Exceptional defensemen lead puck powers
Goal-scorers get the glory, and goaltenders become instant heroes, that’s the easy part of watching a hockey game. But both the scorers and the savers depend on their defensemen for their success.
On some teams, defensemen are ordered to stay at home and defend. On others, they may fly up the ice to join the offense. On all of them, it is up to the defensemen to clear the zone with crisp passes, giving their goaltenders a moment of peace and starting the rushes toward the other end all at the same time.
Many times, defensemen can be unsung and overlooked. Not this year. While this has been a season of unexcelled strength in numbers among Up North area high school hockey teams in both Classes AA and A, it also has been dominated by a crop of defensemen that may be unmatched in recent history.
It would be possible to fill an entire roster with all-star selections from Section 7AA and 7A.
Consider the Duluth area. Perennial power Duluth East struggled to a 2-2 start when senior defenseman Anunti was out with a preseason injury. When he came back, he stabilized the defense and the Greyhounds took off on a 10-game winning streak. And even when they struggled late in the season, it wasn’t because of their defense, but their goal-scoring that wavered.
Coach Mike Randolph’s method for getting the offense untracked took a novel twist: He moved top scoring forwards Ross Carlson and Nick Licari back to defense for one game, a 4-3 victory over Grand Rapids, then moved them back up front and the ‘Hounds crushed Cloquet 7-1.
“Now Ross and Nick keep asking me if they can go back to defense,” said Randolph. “They loved it.”
No such movement was necessary for Hermantown, which made a run at the Lake Superior Conference championship by upsetting East 4-3 to climax a superb season. The Hawks top line of Jon Francisco, Andy Corran and Chris Baron does most of the scoring, but the Hawks didn’t really get rolling until senior J.R. Bradley came off a long dose of mono that caused him to miss three weeks of school as well as a month of hockey.
“He had two goals and two assists in our first game, then he went out,” said coach Bruce Plante. “At 6-3 and 220, he’s a great skater, and obviously he makes a difference in our team.”
While Hermantown is the favorite in section 2A, Silver Bay and Marshall are two Lake Superior Conference teams who will challenge defending state champ Eveleth-Gilbert in 7A. And their defense will not rest.
Silver Bay has John Conboy, a strong, forceful senior who has accepted a scholarship to play at UMD in the fall. He rarely leaves the ice, staying out as long as his wind will last, and capable of dominating play at both ends of the rink. When he seems to be spent defending, the puck pops loose and Conboy will race up the rink to generate attacks.
“It’s the fifth year he’s played for us,” said Mariner coach Mike Guzzo. “Sometimes he sits back a little against another team’s top line, but he’s so fast, he really helps our offense.”
At Marshall, the Hilltoppers resurgence under coach Brendan Flaherty was smoldering until Tomaino decided that playing at prep school wasn’t for him, and he transfered home from Faribault Shattuck. After sitting out for two weeks, Tomaino stepped onto the ice and the junior blueliner’s forceful presence both offensively and defensively caused the Toppers to flare into a genuine sectional threat.
On the Iron Range, Eveleth was going for its second straight IRC title behind the scoring of the explosive Andy Sacchetti, but Book’Em Heitzman — he’s really Dan Heitzman, but goes by the name “Book’Em” Heitzman after the “Book ’em, Daniel” line from the old television show Hawaii Five-O — is responsible for getting the puck up to the big line and plays in every pressure situation.
The Golden Bears suffered a stunning 5-0 loss to Greenway last Saturday. Ninth-grade forwards Gino Guyer and Andy Sertich team with senior Josh Miskovich on the first line, which scored four of the five Greenway goals. But the solid Raider defense, led by Geisler’s rushing and puck-moving, is equally impressive.
Hibbing gained a tie with Greenway for the title by beating Eveleth-Gilbert 5-4 Tuesday in an overtime thriller. Hibbing’s strength is three lines that keep coming at foes with unwavering balance. But most of the goals are scored when the tandem of Suihkonen and Fatticci on the ice.
It was Fatticci who broke across the blue line and rifled his second goal of the game into the Eveleth goal at 2:26 of overtime Tuesday. He’s headed for Bemidji State’s new Division 1 program in the fall. Suihkonen, a lanky, stickhandling rusher with a hard shot is heading for Alaska-Anchorage. Hibbing coach Mark DeCenzo points to Erik Maras, an unheralded junior, as a key defensive defenseman.
Unlike Hibbing’s two Division 1 recruited defensemen, Greenway’s seniors have no college offers yet., which puzzles Raider coach Pat Guyer.
“There is not a better senior player that we’ve played against than Josh Miskovich,” said Guyer. “If I was starting a team, he’d be my No. 1 choice.”
OK, coach, but he’s a forward. How about senior defenseman Geisler? “OK, I’d have to have two first choices,” Guyer said, hedging.
And then there’s Andy Johnson, the 6-6 giant who has signed a tender to play football at Minnesota, and Bryan Hanson, yet another senior. Johnson can seemingly poke-check from his goal to the blue line. “And defensively, Hanson might be the best of all,” said Guyer.
With the sectional playoffs starting next week, watch the headlines for the exploits of the forwards and goaltenders. But watch the defensemen to see which teams advance.
Duluth girls win tourney opener, 5-2
ST. PAUL, MINN.—
The Duluth Dynamite overcame first-game, first-tournament jitters Thursday night, and skated to a 5-2 victory over Mankato East/West at the State Fair Coliseum.
Leah Wrazidlo scored two goals for the Dynamite (21-4-1) who advance to tonight’s semifinals against the winner of the final opening-day round between Roseville and Burnsville.
The game kicked off the first day’s evening session, after the tournament opened with a record single-session girls tournament crowd of 4,462 watching South St. Paul upend No. 1 and previously undefeated Park Center in a 3-2 thriller. Park Center star Krissy Wendell scored two goals — the 101st and 102nd of her junior season — but both came after South St. Paul had built a 3-0 lead, and the more team-oriented Packers stormed into tonight’s first semifinal against Bloomington Jefferson, which broke a 3-3 tie on Emily Naslund’s second goal of the game to beat stubborn Mounds View 4-3.
Duluth, playing for the first time in the five-year old tournament, had some jittery players before the game, but seemed to conquer those nerves with a three-goal first period. After building the 3-0 lead, however, the Dynamite seemed to sag, and Mankato battled back with a pair of second-period goals to cut the lead to 3-2.
“I think we got the 3-0 lead and then turned complacent,” said Duluth coach Jack 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.”
Wrazidlo whistled in the first goal by deflecting a Rose Babst shot from center point at 4:13 of the first period.
Tresa Lamphier scored barely a minute later on a high flip from just across the blue line on the right boards. Mankato goaltender Nitara Frost, who made 29 stops as her team was outshot 34-11 for the game, had trouble playing the high flip, which bounced at her feet and short-hopped between her pads at 5:17.
“That one was kind of cheesey,” said Lamphier, who now has 45 goals for the season. Asked if she and her teammates felt a little jittery, Lamphier said: “Not a little; a LOT.”
Rachel Goodwin skated in to score with a loose puck in the slot at 9:59 for the 3-0 Duluth lead, and a 14-3 edge in shots for the session.
But Amy Egli scored at 3:13 of the second for Mankato (17-7-1), and Nicole Hottinger converted a broken play at 8:16 with a quick shot that beat goaltender Sanya Sandahl, and suddenly it was 3-2.
The Dynamite turned up the pressure then, with Meghen Stotts scoring on a rebound at 12:50 for breathing room at 4-2. With 1:38 remaining, Wrazidlo angled across the slot and scored with a power-play backhand to complete the scoring. Unlike her teammates, Wrazidlo said she wasn’t nervous at the start.
“I wasn’t nervous at all, until after my first shift, then it hit me,” said the senior from Denfeld. “The first goal was nice, because it got us going. But their first goal went off my right skate, right to their other girl, who scored.
“We definitely let up when it was 3-0. We’ve done that all too often, and we know we can’t do that in the semifinals if we hope to win.”
SOUTH ST. PAUL 3,
PARK CENTER 2
After eliminating Eagan and star Natalie Darwitz 1-0 in the section final, South St. Paul (25-1)played giant-killer again against Wendell, who scored with two seconds left in the second period, and again on a 15-foot missile 2:03 into the third.
“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 balance of senior Sarah Ahlquist in goal, freshman Ashley Albrecht on defense and fifth-year senior center Kelly Kegley as architect of the Packer offense.
Albrecht moved in from left point and scored with a high slapshot over the glove of goalie Amy Jones and into the right corner at 2:36 of the first period. Kegley, who had played heads-up against Darwitz and faced Wendell after she moved up from defense to play center in the third period, came through with exceptional plays on the other two goals, both scored by Erika Hockinson. Twice, after being knocked flat, Kegley managed to sweep passes to Hockinson, who scored in the last minute of the first period and at 9:02 of the second.
“We’ve kind of been underdogs all year, so that might help us,” said Kegley. “We knew they had a great team, but we also knew they hadn’t played as strong a schedule as we had.”
It became immediately obvious that Park Center’s chances hinged on Wendell’s determination to make one-player attacks from end to end. Packers coach Dave Palmquist anticipated Wendell would try to keep the puck, and flawlessly prepared his defense to force her to the inside and then clutter the slot to keep her from the net. That strategy kept Park Center from getting a single shot through to Alquist for the first 12 minutes, and the Pirates, who had only trailed Duluth and Jefferson all season, and then only by one goal and only for a short duration, wound up trailing 3-0, and against the best foe they’ve faced all season.
“We had scrimmaged South St. Paul early, and Krissy scored eight or nine goals, and we won eight or nine to nothing,” said Park Center coach John Donovan. “But we may have caught them by surprise. Today, their defense didn’t give us anything in the middle. And when Krissy was rushing from defense, their backcheckers had time to stay with her. So I moved her up to center in the third period, and I think it worked to allow her to get away from the backcheckers.”
It worked, but only to a point. “By the end of the second period, all I said to the team was, ‘Don’t let 15 [Wendell’s number] beat us.’ After facing Darwitz and Wendell back to back, we’ve seen it all. Now we can just focus on playing our game.”
JEFFERSON 4,
MOUNDS VIEW 3
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. Once on the Coliseum rink, though, the Jaguars got an opening goal from junior defenseman Bethany Petersen, who had missed all but one period of the last three games with illness.
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.
Naslund scored on a rush after a pass from Petersen midweay through the second period to lift the Jaguars to a 2-2 tie, and eighth-grader Natalie Turgeon scored on a rebound to give Jefferson a 3-2 edge in the last minute of the second period. Lisa Sullivan got the 3-3 tie for Mounds View on a rebound at 5:45 of the third, but Naslund knocked in a loose puck at the crease after Petersen’s wraparound had been stopped at 7:53. That one proved to be the eventual game-winner.
“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.
St. Scholastica, Marshall merge for ice arena
St. Scholastica and Marshall High School have joined forces to devise a concept for a new hockey arena, and the joint-venture facility on the Marshall campus could be open for next season.
The ground-breaking was conducted Thursday morning at the Marshall site, at 1215 Rice Lake Rd. The plan calls for a $3.5 million concrete-walled facility with initial seating for about 1,000 spectators, plus a glassed-in viewing area on the second floor at one end for more.
Tom Cartier is one of the main forces behind the venture. Cartier played on the powerful Duluth Cathedral hockey teams during their dynasty of the 1960s and early ’70s, before it became Marshall High School. He later played at St. Scholastica in its early years of college hockey. Cartier now is the president of a group that became “Saints-Hilltoppers Arena, Inc.,” a group with a board of directors of five board members each from St. Scholastica and Marshall, and three more from the community.
“I played for both teams,” said Cartier, whose son, Cory, is a junior on the current Marshall team. “I know that St. Scholastica had to go to Superior to practice at 10:30 at night on school nights, and this area needs more ice arena facilities.
“This arena will have the St. Scholastica men’s and women’s hockey teams, and the Marshall boys and girls teams, as priority tenants, but it will be available for community rentals, too. Any profit would go to the two schools.”
The $3.5 million price was attained by fund-raising that got to $2.6 million, and the rest was obtained by a loan. “We did it that way, with the loan for the balance, so that we could get it up by next fall,” said Cartier.
Streaking Homstol gives Bulldogs spark
Ryan Homstol was pretty adamant about it.
“I wouldn’t consider myself a natural goal-scorer,” he said.
That’s where things stand with the UMD hockey team, in this bizarre season. The Bulldogs continue to play as well as any team in the country, but they find ways to not score, and to not win. And since they seem unified in not scoring goals, even one of the hottest streak-scorers in the country apparently doesn’t want to break from the team’s well-chronicled unity.
While the last-place Bulldogs engage eighth-place Michigan Tech, look at the last three UMD games: UMD lost a wrenching 4-3 game when No. 1 ranked North Dakota scored two goals in the last 25 seconds, and Homstol scored two of those three UMD goals; the next night, UMD stunned North Dakota with a 2-2 tie, and Homstol had one of the two goals; then the Bulldogs saw a 2-1 lead turn into a 5-3 loss at Alaska-Anchorage, and Homstol had one of the three UMD goals.
Of course, the team lapsed back into that “unity” of not scoring on Saturday, when they played a 0-0 tie with the Seawolves. But Homstol — an alert, hustling winger who is particularly adept at converting Scissons set-ups and pouncing on loose pucks and putting them away with a quick and forceful shot — has scored four goals out of the team’s last eight.
“I didn’t even realize that,” said Homstol, a hard-nosed 5-11, 180-pound sophomore. “Playing a 0-0 tie is not the most fun game to play. It’s good for us to know we can play with the best teams in the country, but it’s also frustrating when we lose, to them or other teams.
“There’s really no way to know what the difference is. We had a lot of chances in the 0-0 game, but it’s been that way all season. Some nights the puck goes in, and other nights it just won’t.”
Coach Mike Sertich thinks part of Homstol’s recent success, and the team’s continued optimism, is simply the experience of a young team, and a young line, playing together. “With Ryan, Jeff Scissons and Derek Derow playing together for a while now, they’ve gained some confidence,” said Sertich. “I don’t really see any difference in their play, except the line has jelled.”
Homstol and Derow are both sophomores, and Scissons, consistently the Bulldogs top player and most-covered forward, is only a junior. All three are from Saskatchewan.
Homstol has scored 11 goals this season, after getting eight in his freshman season. Eleven is not a lot, but aside from this current splurge, he also scored four of the team’s eight goals in a stretch earlier in the season. He got the goal when UMD tied Anchorage at the DECC 1-1, and he scored two of the five goals when UMD won 5-2 at Michigan Tech, and got one of the first two in the 6-2 victory at Tech the next night, making it UMD’s only sweep of the season.
That means eight of his 11 goals came in two streaks, during which the team went 2-1-3.
With Tech coming to the DECC this weekend with a four-point lead on the ‘Dogs, and faltering Minnesota coming in two weeks, Homstol said the players still are optimistic. “We’ve got a couple of big home weekends coming up, and it’s exciting to think we have a chance to gain some points,” Homstol said. “I don’t think anybody on the team has given up thinking we can still make something out of the end of the season.”
As for his scoring, Homstol, from Tisdale, Saskatchewan, came out of Tisdale Comprehensive High School to play two years for the Melfort Mustangs junior team, where he led the team in scoring with 92 points on 41 goals and 51 assists two years ago.
“I always scored, growing up,” Homstol acknowledged. “But I still wouldn’t consider myself a goal-scorer.”
On this Bulldog team, who is? Only Scissons, with 13 goals, has more. Maybe Sertich needs to hold a team meeting and suggest that, despite the incredible team unity, it would not be a punishable offense for players who can score to, perhaps, consider themselves goal-scorers.
Hibbing, Greenway, East seeded 2-3-4
In the end, the actual numerical seeding of the Section 7AA hockey playoff didn’t matter. At this point, the pairings are all that count, because records won’t mean a thing when the shooting — and scoring — starts next Friday.
In one bracket, Elk River is heavily favored, and knows it, against St. Francis, while Duluth East faces Cloquet-Esko-Carlton. In the other bracket, Hibbing takes on Grand Rapids and Greenway of Coleraine meets Forest Lake. Winners play in what promises to be a memorable semifinal doubleheader at the DECC on Tuesday, Feb. 23, with the championship being decided on Thursday, Feb. 25, at Hibbing.
But setting up the pairings required an intrigue-filled night. Considering the potential for disagreement, the Section 7AA seeding meeting could have been staged in a gymnasium, on a wrestling pad, instead of at Southgate Bowl in Cloquet, where the eight coaching staffs sat in a room and talked above the backdrop of clattering pins from the adjacent bowling lanes.
Across the state, the only teams whose caliber, schedule and performance in Class AA matches East, Greenway, Hibbing and Elk River are Hastings, Hill-Murray, Roseville and Roseau. That means that the fabulous foursome in 7AA represent four of the top eight AA hockey teams in the state. Eagan’s record is as good, but despite two upsets of Hastings, their schedule and caliber remain a notch below.
Going into the meeting, the different coaches had to examine what would happen if they should win a round or two in the sectional.
Hibbing (17-4) and Greenway of Coleraine (17-4) tied for the Iron Range Conference hockey championship and split two games against each other this season. Both of them respect Duluth East (16-5), which, quite amazingly, has won five consecutive Section 7AA hockey titles and is equipped to run for a sixth. Greenway and Hibbing both would prefer not to wind up facing the Greyhounds in the semifinals, which will be in the DECC on the section’s alternating concept of semifinal and final sites.
Then there’s Elk River (19-1), which is ranked No. 1 in the Up North state rankings. The Elks play on a new, larger, Olympic-size ice sheet at home, so Greenway, Hibbing and East would all prefer to play Elk River on the undersized rink at the DECC, rather than on the larger, near-Olympic size rink at Hibbing. Except for Hibbing, which wouldn’t mind playing anybody on their home-ice.
But East coach Mike Randolph, Hibbing coach Mark DeCenzo and Greenway coach Pat Guyer all were quick to interrupt any such speculation about the likely prospect of a sectional semifinal that would pair up those four powers, because they totally respect underdogs such as Cloquet and Grand Rapids, and even Forest Lake and St. Francis. In particular, East, Greenway and Hibbing would just as soon avoid Cloquet and Grand Rapids in the first round, considering both to be sleeping giants who could awaken at a painful time.
Duluth East athletic director Mike Miernicki called the assembled coaches to order and conducted the seeding meeting. After updating all records, he issued ballots which each team filled out and submitted, excluding themselves and ranking the rest 1-7. He counted the ballots, counting the position voted and listing them with the fewest vote-points at the top. It came out: 1. Elk River (7, obviously with seven first-place picks); 2. tie between Greenway and Hibbing aith 18; 4. Duluth East (21); 5. Cloquet (31); 6. Forest Lake (39); 7. Grand Rapids (42); and 8. St. Francis (48).
It was fitting that Greenway and Hibbing tied, and a case could be made for both, with Hibbing having beaten East, while Greenway lost to East; Greenway having inflicted the only loss of Roseau’s season in a 6-3 game, while Hibbing lost to Roseau; Greenway beat both Eden Prairie and Burnsville, while Hibbing lost to both; Greenway lost to Rochester Mayo while Hibbing beat Mayo. Meanwhile, East had a strong case, because while the ‘Hounds were upset 4-3 by Hermantown, one of the state’s best Class A teams, their other losses were to Elk River, Hill-Murray, Hastings and Hibbing — all among those top eight in the state.
How to break the tie? Guyer had a suggestion: “Paper, rock, scissors,” he said.
“I told our team at practice that we’d probably be fourth and play Cloquet,” said Randolph.
“So did I,” said Guyer.
Next, each coach got a couple minutes to state his team’s season and lobby for a higher place. Finally, new ballots were issued for a revote. There was only one change, of one vote on the secret ballots: East gained one vote, which didn’t change their fourth seed; that point came at Greenway’s expense, dropping the Raiders one point behind Hibbing and into third.
Greenway coach Guyer acknowledged that while he knows Forest Lake is dangerous, he was relieved to have avoided meeting Grand Rapids, in what would have been a neighborhood battle superceding the team’s strength; while “winning” the tie-breaking procedure, Hibbing now gets to face Grand Rapids.
East is locked into facing Cloquet, a team the ‘Hounds just whipped 7-1. That makes Randolph more concerned than usual, because, by luck of the draw and the changed dates for the sectional from recent years, the first round is on Friday at the site of the higher seed, but the DECC is booked for that night. So the teams play at Cloquet. Which, in effect, means that Cloquet gets the benefit of the fourth seed and East gets the road trip of a fifth-seed.
While coaches can’t afford to look ahead, we can envision a scenario with the top four seeds winning their opening games, which would mean a DECC semifinal doubleheader a week from Tuesday with Elk River facing East at 6 p.m., and the third of the season’s Greenway-Hibbing battles at 8.
Guyer, DeCenzo and Randolph all said it all really didn’t matter, because the winner will have to win three tough games. Cloquet coach Tom MacFarlane said: “We had beaten Grand Rapids and Forest Lake, so I figured we’d end up seeded ahead of them in fifth. That meant we’d have to play East, Greenway or Hibbing, and they’re all so strong, what does it matter? We end up at home against East. We’ve struggled this season, and we couldn’t have hoped for anything better.”
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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