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.
Elks focus now on Martin, state tournament
Three of the favorites for Sunday’s Mr. Hockey award are in the lower bracket of this week’s Class AA boys hockey tournament — Hastings stars Dan Welch and Jeff Taffe, and Hill-Murray’s Matt Koalska.
Elk River doesn’t have a Mr. Hockey finalist for one reason, because Martin is only a junior. But there are those observers who think that Martin might be the best player in the state right now.
Several very good Class AA hockey teams in the Up North region are still feeling the sting, but they have to grudgingly acknowledge that whether they should be in Section 7AA or not, Elk River, from the northwestern Twin Cities suburb next to Anoka, is the 7AA representative at this week’s state tournament.
The Elks always attract attention for their hard-charging style and tireless work ethic, and sometimes for colorful outbursts by coach Tony Sarsland, and his snakeskin boots. But as teams Up North painfully learned, the focus of attention on this year’s Elk team is Martin, a tall, lanky defenseman, who spends almost all of every game on the ice and making sure the Elks come out on top.
Martin got only one assist in the last two games, when the Elks beat defending state Class AA champion Duluth East in a 4-2 Section 7AA semifinal at the DECC, and beat Hibbing in a 2-1 triple-overtime classic in the 7AA final in Hibbing. But he was the dominant performer in both games, blocking shots, breaking up rushes, and swift and efficient as he broke the puck out of the Elk zone and generated most of their offensive rushes.
As the Elks skate onto the Target Center ice sheet for Thursday’s first round, the focus of attention will be on No. 15, Martin. It’s doubtful Martin can spend as much time on the ice as he did through the Section 7AA tournament, but with the Elks facing Hill-Murray, then possibly Hastings, you can look for Martin to be on the ice more than on the bench.
“Martin is the best player in high school hockey,” said Sarsland. “We thought about playing him up front this season, but in my opinion he’s the best defenseman in the state.”
What has become unfortunately typical of high school hockey these days, USA Hockey tries to encourage areas to develop players like Martin, then USA Hockey tries to lure them away to their elite program in Ann Arbor, despite the devastating blow it delivers to the hometown high school.
“I’ve thought about it,” said Martin. “I know that if I went there, I would improve my game from the longer season. But it’s so much more fun in high school in Minnesota.”
Sarsland, who gave his blessing for Martin to leave the high school team and fill in on the USA Select team for a trip to the Czech Republic a month ago, is confident his prize will stay at home.
“We let him go on that trip, and we know he could go to Ann Arbor or to the USHL next season, and he could get more games, no question. But there are things more valuable to him,” said Sarsland. “He’s a three-sport star. He’s a wide receiver in football, and plays first base in baseball. Not only that, he ran track last spring.”
State tournament attention, and the play of Martin, are a welcome relief for the Elks, who have come to be looked upon as the state’s villains for being assigned to far-flung sections and prevent other good teams from making it to state. None of that is Elk River’s fault. Until last winter, Elk River spent four years in Section 8AA, where they had the misfortune of having one of the best teams in the state the same years as Moorhead, which always prevailed in the sectional, once beating the Elks in a four-overtime classic.
When the Elks were finally taken out of Section 8AA, they were plugged into 7AA, where they lost in the title game to Duluth East last year, making it five straight years an excellent Elk River team had failed to make the state tournament since its only appearance, in 1993.
Sarsland has established a trademark of a hard-working, unwavering attack, coupled with the flamboyance Sarsland’s snakeskin boots and sometimes-controversial statements that are much more direct than they are tactful. Sarsland attracted more of the wrong kind of attention last year, when he verbally threatened Joey Bailey, a good-skating junior, and long-time assistant coach Marly Glines quit in the aftermath, even though his son was a junior goaltender on the team.
But everything has been in order this season. Bailey plays on the first line with fellow-senior Jed Leonard and sophomore Joel Hanson. It was Hanson who scored at 0:12 of the first period to ignited the Elks past East in the DECC, but the most dramatic game of Elk River’s season was still ahead.
The Elks outshot Hibbing 62-28, but it wasn’t until 3:56 of the third overtime that Leonard who took a feed from Bailey and broke to the net from the left side, jamming a shot in to end a sensational, 60-save performance by Hibbing’s sophomore goaltender Travis Weber.
Another key performer for the Elks is sophomore Trevor Stewart, who centers juniors John Brummer and Justin Nikle. Stewart set up Brummer for two goals in the second period to break a 1-1 tie against East, and it was Brummer’s power-play goal with 2:13 remaining in regulation that tied Hibbing 1-1 and forced the three overtimes.
“I was worried because we put so much pressure on Hibbing, and their goalie played so great,” said Glines, who has remained solid in the nets for Elk River all season, and can now display his 1.9 goals-against average and 89-percent save mark at state.
“Nobody ever said Mitch was any good,” said Sarsland. “But all he’s done all year is win for us. My heart goes out to Hibbing, because I’ve been there. A few years ago [1994] we had the best team in the state but we lost one game, in four overtimes to Moorhead in the section final.
“This time, after all these years, and all the close games, I was on the bench saying, ‘Please, lord, c’mon, just once let us win one of these.’ ”
Traveling to Target Center will be a shorter hop for the Elks, who were conditioned for the road by flying in their own Olympic-sized ice sheet and on the road by Sarsland.
“We haven’t lost a game in three years in our new rink,” said Sarsland. “It’s baloney that we have to come up to Section 7AA to play. Sure, we deserve to be in the tournament, but these Range teams and Duluth teams are the reason the state tournament even exists. We’re not a Range team, we belong in Section 4.
“But because we knew we had to come up here and play Duluth East in Duluth, and Hibbing in Hibbing, we scheduled our last six games on the road.”
Those were at Champlin Park, Burnsville, Anoka and Blaine. The Anoka and Blaine games came after Elk River had achieved the No. 1 seed in 7AA, and the Elks went back and lost both of them to the teams from their legitimate section. That dropped the Elks from 19-1 and the No. 1 rating in the state, but they now have rebounded and stand 22-3.
And now the state’s television crews can scramble to focus on Sarsland’s snakeskin boots. He hadn’t worn them for a while, but he pulled them back on for the sectional. “I’m trying to keep a low profile,” Sarsland said. “But…these are my lucky boots.” Obviously, he’ll be wearing them at Target Center.
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.
Slow-starting Hawks take flight for state
The Hermantown Hawks made quite a splash last year, reaching the Class A tournament, upsetting favorite Red Wing, and losing only to Eveleth-Gilbert in the championship game.
Coach Bruce Plante enjoyed the ride, but he wondered about the follow-up this season.
“We had lost 13 players from that team, and we had some skilled forwards like Jon Francisco back, but J.R. Bradley was our only returning defenseman,” said Plante. “I knew we’d be good at the top, and be able to put out five players as good as anybody, but we had so many ‘ifs’ I didn’t know how this team would be.”
The “ifs” were answered early, and the Hawks have stormed through an even more-impressive season — beating Duluth East for the first time in school history, winning their first-ever Lake Superior Conference title, and returning to the state tournament with a glistening 21-3-1 record.
The Hawks have it all: an exceptional first line, a surprisingly productive second line, a flaky-but-effective goaltender in Allen S. Knowles, perhaps the largest “secret weapon” in the state in defenseman J.R. Bradley, a 6-3, 215-pounder, and a tenacious and underrated supporting cast of role-players.
In fact, while Hermantown is the Up North favorite, the only thing preventing the Hawks from being the clearcut favorite is Benilde-St. Margaret’s — the 23-2 team that not only is the “southern” favorite to win it all, but also is the team the Hawks face in Wednesday’s 7:05 p.m. first-round game at Target Center.
“I scouted them the other night, and they’re good,” said Plante. “Their first line is good, but their whole team is good. In a way, I thought I was seeing a mirror-image of our team. They play up-tempo, and pretty physical. They do use their first line a lot. In their section final against Totino-Grace, I think they had that first line out for 13 of the 15 minutes.
“Our first line is well-conditioned, and we’ll try to go head-to-head with theirs, and that will be the showdown. That’s what’s most impressive about our first line, is we always have them go up against the other team’s best line.”
The challenge of stopping state scoring leader Troy Riddle and the Red Knights first unit is a worthy one, but Hermantown’s first line has been dominant at both ends of the ice. Jon Francisco, who accepted a scholarship to UMD but will first play a year in the USHL, has 29 goals, 34 assists for 63 points and centers fellow-senior Andy Corran (20-29–49) and junior Chris Baron (11-21–32).
“Everybody looks at our first line, but our second line got three of the four goals in our Section 2A final against Pine City,” said Plante.
That would be a goal apiece for freshman center B.J. Radovich and wingers Loren Kaake and Clint VanIseghem, a pair of productive seniors. For the season, Radovich has 14-18–32, VanIseghem 12-13–25, and Kaake, a respectable 10-7–17, made far more than respectable by the fact he scored his fifth goal to clinch the 4-2 victory over Duluth East, and he scored the Hawks first goal in each playoff game.
In goal, Knowles had given Plante some preseason cause for concern. “He’s kind of a flighty kid, and I didn’t know if he’d be responsible enough,” said the coach. “He’s been wonderful. He’s handled the pressure well, but he’s still a little flighty. The kids get him revved up easy by teasing him, and they’re always teasing him about something, but they love him and they play hard for him. It helps that Jon Francisco is his buddy, because Jon is just the opposite, taking care of every detail and making sure everything is in place.”
The victory over East was a huge turning point for the Hawks, but an even bigger one might have been when Plante took the team to the Twin Cities to scrimmage Eden Prairie and Bloomington Jefferson, a pair of traditional powers in AA. “We did well against both of them, and that did a world of good for our confidence,” said Plante. “That helped us when we got up against East.”
No question, however, the team’s biggest turning point was getting Bradley back from a lengthy bout with mononucleosis. He went out after playing one game, and the Hawks were 7-2-1 without him, and may have benefitted from forcing younger defensemen to step up immediately.
“People don’t realize, J.R. was really sick,” said Plante. “He was off skates for seven weeks, and most of that time he was out of school, home in bed. When he came back, he was weak, and he probably shouldn’t have played right away. We lost that game to Proctor, and while it took him a half-dozen games to get back to normal, we’ve gone 13-0 since then.”
One of the big surprises is that in an era when pro and college scouts seem to go overboard trying to enlist the services of any player with decent size, regardless of their hockey sophistication or skating ability, nobody has made a concrete offer to Bradley — a 6-3 player who has recovered most of his lost weight by now, is an excellent skater, bold and confident with the puck, and loves to jolt foes with heavy hits.
“I really don’t know why Division I colleges and junior teams haven’t come after him with solid offers,” said Plante. “He’s the real deal. About his only liability is that he sometimes tries to do too much and might get in trouble stickhandling, but that’s only because he’s so confident he thinks he can do anything. I think it’s really great for him that we’ve made it to state, so everybody can see him at his best.”
The loss of Bradley for 10 games didn’t exactly enhance Plante’s early-season planning, but it may have paid off in the long run. “With J.R. our only returning defenseman, I moved Jesse Stokke, a junior who played second line right wing with Corran and Baron last year, back to defense,” Plante said. “Stokke is an awesome skater, and he helped out right away.
“And the minute I saw how good Danny Knapp was, as a sophomore right up from Bantams with Radovich, I realized we were going to have three outstanding defensemen from the start. Steve Henry, another sophomore, has come on to be solid as a fourth.”
With Bradley back, the Hawks will open with him and Knapp on one unit, while Stokke and Henry make up the second.
“We like to play six defensemen and three lines, although our third line doesn’t score a lot,” said Plante. “And I don’t know how much we’ll be able to use them against Benilde.”
After last year, and the struggle of Bradley to get healthy, and then skate his way back into condition, it took awhile for Plante to be able to fully assess this team.
“This team is better than last year,” he said. “This team has more skill at the top, because Jon Francisco was our best player last year, and he’s back and better this year. And the way our other players have improved, and our younger players have come in, we’re a hard team to play against. Everybody plays hard, and we don’t usually give up more than 14-20 shots, with not many good chances.”
The road to the championship, and the pride Up North, requires an opening-game showdown. Plante, always calm and in control, is concerned that the Hawks have started each playoff game slowly because of nervousness, and had to build up to their best tempo. He realizes that could be fatal against Benilde. But things have gone so well for the Hawks this season, the coach has to have something to be nervous about too.
A Tribute to tournament memories
A TRIBUTE TO THE HOCKEY TOURNAMENT
Print courtesy of Terrence Fogarty Studio
Anyone who ever played in or witnessed a high school tournament at the St. Paul Civic Center will cherish the memories of many great games, as well as the vast expansiveness, the unique clear-glass sideboards, and the spoke-wheel ceiling of the facility itself. The Civic Center is gone now, but the memories have been captured in an amazingly detailed limited-edition painting named “Tribute,” by Terrence Fogarty. Only part of the panoramic 35-inch-wide print is reproduced here, depicting an array of players from teams of different eras. Prints of “Tribute” and numerous other hockey scenes can be obtained from Terrence Fogarty Studio, 6120 Oren Av. N., Stillwater, Minn., 55082, (651) 351-1452.
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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