3 Duluth hockey teams, no state titles
THREE DULUTH TEAMS, BUT NO STATE TITLE
By John Gilbert
Maybe it was just coincidence, but wandering around Xcel Energy Center last week at the 68th Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament provided a unique perspective within a 24-hour span.
In the Class A quarterfinals on Wednesday, Marshall was crushed 7-0 by Breck, one of the two private school elephants in the Class A room, while Hermantown whipped Rochester Lourdes 7-2. On Thursday, Class AA took the big stage, and upsets ruled the day, as Maple Grove was beaten by Hill-Murray 5-2, and unseeded Moorhead took out Eagan 4-0 in the afternoon session.
In the first game press conference, Hill-Murray coach Bill Lechner, an outstanding coach, was asked about how Maple Grove made a couple of cute plays and got ahead 1-0, but the Pioneers threw some bodychecks and turned the game around for the 5-2 victory. “Cute won’t win games,” Lechner said. “It’s win moments, but not games.”
Very interesting way to put it, I thought, and the comment stayed with me as I walked around the concourse before the first night game, in which No. 1 seed Duluth East was about to take on Lakeville South. There was no question East was the best team in the state, and that coach Mike Randolph had painstakingly juggled through injuries and put them together to be primed and ready to go all the way, when I ran into a familiar face.
It was a man I knew, the parent of an East player, who wanted to introduce me to his wife. We talked for a while, about the afternoon’s upsets, and about East’s chances of going all the way. Everything is in place, I suggested, except maybe for one element.
“The only thing I worry about,” I said, “is that I’m a big believer in cosmic energy — positive kharma — that only comes from everyone pulling together in complete unity, and I’ve never sensed that all the parents, for example, were all behind the team, pulling for the team’s success.”
Though I had just met her for the first time, the man’s wife said, “That comes from the top…from Randolph.”
“What?” I said. “I’m just suggesting that all the parents may not be pulling together and you’re saying it’s the coach’s fault? You think that the person who could benefit the most from unity is responsible for hurting the unity? Do you realize you’re providing evidence of exactly what I’m talking about when I say I’m worried about kharma?”
She said: “Don’t blame the parents for a lack of unity.”
I was astounded. Her husband didn’t say much, but it was clear he supported her negative energy, and neither one of them seemed to grap the divisiveness they were contributing to, nor did they realize that in my theory of cosmic energy, the lack of unity is a factor even if nobody else hears it. At that instant, another man walked up to say hello to the guy I was talking to. He was grinning broadly as he said: “Isn’t this great? The greatest thing in the world is having played hockey, and coming down here every year to this tournament, that now I’m able to watch my son play in it.”
When they introduced him to me, he said he was the dad of a player on the Marshall team, which had been blown out 7-0 by Breck the day before. “How did they do today in consolation?” I asked. He told me Marshall had lost 5-4 to Little Falls.
“So they’re on the bus heading home,” he said. “But I asked my son what he thought of the whole thing, and he said, ‘It’s the greatest experience of my life.’ ”
I continued on my way, shaking my head about how the dad of a kid whose Marshall team came to state but went two-and-out claimed it was a great experience, just to be part of a team that made it to state, but that the negative vibes emanating from the parents of a kid on the No. 1 ranked Duluth East team reverberated even before the Hounds opening game. As I got on the elevator to head for the press box, I reflected on how difficult it is for Randolph to blend his players into impressive unity in those dressing rooms all around the state, while having to overcome those outside influences that seem to be decidedly negative.
Kharma may not have had anything to do with it when unheralded Lakeville South overcame a 1-0 East lead and claimed a 3-2 victory, but you can’t convince me of that. By the way, when it was 3-1 in the final minute, the way I saw it was Dominic Toninato won a left-corner faceoff, Jake Randolph got off a shot that hit Lakeville South goalie Tyler Schumacher and bounced high above the crease. Alex Toscano, the smart junior center on the second line, who Randolph sent on as a sixth attacker, swung at the puck when it was above the crossbar, but, fortunately, missed it. Then he swung again as the puck dropped back to legal height, and knocked it in, with 10 seconds remaining. A referee supervisor monitoring the video review, confirmed what I saw, but the official scorer gave the goal to Trevor Olson, who had scored East’s first goal in the game, and is the regular winger on the Toninato-Randolph line. I asked officials to check the goal again to be sure, and when they went to, the video had been erased to be reused for the next game. Maybe I’m wrong, but if Toscano got the goal, congratulations. And I tried.
As for kharma, the more likely scenario was that Lakeville South coach Kurt Weber’s game plan was executed to perfection to spring the upset. “East is the best high school team I’ve ever seen, systematically,” Weber said. “They do some things and you lose track of their weakside winger, then they go to him so well. I’m so impressed with how East plays that I called Mike and asked him for a scrimmage before the season. We took a school bus up to Duluth, and in the scrimmage, just like tonight, we stood around and watched them pass the puck around for the first 10 minutes, before we realized we had to start playing.
“When we realized we’d have to play East, we cut apart some videos and made our kids watch them, to see how well they used the rink-wide passes to the weakside winger, and if you let them get up to full speed, how tough it is to stop them. This is the smartest group I’ve ever coached, and we showed them what we’d have to do to stop them. That’s what it takes to beat the No. 1 team in the state.”
I was digesting the coincidence that the opposing coach crafted the huge upset because he was so impressed with Mike Randolph’s system for this East team, even if some of East’s own parents thought differently about their coach. About then, Bill Lechner’s motto came back, because East usually scores goals that are stunning, and might be called “cute,” and there was nothing cute about the way Lakeville South prevented all but two of them.
My underlying theme of positive kharma returned when Benilde-St. Margaret’s rose up to surprise Edina in the final game, breaking a 2-2 tie that seemed destined for overtime when Chrsistian Horn scored with 23.9 seconds remained in the third period. Benilde, with complete unity behind coach Ken Pauly, had the added emotional kharma of Jack Jablonski, watching from a wheelchair in a suite after suffering a paralyzing injury in a junior varsity game Dec. 30.
Now we jump ahead 12 hours, to Hermantown’s 3-2 victory over Thief River Falls in the Class A semifinals — a game in which superb Hawks defenseman Jared Kolquist scored the tying goal six minutes into the third period, with 5:15 remaining, and then Jared Thomas scored his second goal of the game with 5:15 remaining. Incidentally, why aren’t Division I colleges all over Kolquist, who is the emotional leader of the Hawks and a true warrior. Coach Bruce Plante said he talked to Thief River Falls coach Tim Bergland before that game and, knowing that St. Thomas Academy and Breck were playing in the other semifinal, told him, “We’re playing for the public school championship.”
The thought hit me that my perception of Hermantown’s program was that there seems to be complete unity, that not only were all the players on the same page, but all the parents seemed totally supportive.
“We’ve got great parents,” said Plante. “The parents have left me alone — no emails, no phone calls. I’ve told them that if they want to get rid of me, just start bitching. Same with the players. I told them if they want me to quit, just tell me. I’ve retired from teaching, and I like to bow-hunt and ice fish.”
A day later, Moorhead jumped ahead of Hill-Murray in the AA semifinals, outshooting the Pioneers 7-1 at the start before junior Hill-Murray defenseman Blake Heinrich jolted Aaron Herdt with the most jolting bodycheck of the tournament. The Hill-Murray fans taunted the Spuds at that point with chants of “Mashed potato…mashed potato.” That hit created an interesting changeover. As Moorhead tried to show they could hit, too, the Spuds seemed to stop making plays with the puck, and the Pioneers were inspired by the big check to start playing. The Pioneers outshot Moorhead 10-5 in the second period, and an amazing 12-1 in the third, when Conrad Sampair scored the tying goal, and came back to score the 2-1 game-winner on a dazzling rush at 1:51 of overtime.
No, there was nothing cute about it, but Hill-Murray won much more than the moment. In the second AA semifinal, Benilde shocked Lakeville South 10-1, jumping to a 5-0 lead in the first period, when it became obvious that either the Cougars had completely spent all their energy and inspiration on upsetting East, or coach Weber couldn’t find any videotapes of Benilde-St. Margaret’s.
The championship games in both classes were, at best, anticlimactic. St.Thomas Academy, a military academy in Mendota Heights that qualifies as Class A with “only” 1,066 students, has only boys in the school, which means that an equal number of girls would boost the school far into Class AA. The Cadets, who beat Breck 1-0 in the semifinals, ran away and hid from Hermantown in a 5-1 championship game that was 5-0 before the Hawks got their goal, from Jared Kolquist on a two-man power play.
Meanwhile, the best thing about the AA final was that Benilde-St. Margaret’s and Hill-Murray were two small private schools (Hill-Murray has 706 enrollment, Benilde 930) who are playing up in AA, where they belong. Benilde, in fact, won two Class A championships before coach Ken Pauly decided that was enough evidence to prove the Red Knights should move up to play with the big schools. In an amazing romp, junior Grant Besse scored all five goals for a 5-1 victory over Hill-Murray. Besse may have set a record of some sort because his last three goals were all shorthanded.
Duluth East, by the way, came back to beat Edina 3-2 in consolation play, scoring all three goals in the final period, then the Hounds finished their season 29-2 by beating Eagan 4-1 in the consolation final. There were some cute goals involved in those two victories, and, in retrospect, Hill-Murray might have liked to have had a couple of those cute goals against Benilde.
FINAL FIVE, FROZEN FOUR WEEK
The NCAA men’s Frozen Four is always an entertaining tournament, but the WCHA Final Five is often more spectacular to watch, and this year should be no exception. UMD, the defending NCAA champs, joins Minnesota in the two bye slots, while North Dakota, Denver, St. Cloud State and Michigan Tech scrap to earn the right to face them.
Tech, which took out Colorado College in two games at Colorado Springs last weekend, comes to Xcel Center to face Denver Thursday night, after Denver needed a third game to overcome strong-finishing Wisconsin, while St. Cloud State, having eliminated Nebraska-Omaha, faces North Dakota. The Denver-Michigan Tech winner and the North Dakota-St. Cloud winner will advance to the semifinals, where UMD will be waiting in the 2 p.m. game Friday, and Minnesota is installed in the 7 p.m. second semifinal.
Interesting, but Minnesota, which won the WCHA title, is 26-12-1 and rated only No. 8 in the Pairwise computer rankings, while UMD, the league runner-up, is No. 3 at 24-8-6. Furthermore, UMD is ranked No. 2 in the country to Boston College in the standard collegiate ratings. Both UMD and Minnesota are assured of berths in the NCAA tournament next week, while North Dakota and Denver could also make it. In the NCAA scheme, Minnesota must play at Xcel Center, where it is the host team, but maybe as a No. 2 seed, while UMD will probably get sent to a different regional as a No. 1 seed.
The league tournaments will matter greatly, however, because the CCHA has risen to prominence in the Pairwise, where, after No. 1 Boston College, Michigan is No. 2, followed by UMD, and then CCHA stalwarts Ferris State and Miami of Ohio as Nos. 4-5, with Boston University 6. League playoff champions get automatic berths in the 16-team NCAA field, and if the current Pairwise were to establish No. 1 seeds right now, they would be BC, Michigan, UMD and then either Ferris State or Miami, depending on which does better in the CCHA playoffs.
Meanwhile, the Women’s NCAA Frozen Four is at AMSOIL Arena this weekend, with an intriguing field in spite of the absence of UMD. Those who watched the WCHA Final Faceoff might realize that Wisconsin and Minnesota are two of the nation’s elite teams, and Boston College and Cornell come in from the East. In Friday semifinals, Minnesota (32-5-2) faces Cornell (30-4), while Wisconsin (32-4-2) plays BC (24-9-3). The championship is at 3 p.m. Sunday.
The NCAA regionals saw Wisconsin beat Mercyhurst 3-1, while the Gophers beat North Dakota 5-1, Boston College took out St. Lawrence 6-3, and Cornell outlasted BU 8-7 in three overtimes. All four are worthy of the title, and if Wisconsin and Minnesota happen to reach the final, we’re guaranteed of a spectacular championship game.
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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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