Gopher women beat UMD 2-1 for more than semifinals

MINNEAPOLIS, MN. — The University of MinnesotaÂ’s semifinal victory Saturday gained far more than the right to face Wisconsin in SundayÂ’s WomensÂ’ WCHA playoff championship game. When the Golden Gophers slipped past archrival Minnesota-Duluth 2-1 in the second semifinal, the victory almost certainly clinched a home-ice berth for next weekendÂ’s NCAA quarterfinals as well.

Wisconsin, the leagueÂ’s top seed, sped past St. Cloud State 9-0, before the dramatic Gopher victory over UMD, which came when Janelle Philipczyk deflected Gigi MarvinÂ’s shot past Bulldog all-WCHA goaltender Riitta Schaublin with 3:55 left in the third period.

The goal came on a heads-up play by Philipczyk, a sophomore from Eagan High School, who was in traffic in the left circle when she saw Marvin – the WCHA freshman-of-the-year from Warroad, Minn. – about to gain possession. Philpczyk broke for the net, and surprisingly, no Bulldog skater went with her.

“When Gigi got to the puck, I yelled for her to shoot,” said Philpczyk.

Marvin, by coincidence, had been a playmaker who has been urged repeatedly to shoot more by coach Laura Halldorson. “I heard Jay (Philpczyk) yelling, ‘Shoot the puck!’ but my back was to the net as I got to the puck,” said Marvin. “There were a lot of people over there, so I just got the puck and shot.”

Philipczyk tipped the shot in, and coach Halldorson said, dryly, “I’m glad she listened to her teammate.”

UMD had taken a 1-0 lead when Noemie Marin converted the rebound after Gopher goaltender Kim Hanlon blocked Jessica KoizumiÂ’s shot at 2:35 of the first period. The Badgers tied it on a power play at 7:56, when Ashley AlbrechtÂ’s shot was deflected in by Andrea Nichols.

That set up the playoff title matchup between the Gophers, at 27-9-1, against Wisconsin, 32-4-1.

“We haven’t really thought about Wisconsin yet,” said Halldorson, right after the victory. “That was a strong UMD team we beat, and we needed great goaltending and a solid penalty-kill. We’re getting good penalty killing from players like Whitney Graft, Becky Wacker and Bobbi Ross.”

Coming into the WCHA semifinals, the Gophers and Bulldogs were virtually deadlocked for the season. A Minnesota sweep over North Dakota on the final regular-season weekend created a tie for second with UMD,, when the Bulldogs won and tied at Minnesota State-Mankato. The Gophers won the tie-breaker with one more victory to become No. 2 seed behind league champ and No. 1 seed Wisconsin.

The outcome also affected national pairwise rankings, where Wisconsin stood third, the Gophers fourth and UMD fifth, following New Hampshire and St. Lawrence at 1-2. The NCAA selection committee generally follows the pairwise to select its top eight, although match-ups attempt to not send league opponents against each other. So the chances are good that the top four teams in the pairwise will get home ice for the first round, while the next four highest-ranked teams will go on the road to oppose them in best-of-three pairings scheduled for announcement Sunday night.

The stakes for the semifinal, therefore, meant that a UMD victory would undoubtedly lift the Bulldogs ahead of the Gophers, not only into the league playoff final but into a top-four pairwise and a home-ice slot for the NCAA. The Gophers, meanwhile, needed a victory to secure that top four slot.

Wisconsin might have remained third even by losing to St. Cloud State in the first semifinal, but the Badgers took no chances, and took no prisoners by crushing St. Cloud StateÂ’s long-shot hopes for advancement with a 9-0 romp. Homestate senior Cyndy Kenyon scored four goals, and her center, Sara Bauer, had a goal and four assists.

Bauer, a junior from St. Catharines, Ontario, was named league most valuable player before the semifinals, and her 22 goals, 31 assists and 53 points have led the Badgers to a 32-4-1 record overall, after a 24-3-1 WCHA slate. St. Cloud State finished 18-18-1, after having swept UMD to ultimately cost the Bulldogs second place, and upsetting Wisconsin once in recent weeks.

The game started out scoreless, but at 13:33 of the first period Kenyon scored , and the Badgers were off and running, with freshman Jessie Vetter making 21 saves for the shutout. Junior goaltender Lauri St. Jacques, who had been St. Cloud State coach Jason LestebergÂ’s choice to play every game the last six weeks, after a seemingly successful alternating plan with sophomore Kendall Newell, was the victim of a flat performance by the Huskies, who were unable to contain the explosive Badgers. St. Jacques gave up five goals, and Newell, perhaps rusty from inactivity, yielded the last four.
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The UMD-Minnesota game was clearly the highlight of the semifinals, and Minnesota had a clearcut edge in play, outshooting the Bulldogs 39-21 – including 14-2 in the decisive third period. UMD coach Shannon Miller brushed the shot count aside, and said, “We had the puck in the offensive zone and set up good scoring opportunities for a lot of the first 10 minutes of the third period, but the shot count never moved.”

Miller said she was proud of her team’s hard work, and the difference was clearcut: “We were 0-for-5 on the power play, and they were 1-for-6. That was the difference.”

However, the Bulldogs had an amazing penchant for shooting directly into Gopher defenders time after time throughout the game, and if the Bulldog shot count was unfairly low, it seemed that the Gophers blocked far more than the eight third-period tries and 17 for the game – which meant Minnesota had nine shots blocked and 39 shots on goal, while UMD had 17 shots blocked and only 21 that got through to the net.

“I noticed that they were only given two shots in the third period,” said Minnesota freshman goaltender Kim Hanlon. “It seems like I noticed 20 times, at least, they wound up and shot. My teammates did a great job of blocking shots.”

Marin said: “They’re good defensively, and it did seem that we’d go right into them.”

Koizumi noted that she and her teammates seemed to wind up not getting to the net on their offensive attempts, despite being inspired by the televised Minnesota state high school boys hockey tournament games they had been watching. She said she didnÂ’t think the Gophers did anything better defensively in the game, compared to their regular-season games, in which Minnesota won 4-1 then lost 6-0 at Ridder Arena, and the Gophers lost 4-2 but rebounded to win 2-0 at Duluth.

“We’ve been watching a lot of high school games, and realized they seemed to shoot from anywhere and scored a lot of goals,” Koizumi said. “So we wanted to try to shoot a lot.”

Coach Miller knows that going home with a 22-8-3 record assures her Bulldogs of a spot in the NCAA pairings. “But I’m sure we’ll be on the road, too,” she said. “I’m guessing we’ll go somewhere like St. Lawrence. We’ve got another week to work on some new power-play things we’ve put in. I know you’ve got to work to create your own breaks, but we haven’t gotten many bounces in the last few weeks.”

The bounces on Saturday were mostly off Gopher shinpads.

Huskies stop Potulny, Gophers 8-7 in OT WCHA semi

SAINT PAUL, MN. — Matt Hartman, a fourth-line sophomore, flung a shot from deep in the left corner that found the Minnesota net at 9:14 of sudden-death overtime, lifting St. Cloud State to an improbable 8-7 victory Friday night, and into a berth in SaturdayÂ’s WCHA Final Five playoff championship game. The triumph came despite a heroic performance by MinnesotaÂ’s Ryan Potulny, who scored his fourth goal of the game with 15 seconds remaining to tie the game and force overtime.

In the overtime, Hartman rushed up the left boards and pulled up sharply in the corner. “Nate [Raduns] had bumped the puck ahead to me, and when I got to the corner, I saw Brocklehurst screaming down the slot there,” said Hartman.

Gopher backup goaltender Jeff Frazee also apparently saw Brocklehurst coming down the slot, and started to move off the short-side pipe, anticipating a pass. “I thought I’d throw the puck on net, and it found a way through,” said Hartman. “I saw the net fly up, but I had no idea where it went in.”

The winning shot was improbable, and so was the score, but even more improbable is that the Huskies (22-15-4) snapped Minnesota’s eight-game winning streak and find themselves one game away from a berth in the NCAA tournament’s 16-team field. The playoff winner gets an automatic berth, and that’s the only way the Huskies could reach the select field. Minnesota (27-7-5) remains the nation’s No. 1 rank and will face Wisconsin in Saturday’s 2:30 p.m. third-place game – a game which could determine the nation’s No. 1 seed overall, with Minnesota No. 1 and Wisconsin No. 2 in the Pairwise ranking. St. Cloud State will take on North Dakota at 7:30 for the championship.

Minnesota, Wisconsin and North Dakota are already secured among the nationÂ’s top 16 teams and should make the field easily when the NCAA selection committee announces its picks Sunday. But St. Cloud State had no chance of making the NCAA on ratings.

“No question, we’re playing to get into the NCAA tournament,” said coach Bob Motzko, who is in his first year at St. Cloud after assisting at Minnesota.

After North Dakota had beaten Wisconsin 4-3 in the afternoon semifinal, the Xcel Energy Center public address announcer said: “With this victory, North Dakota now advances to the championship game against Minnesota tomorrow night…”

“We heard that, in the lobby of the hotel,” said Hartman, whose winning goal was his second of the game and 10th of the season.
Brad Hooten, who also had two goals to give him six for the season, said: “No question, we fed off it.”

With both teams stressing low goals-against, the goal-scoring binge was out of character for both. Minnesota was outshot 16-8 in the first period but outshot the Huskies 51-38 for the game. “It is draining for a coach,” said Motzko. “But when the game got going like it did, we had to keep going. We knew they were having fun getting back into it, so we told the guys they had to keep going. You get into a nutty game like this, you’ve got to go with it.”

Potulny certainly went with it, and as evidence of how strange the game became is that his spectacular night — with four goals and one assist — became overshadowed by the Huskies ability to overcome it. Potulny now has 38-25—63 to take the nationÂ’s point-scoring lead as well as expanding his goal-scoring lead.

The teams played nearly half the first period without a goal. Ben Gordon got one on a slick pass across the slot from Blake Wheeler at 9:36 to stake Minnesota to a 1-0 lead, but Matt Hartman tied it 1-1 at 10:57 when he scored with a one-timer after Matt StephensonÂ’s shot was deflected to him at the left of the carge. Minnesota sophomore defenseman Alex Goligoski regained the lead 2-1 for Minnesota at 13:33, but then went off for a penalty that opened the chance for Andrew Gordon, who scored his 20th with a screened wrist shot from center point that eluded goaltender Kellen Briggs at 15:02.

The flurry of four goals in six minutes should have been an indication of things to come, but nobody could foresee the second period antics, as the Huskies scored three straight goals to stun the Gophers. Andrew Gordon got his second of the game at 0:58, Casey Borer beat Briggs with a wrist shot from the left point at 3:50, and Grant Clafton scored at 5:54, making it the first time in 49 games the Gophers had yielded as many as five goals, and prompting Minnesota coach Don Lucia to pull Briggs for backup Jeff Frazee.

“It was one of those games where the puck was going in, but never in my wildest dreams did I think it would be 8-7,” said Lucia. “When they got ahead by three, I thought it was one of those nights for us.”
Potulny and the Gopher power play kept the game within reach, as Potulny, a left-handed shooter, drilled Phil KesselÂ’s pass from the right circle at 9:43 to cut it to 5-3. But after Potulny scored his nation-leading 35th goal, Brock Hooten scored his fifth for St. Cloud by intercepting a careless breakout attempt up the slot, walking in and firing past Frazee at 11:40 of the middle period.

Before the second period ended, Potulny smacked in Danny Irmen’s pass at 14:08, and then completed his hat trick with a power play goal when Kessel went behind the net and fed him at his favorite right circle station – with a scant 0.4 seconds remaining. It was dramatic, and it cut the deficit to 6-5, but amazingly enough, the drama was still in its preliminary stage.

“The way we played, it’s just not going to cut it,” said Potulny. “I think the team decided it was time to turn things around, and I was in the right spot at the right time.”

The Gophers had outshot St. Cloud 17-12 in the wild second period, and they stormed the Huskies goal for a 20-7 shooting edge in the third, which put ace St. Cloud goaltender Bobby Goepfert under intense pressure. Despite the score, he played well. “He let in seven, and he made some big-time saves,” Lucia said.

The Huskies were left clinging to the 6-5 lead through the first 16 minutes of the third period, then Hooten blocked the puck free and zoomed in to score on a breakaway for a 7-5 Huskies lead at 16:21.
Undeterred, the Gophers swarmed on the attack, and Irmen lifted a rebound up and over the fallen Goepfert with 2:01 to play to cut it to 7-6.

“When St. Cloud went back up by two goals, I was so mad I didn’t even want to pull the goalie,” said Lucia. “Then we scored, and I had to.”

Lucia called time, and pulled Frazee for a six-skater attack. The Gophers pressed, the Huskies defended, and as the last minute ticked away, Kessel forechecked the puck free to Irmen, who curled up the boards from the left corner and spotted Potulny at – guess where? – the right circle. Irmen’s pinpoint pass was perfect, and Potulny one-timed it for his 38th goal of the season at 19:45.

“We tie it with 15 seconds to go,” said Lucia, who could appreciate how much the fans must have enjoyed the explosive game. “For the fans – my gosh – they should’ve charged $50.”

Badgers rip Gophers 4-1 for Women’s WCHA playoff title

MINNEAPOLIS, MN. — The University of Wisconsin womenÂ’s hockey team has been breaking down the tradition that the WCHA is a two-team league, a dominance created over the WCHAÂ’s first six seasons by Minnesota and Minnesota-Duluth. The Badgers broke one barrier by winning the WCHA regular season title, and on Sunday, they broke through another one – whipping Minnesota 4-1 for the WCHA playoff championship.

“I’m real excited for our players,” said Wisconsin’s coach-of-the-year Mark Johnson, whose Badgers lost a heartbreaker in the playoff final to Minnesota last year, after rallying for two goals in the final minute to tie the game 2-2. “Last year, we were very close, in a similar situation, but we were beaten in overtime. Any time you have the opportunity to win a championship, you go after it, and any time you do something for the first time, it’s special.”

There is, of course, one further barricade up ahead. UMD won the first three NCAA women’s hockey championships, and Minnesota won the next two. All three teams – and the WCHA has at least become the “big three” by now – will enter the eight-team NCAA tournament starting this coming weekend. Wisconsin (33-4-1) will be at home against Mercyhurst on Saturday, Minnesota will be at home against Princeton on Friday, and UMD will be on the road at St. Lawrence Saturday.

The other NCAA pairing has Harvard at No. 1 ranked New Hampshire, with the four winners convening at Mariucci Arena for the NCAA WomenÂ’s Frozen Four.

Minnesota had won seven straight coming into the game, and even though the Gophers have now lost four out of five games to the Badgers, Gopher coach Laura Halldorson said she didn’t think Wisconsin had a clear upper hand in the game. “Wisconsin has a very good team, and I congratulate them,” Halldorson said. “But the score was a little deceiving, because it didn’t really feel like a 4-1 game. We outshot them 29-19, so we were really in the game.”

The Golden Gophers (27-10-1) had outshot UMD 39-21 while beating the Bulldogs 2-1 Saturday, and they outshot Wisconsin similarly, 21-11, on Sunday, but the Badgers handled the Ridder Arena crowd, announced as 1,012, and the shot-counter with the same poise they used to control the Gophers.

Wisconsin has a prominent offense, led by WCHA player of the year Sara Bauer, and it has a solid defense, led by Bobbi Jo Slusar, the WCHA defensive player of the year, and solid goaltending from senior Meghan Horras. Against the Gophers, the defensemen became offensive, scoring three of the four goals. The Badgers took a 2-1 lead in the first period, and resolutely added another goal in the second, and another in the third, while Bauer settled for three assists.
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Cyndy KenyonÂ’s goal at 5:14 of the first period was offset when MinnesotaÂ’s Allie Sanchez connect at 12:15. The Badgers reclaimed the lead when Slusar slid over to center-point and rifled a slap shot straight on from 55 feet past a screened Kim Hanlon. At that point, all three goals had come on power plays, and while Wisconsin was being outshot 15-5 at that moment, the Badgers led 2-1.

The pace was about even in the second period, although the Badgers killed their two penalties, and went ahead 3-1 when Emily Morris moved in deep from the blue line and smacked in a rebound even though she couldnÂ’t see the puck go in because a Minnesota defenseman was pretty well taking her out as she shot.

The Gophers needed a rally in the third period, but the Badgers held them to only five shots, and defenseman Meaghan Mikkelson strode in from the right point and scored from the top of the circle against relief goalie Brittony Chartier, who went in for the second and third periods after Hanlon twisted her ankle trying to prevent Nikki Burish from scoring at the right edge late in the first period.

While the Gophers solidified their home-ice spot in the NCAA with their victory over UMD, meaning the semifinal might have been the more important game of the weekend, but the players insisted it didn’t cause any letdown. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re playing one archrival in UMD or another in Wisconsin, mentally, when you’re playing for the championship, you go all out.

“Wisconsin moves the puck real well, and they banged a couple power-play goals in.”

Badger coach Johnson was a power-play specialist himself on NCAA championship Badger teams coached by his dad, Badger Bob Johnson, so he knows the importance of a successful power play.

“In the first period, Minnesota had more energy than we did, which didn’t surprise me,” said Johnson. “They’re in their own building, with their own fans, and they won a tough game against UMD. They had some good chances, and Meghan came up with the saves, and we came out of the first period ahead 2-1. At this time of the year, you look for your special teams to be pretty good.”

The Badgers were 3-for-6 on the power play, and held Minnesota to 1-for-4. That contributed to a huge haul the Badgers took back to Madison – coach of the year, player of the year, defensive player of the year, and a giant trophy for winning the WCHA playoff title.

Goepfert, Huskies trip UMD, face No. 1 Gophers

SAINT PAUL, MN. — Minnesota-Duluth was the biggest surprise entry to the WCHA Final Five, and the Bulldogs rode in on the startling success of unheralded reserve goaltender Nate Ziegelmann, who had upset Denver in two of three games last weekend. But where goaltending is concerned, St. Cloud State’s Bobby Goepfert won all the league awards as top goalie, and he gave a display of how that happened to lead the Huskies to a 5-1 victory in Thursday’s tournament opener.

There was some disagreement when Goepfert was named first team all-WCHA goaltender earlier Thursday, but the Huskies junior, a transfer from Providence, strode out onto the Xcel Energy Center ice sheet and eliminated the critics – especially any of those wearing Minnesota-Duluth jerseys – by kicking out 36 of 37 shots he faced to frustrate the Bulldogs in the “play-in” game of the WCHA Final Five tournament.

The game drew a first-game record crowd of 16,312 – perhaps a benefit of the busride range of all five entrants, where UMD, St. Cloud State and No. 1 Minnesota are all within an hour or two, and the most distant teams are Wisconsin and North Dakota. Wisconsin might have filed the most valid complaint about the identity of the league’s best goaltender, because of Brian Elliott, who will face North Dakota in Friday’s first semifinal. But few will question the choice of the lightning-quick Goepfert after his performance allowed St. Cloud State to return to Xcel Center to face the Gophers in the second semifinal.

“As a team, it’s big for us to do well here, but the personal accolades didn’t mean anything to me as far as this game went,” said Goepfert, a transfer from Providence. “Playing the Gophers, who are No. 1 in the country, will be a big test. We’re all excited for that, but you can’t look ahead at more than one game at a time, and we were focused on Duluth.”

Motzko wasn’t so sure. One of the key factors in St. Cloud’s favor when the Huskies put their 21-15-4 record out against Minnesota’s 27-6-5 ledger will be that the Huskies got past any Xcel Center awe in the UMD game. They were apparently uptight at the start of the game, and yet they jumped ahead 3-0 – an ironic twist for Motzko, who said he hoped they’d be hustling and outworking UMD, but instead they got outhustled and yet jumped into the lead.

“We got three in the first to get ahead, and I don’t know when that’s happened,” said Motzko, whose team usually has to work hard for goals. “We needed our first line to score, and they got two, and we needed our power play to come through, and it did.”

He started to add that the Huskies also needed a strong game from Goepfert, but that was a given. “We didn’t have the energy at the start, but we got it in the third period,” Motzko said. “Everyone was surprised that Duluth beat Denver last weekend, but to me the surprise was that Duluth finished ninth, because they’re the second fastest team we’ve played, after Colorado College. We’ve become a good hockey team, and Bobby gives us a good chance to win. Bobby is what you saw tonight.”

Goepfert got all he needed in the first three minutes. Just 44 seconds after the game started, Bill Hengen got the puck back after a left corner faceoff, and drilled a shot past UMD goaltender Nate Ziegelmann for a 1-0 lead. At 3:18, Nate Dey scored for a 2-0 St. Cloud lead, and UMD hadnÂ’t had a shot yet. The Bulldogs started shooting, as well as skating and moving the puck in something close to dominant fashion, but when St. Cloud got the only power play of the first period, Brook Hooten got free on the left side of the net and quickly converted a perfect pass across the goal-mouth from Joe Jensen, deep in the right corner, at 12:55.

With Goepfert in goal, the 3-0 lead must have seemed like a mountain to the Bulldogs, although Tim Stapleton came back to snap a screened shot past Goepfert at 13:56 to cut the deficit to 3-1.
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A goal of any flavor in the second period might have lifted UMD back into it, but after outshooting the Huskies 11-6 in the first period – and 11-2 after St. Cloud’s opening flurry – UMD stormed the net in the second period, outshooting the Huskies 15-3. But Goepfert allowed nothing to pass.

“It’s a great building to play in, and the whole event is great for our team to be a part of,” said Goepfert. “The three quick goals made things a little easier, but I figured after the first period that the second period would be big, so I got really focused in the dressing room. I might say a few things at the start of the intermission, but then I’m pretty much silent, and I zone out…except when coach is talking.”

Stapleton was not surprised by Goepfert’s play. “I played against him in juniors, and he’s always been that way,” said Stapleton. “He makes the first save, and he doesn’t allow rebounds. We had our chances; at one point I looked up at the scoreboard and the shots were 24-8.”

But the score never got closer. The Bulldogs, who finish 11-25-4, could have made it more dramatic with a goal to open the third period, but instead Andrew Gordon scored at 0:48 off a left corner faceoff, and it was 4-1. The Huskies started firing on all cylinders after that, and got off 17 of their game total 26 shots in the final 20 minutes. They scored the final goal when UMD coach Scott Sandelin pulled Ziegelmann for a sixth attacker with 3:36 to go, hoping to cut into the three-goal deficit. But Goepfert stayed invincible, and after missing the open net twice, Hengen fired a 125-footer into the net at 17:34.

“After the first five minutes, I thought we played pretty well for the next 35 minutes,” said Sandelin. “I was proud of the way we played after being down 3-0. Obviously, when you’ve gone 1-15, things are not looking very bright, so ending our season here, instead of at Denver, was important. We had our chances, but obviously Goepfert made some saves.”

It was a tough night for Ziegelmann, whose touch turned magic last weekend in the playoffs, when he rose from No. 3 in DuluthÂ’s goaltending scenario to win his first two college games in upsetting Denver. The victories came after the Bulldogs had won just one game in calendar 2006, and reinvigorated the Bulldogs after a drop to ninth place. The victories also cost two-time defending NCAA champion Denver a chance to return to the Final Five, and ultimately will probably prevent the Pioneers to get invited to the NCAA tournament.

The 16-team NCAA field will include the top 14 ranked teams plus two independent teams, not counting any other teams that might win their league playoff and advance, despite being unranked, by displacing ranked entries. That’s where the Huskies enter the picture. They know they only have one chance to make the NCAA field, and that would be to win the Final Five championship – which, of course, means beating Minnesota in the semifinals.

Private schools used to have their own puck tourney

Cretin-Derham Hall ran away from Grand Rapids in a 7-0 state tournament championship final, climaxing a surprise-filled week at Saint Paul’s Xcel Energy Center. The fact that a colorful Grand Rapids team simply ran out of gas after upsetting Roseau and favored Hill-Murray in the first two rounds, was less surprising than the emergence of Cretin-Derham Hall, winning its first title in only its second state appearance.

When Hill-Murray and Holy Angels played to a 3-3 tie at midseason, they were considered co-No. 1 hockey teams. But with No. 1 Holy Angels suffering its only loss in a sectional upset by Apple Valley, Hill-Murray came into this yearÂ’s state tournament No. 1 in Class AA. Duluth Marshall reached the Xcel Center as the No. 1 ranked team in Class A.

Interesting to check through the historical tidbits of the state tournament program to see the listing of tournament appearances. The perennially powerful Pioneers never made it to the state tournament until 1975, while Marshall, a powerful little school on top of the hill in Duluth, never made it until 2001.

That is true, and it is also very misleading. The state hockey tournament program is a great source for historical tidbits such as those, but the Minnesota State High School League’s detailed accounts of state hockey history leaves what amounts to a “black hole” when it comes to the private and parochial schools.

Backers of public schools still bristle at the mention of private schools, and complain that they “recruit” from the productive youth hockey programs in public school areas. That talk subsided after the first Hill-Murray teams appeared dominant, and came back strong when Holy Angels swept to prominence in recent years. Accusations and evidence of recruiting by public schools, through open-enrollment, have pretty much drowned out the protests that private schools should be segregated into their own tournaments.

As a matter of fact, they used to do exactly that. State private school tournaments were held separately from the public school tournament in the 1960s and early 1970s, but the great teams that played in those glory years have dropped into the black hole of state puck history.

Except, of course, in the fertile memory banks of those who played on those teams, and those who played against them.

Bill Lechner, the coach at Hill-Murray for the past nine years, gave in to the demands of Hill-MurrayÂ’s alumni this year and brought out the old horizontally striped green-and-white sweater to wear at the Section 3 championship game. Facing arch-rival White Bear Lake before a doubleheader crowd that counted an over-capacity 7,425 at the state fair Coliseum, Lechner wore the sweater and Hill-Murray defeated the Bears 5-4 in the second sudden-death overtime.

“This is a gawd-awful sweater,” said Lechner, who is a bit more conservative in his game outfits. “But 2002 was the last time we made it to state, and three years tied the longest drought Hill-Murray has had without winning the section. I’ve had so many phone calls from alumni, telling me about how much tradition we’ve had, that I wore the sweater. Now I can put it back in the closet – at least until next year’s section final.”

Hill-Murray’s return was so stirring that nobody – from the referees, to the official scorer, to Lechner and some of the Pioneer players themselves, questioned the call that defenseman Derek McCallum’s shot from the blue line had won the game. Only a few folks standing behind the Bear goal realized that Bryant Skarda deftly got his stick blade on the low shot and deflected it into the upper right corner. “I don’t care if I get credit for it,” Skarda said, after acknowledging he deflected in the biggest goal of his life. “As long as we won the game.”

ThatÂ’s LechnerÂ’s one-for-all and all-for-one attitude at the Hill-Murray helm, just as it was his even-keel attitude 30-some years ago, when he was the goaltender at Cretin. Yes, Cretin-Derham Hall used to be just Cretin, just as Hill-Murray used to be just Hill, before merging with Archbishop Murray girls school, and Marshall School of Duluth used to be Duluth Cathedral, before moving up on the hill and being renamed after a significant donor.

Cretin-Derham Hall’s victory was reported as a shock because Cretin’s historic achievements in baseball and football have been so prominent they’ve overshadowed the school’s hockey past. That, and the “black hole” theory. Only people so naive about hockey are unaware that Cretin used to be a “Paradise” for hockey players, as the Paradise brothers — including NHL and hockey Hall of Fame resident Bob Paradise — led a group of skilled players to the St. Paul school.

“I graduated in 1971 from Cretin,” said Lechner. “We made it to the state independent tournament my junior year at Aldrich Arena, and my senior year at Duluth.”

If you probe the gracious and modest Lechner, whose first love was baseball, he will divulge his greatest moment in the Cretin nets. “We were playing St. Agnes in the section final to go to state,” he recalled. “Tom Younghans came in on a breakaway with a minute left in the third period. I stopped him…or maybe he missed the net. Whatever, the puck didn’t go in, and we son 3-2 to go to state. I’d have been really scared if I’d known what Tommy Younghans would become.”

Younghans went on to star at the University of Minnesota, and then with the Minnesota North Stars, where his always-hustling spirit won over the fans, and could be traced to his hockey roots.

“I played four years at St. Agnes, and we had good teams, but the only year we made it to the private school tournament was 1968, when I was a freshman,” said Younghans, who is trying to pull together a 30th anniversary reunion of his NCAA championship Gopher days. “We played Duluth Cathedral in the title game, and we lost. They had Pokey Trachsel, and Phil Hoene and Kevin Hoene. It’s funny, butnow I play senior men’s hockey with several Hoenes, and last fall we played against a Duluth team that had Pokey Trachsel on it.

“There were some great teams in the private schools back then, just as there are now, but unfortunately we weren’t allowed to play in the public school tournament. Every year, back then, there were two or three teams that would have challenged for the overall state title.”

There were some outstanding teams in the Catholic and private school sectors then, and they’d prove their skill level against the top public schools throughout the regular season. Then, as the public schools started gearing up for their regional play – now called sectional – the private and Catholic teams would go into their own small domain and play each other. Wakota Arena in South St. Paul, where the first private tournaments were held until the tournament began alternating between Aldrich Arena and the Duluth Arena – now the DECC – may have lacked the size, scope and media attention of the “big tournament,” but it never lacked for emotion and passionate hockey.

Blake and Breck were the primary private schools, and both were impressive, with Jack Blatherwick coaching Breck, and Rod Anderson coaching such luminaries as Ric Schafer at Blake. St. Paul Academy, where Tommy Vannelli and Robin Larson led SPA to glory, and St. Thomas Academy came to prominence after those early years.

The private schools were good, but they were usually overmatched by Catholic schools such as St. Agnes with Younghans following Mike Mallinger, Jerry OÂ’Connor and Jim Morin, and Cretin with future pro hockey brothers Bob and Dick Paradise, faced decent teams from Rochester Lourdes, Fridley Grace, St. BernardÂ’s, Benilde, and St. Cloud Cathedral. But without question, the two major powers were Hill and Duluth Cathedral.

Duluth Cathedral, under the brilliant coaching touch of a real estate salesman named Del Genereau, wrote its own rules for practice. The team almost never practiced indoors, because Genereau believed shoveling and flooding the outdoor rink was not only good for conditioning but made the players appreciate their practice time, and facing the elements made for overload training and an easy transition to the smooth-sliding pucks of indoor games.

The 1967 Duluth Cathedral team remains encapsulated as the best team its fans will ever see in high school hockey. Phil Hoene, who later starred at UMD and with the Los Angeles Kings, centered Larry Trachsel and Dan Sivertson on the first line; Kevin Hoene, later a star and coach at Notre Dame, centered the second line, with Tom Paul, a future Harvard star, on one wing, and Tom Cartier, a prominent Duluth businessman these days, on the other. Mike Randolph, the East coach, was a ninth-grader who centered the third line. Pokey Trachsel, who still holds the UMD record for five goals in a single game, was a ninth-grader who led the defense.

“That one might have been the best, but we won the independent tournament the first five years it was held,” said Kevin Hoene, now a financial consultant in Duluth. “I played in four of those tournaments, two at Wakota and one at the Duluth Arena, and the ’68 tournament at Aldrich. I remember Cretin had a great team, with the Paradise brothers and a lot of other good players, but St. Bernard’s upset them 4-3 in the semifinals when a goalie named Carl Swapinski made 51 saves to beat them at Wakota Arena. We were staying at the Golden Steer Motel, and we went out and after we beat St. Bernard’s 9-0 in the final, we thanked Cretin for softening them up.”

In the 1967 public school tournament, history was made because the string of three straight state championships by International Falls was snapped when Greenway of Coleraine won the title behind a sensational sophomore centerman named Mike Antonovich, and the Raiders beat a great Hibbing team, led by Bob Collyard, in the semifinals. Those two teams were probably the best two teams in the tournament. But Duluth Cathedral, which snapped the International Falls streak of 58 straight victories early in the season, beat both Greenway and Hibbing 4-1 that season, while going undefeated against all Minnesota challengers.

The game of the year in Duluth – and certainly among the greatest high school games in anybody’s history – came when Duluth Cathedral faced archrival Duluth East. The teams had tied earlier in the season, and the rematch was on a Wednesday night, at the Duluth Arena, with its 5,500 capacity. The game was on regional television, and it drew an overflow crowd of 6,122.

The tension was electrifying, and East, which had a half-dozen future Division I players in its lineup, led 4-2. Then Phil Hoene scored a goal to make it 4-3. On the ensuing faceoff, “Phantom Phil” sped in and scored again, 7 seconds later, and incredibly, he scored yet again, 20 seconds after that – a pure hat trick in 27 seconds, and Cathedral won 6-4.

“Cathedral had never beaten East until then, and East had won the state title a few years before that,” Kevin Hoene recalled. “We played six or seven teams that season that were rated No. 1 in the state when we played them, and we beat them all.

“When we moved up on the hill, into the new school, we built our own rink and it was almost Olympic width,” Hoene added. “We had a great guy named Bernie Pfeffer who kept up the ice. He build a thing with a sweeper on the front, and hot water tank at the back, and we called it a ‘Zambernie.’ ”

Mike Randolph remembers also, of course.

“Pokey Trachsel was the only one who never picked up a shovel and never picked up a plow, but he had the keys to the Zambernie,” said Randolph. “He’d make me sit up front on the plow, then he’d drive. We’d go up there and play seven days a week, on our own. Being on top of the hill, there would be some days with an unbelievable wind. At practice, we’d flip to see who got to do the drills with the wind at their back.”

Randolph also remembers beating the state’s best public school teams. “We beat the public school tournament champion three of my four years,” said Randolph. “The only one we didn’t beat was Edina, because we didn’t play them the year they beat Warroad in the final. But that year, we went up to Warroad and beat them 3-2 – right in Warroad. I’ll never forget it, because it was Pokey against Henry. We stayed overnight up there, and we couldn’t believe that Henry had a key to the arena, the Warroad Gardens. He took us around and let us in there.”

Randolph has tried to transfer the Del Genereau coaching technique to his current East teams, where he has former teammate Larry Trachsel as assistant coach. “I remember one time Del came up to a kid named Mike Zeman and told him, ‘You’ll never make it as a defenseman… why don’t you try playing goal?’ ” Randolph said. “He did, and we won state with him in goal.”

He also remembers some of the wry touches Genereau would use for maximum effect. Kevin Hoene’s wingers were griping that their centerman wasn’t moving the puck well enough. “So when Kevin went out on a line change for a faceoff, Del kept his wings on the bench,” Randolph recalled. “Kevin asked what was going on, and Del said, ‘We;;, you’re not using them anyway, so I thought maybe you could play without them.’ ”

Hoene didn’t remember that exact situation, but laughed and acknowledged it might well have happened. At any rate, as that Cathedral dynasty started to wane, Hill – and later Hill-Murray – was just emerging.

“We finally beat Cathedral at Aldrich after they had won five straight private tournament titles,” said Dick Spannbauer, a Hill defenseman and later a star for Herb Brooks with the Gophers. “We won the tournament in 1972 at Aldrich, but we had a great team the year before, in 1970 and 1971, too. We had Bob Young and Les aLarson on one defense pair, and I played with Greg Tauer on the other, with Langevin as fifth defenseman in 1970. The next year, it was Young and Larson on once set, and Langevin and me on the other.”
{IMG2}
Not bad defense for a college team. Young, who had a fantastic shot from the point, went to Denver University to play for Murray Armstrong, Larson went to Notre Dame and played with CathedralÂ’s Kevin Hoene, Langevin went to UMD, and later the New York Islanders, and Spannbauer was a giant defenseman who helped the Gophers win their first NCAA title ever. Langevin, of course, later was voted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, but for one season he was No. 5 on HillÂ’s defense.

“In 1971, we lost to Blake 4-2 in the tournament final in Duluth,” said Spannbauer. “We were 26-1-1 that year, and our only loss was to Blake, where Ric Schafer was their star.”

In those days, there were few if any accusations of recruiting, because there really wasnÂ’t the kind of temptations offered by the open enrollment and the high-powered neighboring programs of today.

“We were all from different little parishes, just like the Cretin guys were, or the St. Agnes or St. Bernard’s guys,” said Spannbauer. “We had Matt and Pat Conroy, Tim Whisler, Rick and Mike Belde, Joe Nelson, Fred Simon – a lot of guys who went on to play Division I college. But it was a foregone conclusion that the kids who went to the Catholic grade schools would be going to Catholic high schools. I was in the first graduyating class from Hill-Murray after they merged, and by my senior year, I think some guys might have started to trickle in to play hockey.

“But before, we were No. 1 in in some state polls, even though we were in the private tournament. We didn’t have indoor ice, so our coach, Andre Beaulieu, would have us scrimmage all the time. We’d have standing room crowds for scrimmages against Edina out at Braemar.”

The Duluth Cathedral heydays also were built on respect, not recruiting. “In Duluth, you couldn’t hop from one district to another,” said Hoene. “Our kids came from the different parishes. If you were Catholic, there was a good chance you’d be going to Cathedral.”

Randolph said: “Cathedral was a Catholic school, and kids went there because of their family’s religious background. We knew we couldn’t play in the public school hockey tournament, but we came to Cathedral for other reasons.”

The reasons have been blurred as the years passed. Mike (Lefty) Curran, star goaltender at International Falls, North Dakota, the Fighting Saints, and with the silver-medal-winning 1972 U.S. Olympic team, recalls those good old days in the 1950s and 60s.

“Cretin used to play International Falls every year,” Curran said. “Falls lost to Cretin in 1957, and came back to beat ‘em the next night, and that was a year Falls went on to win the state title (at 23-2). They had a couple of Paradises out here, and we knew how good they were. And of course, Cathedral ended the Falls streak after 58 straight wins.”

That, of course, was long before Bill Lechner played goalie for Cretin, and longer before Lechner pulled out that green and white striped sweater to help this yearÂ’s Hill-Murray make it back to state. Along with Cretin-Derham Hall, and Blake, and Marshall. Strong teams, with a heritage that now challenges the public schools, but which has roots that go far back to the days of the state independent tournament.

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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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• Exhaust Notes:

  PADDLING
  More and more cars are offering steering-wheel paddles to allow drivers manual control over automatic or CVT transmissions. A good idea might be to standardize them. Most allow upshifting by pulling on the right-side paddle and downshifting with the left. But a recent road-test of the new Porsche Panamera, the paddles for the slick PDK direct-sequential gearbox were counter-intuitive -- both the right or left thumb paddles could upshift or downshift, but pushing on either one would upshift, and pulling back on either paddle downshifted. I enjoy using paddles, but I spent the full week trying not to downshift when I wanted to upshift. A little simple standardization would alleviate the problem.
  
  

  SPEAKING OF PADDLES
  The Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution has the best paddle system, and Infiniti has made the best mainstream copy of that system for the new Q50, and other sporty models. And why not? It's simply the best. In both, the paddles are long, slender magnesium strips, affixed to the steering column rather than the steering wheel. Pull on the right paddle and upshift, pull on the left and downshift. The beauty is that while needing to upshift in a tight curve might cause a driver to lose the steering wheel paddle for an instant, but having the paddles long, and fixed, means no matter how hard the steering wheel is cranked, reaching anywhere on the right puts the upshift paddle on your fingertips.
  
  

  TIRES MAKE CONTACT
  Even in snow-country, a few stubborn old-school drivers want to stick with rear-wheel drive, but the vast majority realize the clear superiority of front-wheel drive. Going to all-wheel drive, naturally, is the all-out best. But the majority of drivers facing icy roadways complain about traction for going, stopping and steering with all configurations. They overlook the simple but total influence of having the right tires can make. There are several companies that make good all-season or snow tires, but there are precious few that are exceptional. The Bridgestone Blizzak continues to be the best=known and most popular, but in places like Duluth, MN., where scaling 10-12 blocks of 20-30 degree hills is a daily challenge, my favorite is the Nokian WR. Made without compromising tread compound, the Nokians maintain their flexibility no matter how cold it gets, so they stick, even on icy streets, and can turn a skittish car into a winter-beater.