, among others. Denny Morgan, the other Lakewood kid, and I joined up and we had some memorable summers. When we got old enough, maybe “Cadet,” and for sure “Midget,” we got to play our biggest games at Ordean.
What a monstrous place, we thought. We’d have our game on the main infield, all grass, usually pretty thick and long, and there’d be a softball game going on out in left-center field, which didn’t matter, because we were too small to hit anything that far. The thing that always amazed me, even back then, was how weird the huge, hulking, concrete grandstand was. I mean, it was about a half-block from the third-base foul line, and closer, more like only 100 feet, from the first-base side. Home teams always took the third-base bench — and it was only a bench then; no dugouts — so our fans, make that parents, practically needed binoculars to see if we were playing.
The concrete grandstand was pristine in those days, close to white in brightness. And it stayed that way, probably because not enough people came to mess it up. Our catchers had the toughest chore, because any passed ball or wild pitch required something resembling track-man’s speed to chase down the ball before a baserunner advanced two bases.
Weird or not, though, it was a special place for special games. As we got older, those summer games took on more significance. Our end of town had the Zenith City American Legion post, which was always challenged by the superior downtown team representing David Wisted Post in Legion ball. Several of us got to play on the Legion team from ninth grade on. I played right field to fill in, and once in a while center or left, or second base. By the time I was done, I had played every position except first base, which I didn’t mind missing, because I had a good arm and I loved to throw, and first basemen rarely get to throw hard, anyplace.
The odd part of it was that after playing ball every summer with the kids who wound up at Duluth East, I wound up being bused to Duluth Central, being outside the city limits of Duluth. East didn’t want those country kids invading. The official reason was that they were too crowded; we figured that’s why the East kids were called “cake-eaters,” and we loved to heckle our summertime buddies about that.
My fondest memories of Ordean came in my last year at Ordean. I wasn’t very big, and I wasn’t a very aggressive hitter, but in my senior year in high school, I went out for the Central baseball team, and made it, at shortstop. We beat East, and won the district championship. When summer came, I rejoined the East guys on the Zenith City team, with JoJo Vatalaro as manager. We played Wisted right off,at Ordean Field, and I got pretty well heckled then, by my Central ex-teammates. Big Dan Howard was the overwhelming fastball pitcher, and when I came up against him, it was pretty intimidating. He threw a fastball, and adrenaline took over. I swung from the heels, albeit late, and hit a long, hard fly down the right-field line for an opposite-field triple.
Flushed with confidence then, things got better as the season went on. By midseason, I tomahawked a high fastball to that faraway backstop in left-center at Ordean for a home run — my fondest memory of the place.
It had been a lot of years since I had been to Ordean when I went by and noticed a high school game going on this spring. When I walked into the bleachers, I was astonished at that once-pristine grandstand. Fans were scattered around, stepping gingerly so as not to stumble over the decaying concrete, pitted so badly it looks like a scale model of the badlands out near Rapid City, S.D. They also had to be careful where they sit, climbing to the more secure-looking slabs of wood still in place, and avoiding the splintered or splintering ones, and particularly stepping around those large hunks of sharp, rusty iron, which used to be supports for those boards, but where the boards had broken away and been discarded.
Yes, there are dugouts now. And the grass infield is still thick. And the baselines still are binocular-distance away. But the weird, hulking grandstand is a disaster.
They tell me the thing is going to be torn down, and a new facility will be erected in its place. Can’t happen soon enough, for my liking. I enjoy tradition and history as much as anybody, but I want to remember Ordean the way it once was, not the way it is.
UMD women’s hockey team aims to clear its ‘raised bar’
In the context of reality, the UMD women’s hockey team’s fantastic first season seems almost magical in retrospective. It may seem more fantastic in years to come, because it may be an impossible task to follow.
Coach Shannon Miller, however, is prepared to go one better next season.
That may be a tall order, considering that the Bulldogs spent their first season in existence by going undefeated through Christmas, winning the first Women’s-WCHA by one point, beating Minnesota in a thrilling W-WCHA playoff championship game, and reaching the national final four.
Losing to Minnesota in the semifinals was a disappointing ending to such a sensational season, but Miller suggests that leaving something on the table for Year 2 won’t in any way detract from the memories of the storybook first season.
“When I came here, we set a goal of reaching the final four in our first year,” said Miller, at a special team tribute dinner on Wednesday, sponsored by Perkin’s Restaurant and including a live WDSM radio broadcast. “Winning the league title was not even one of our goals when we started, it just turned out to be a big bonus.
“We got off to a pretty good start, then the first time we played the Gophers and swept them at their place, it raised the bar. They came up here, and the games raised the bar again. Then we beat the Gophers for the WCHA playoff title, and it raised the bar again. They beat us in Boston at the final four, but that raised the bar one more time.”
That’s the challenge, of course: How to get over a bar that has been set at such an amazingly high level. “Our goal for next year is to repeat for the WCHA title and to get to the final four again, then to have a better showing in the final four than this year,” Miller said.
The Gophers won the national championship, but the Bulldogs had a 3-2-1 record against Minnesota for the season. Not only did the Bulldogs beat the Gophers overall, they also won the opening duel when Jenny Schmidgall and Brittny Ralph left the Gopher program and transferred to UMD to turn the Bulldogs from a promising first-year team into a championship outfit.
The Gophers won the national title, and although they lose only one senior, they recruited nine players, including six Canadians. However, their championship did appear to gain them a major surprise when Bethany Petersen, a defenseman from Bloomington Jefferson who had appeared set to accept a UMD scholarship offer, switched allegiances a week ago and decided to go to Minnesota.
Miller shrugged that off. “I was really surprised when Bethany decided to go to Minnesota, and especially because she hasn’t called us yet to tell her she wasn’t coming here,” Miller said. “The Gophers have recruited nine players so far, which means they’ll have to cut some players. But they’re in their fourth year, so they should be at a full complement of 18 scholarships. We expect to be up from nine to 13 or 14 scholarships for next season.”
A continuing problem for a new program is the quest for U.S., and specifically Minnesota prospects. “Shawna Davidson has been on the road a lot, and we’ve been trying to recruit a lot of American players, but they still seem to say they want to go to bigger, Big Ten schools,” said Miller, who shrugged off the problem a year ago by recruiting a unique, international team.
That plan landed Maria Rooth and Erika Holst from Sweden, and Hanne Sikio and Tuula Puputti from Finland, who became integral parts of the first-year Bulldog success..
The only departing senior on the UMD team is Erin Nagurski, an International Falls native who had never played hockey until she came to UMD and joined the club team for three years until the varsity program began. To upgrade the program in its second season, Miller has obtained commitments from ((((())))) of Finland, and Tricia ((())) and ((((())))) from Canada, and said she also is close to adding a couple more top prospects.
While recruiting competition is always going to be a challenge, a bigger looms from the U.S. National program. Coach Ben Smith, who formerly coached men, has organized a standing national team — an expensive undertaking at this stage of women’s hockey development, especially since no other country in the world is conducting a similar one. Krissy Wendell, who led Park Center to the state championship this past season and also appeared to be leaning toward UMD, was lured instead to the national team by Smith.
Smith also is pressuring Schmidgall to leave UMD and play for the National team next season. Schmidgall, considered the best player in the world by Miller, was not at the team’s party Wednesday night, having already completed exams and returned home to Edina.
“There’s a lot of pressure on Jenny,” Miller said. “She had an awesome year for us, and I’ll support her no matter what she chooses to do. We’d love to have her come back, and she obviously could develop while playing with us and still join the U.S. team for tournaments, but some people are leaning on her.”
The players all continue to stress how much they enjoyed UMD’s first season. Rooth said : “I didn’t expect it to be this good. I love it here, and I like this size school.”
Holst, who came from Sweden also, said: “I wanted to go to a U.S. college, and I had heard from Maria that Shannon was coming here to coach. This year has been awesome.”
Ralph, a strong two-way performer on defense, said she was surprised at how much she enjoyed this season in contrast to her two years at Minnesota. “It definitely exceeded my expectations,” said Ralph. “I kinda underestimated what the program here would be like. It was a great year, a lot of fun, and we all got along real well off and on the ice. I changed my attitude, but it makes a big difference when you want to come to the rink every day.”
The fun never stops. Before Wednesday night’s broadcast was set up, Michelle McAteer, the team’s resident good-time catalyst, picked up the microphone and serenaded her teammates with an over-emotional, and hilarious, version of “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.” It was obvious that the Bulldogs have lost none of it.
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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