skip navigation

At the Edina Invite, Refs blow calls; Rapids tires

By frederick61, 12/19/14, 3:45PM CST

Share

This close up shows the puck going in the net as the Eden Prairie goalie knocks the net off the post.

In the first round of games played at the Edina Invitational Thursday, Eden Prairie and Edina emerged the victors. The Eagles beat Elk River (sans Nick Perbix) 6-3 and Edina (sans Garrett Wait) beat Grand Rapids 8-3.  At a critical point in the Eden Prairie/Elk River game, the Eagles got a gift when Eden Prairie’s goalie knock the net off the right post as the puck was crossing the goal line.  The ref ruled no goal, no penalty, but did give the Elks a face off to the right of the Eagles goal.  Edina had that happen when Grand Rapids scored in the evening game, but the Thunderhawks got the goal and the Hornets got the face off in center ice.  Friday night, Eden Prairie plays Grand Rapids in the 6:00 PM game and Lake Conference rivals Elk River and Edina meet in the 8:30 PM game.  The Elk River/Grand Rapids game Saturday will be the only game played between the two Section 7AA perennial rivals this year and will affect the Section 7AA seeding in February.


This should have been a goal. The Elk River shot by Jensen Zerban (#3 far left) can be seen crossing the goal line as Eden Prairie goalie dislodges the right post with his skate.


Grand Rapids scores to go up 1-0 in the first period of their game against Edina. Note that the net was off the post when the puck hit the goal line.

Eden Prairie beats Elk River

Period 1: Eagles take an early lead, Elks rally to tie

Eden Prairie jumped to a 2-0 lead three plus minutes into the opening period.  They had just killed a hooking penalty when the Eagles’ Wesley Young scored the first goal with Marc Sullivan getting the assist.  Eagle sophomore Casey Mittelstadt scored the second goal 24 seconds later when the Eagles took the following center ice faceoff and pounded the Elk River net.  Mittelstadt put the third rebound past the Elk’s senior goalie Chase Gauthier.  Nicky Leivermann got the assist.  At that point, the Elk’s top line of senior Jacob Jaremko, senior Reggie Lutz, and sophomore Jax Murray started to roll.

The game had started to get physical when Murray beat the Eagles defense to a puck just inside the Eden Prairie blue line.  Murray positioned his body before he took possession of the sliding puck putting the lone Eagle defenseman on his hip and making contact to prevent the defense from getting to the puck and from using their stick.  Gaining control of the puck, Murray then put on a short burst of speed separating himself from the defense turning the race to the puck into a solo scoring opportunity.  He beat Eagle goalie Shaun Durocher with a high right shot to cut the lead to 2-1.  Matt Kiersted got the assist, his lob pass from the Elk blue line set up Murray.


Elk River's Jax Murray scores to cut the Eagles lead to 2-1 in the first period.


Eden Prairie scores.

Period 2: The Ref factor

For the YHH readers who follow the high school game stories, the games constantly change because of penalties, rarely because of a non-penalty ref call.  The Elk’s downfall started with a sequence of penalties in the second period and ended with simply a bad call that killed the game with 12:58 left in the third period.  First, the second period penalties that set up the frustration in the third period.  It started with an Elk River penalty kill to finish off a second period penalty in the opening minute.  The Elks killed the penalty only to draw a holding two minutes later.  They killed that penalty and for the next three minutes it was an evenly skated game.  Elk River drew a third penalty with eight minutes left on the clock.

On earlier power plays the Eagles had two shots in the pipes, but not on this power play.  They set up and controlled the puck in the Elks zone finally moving the puck Brent Boldenow just inside the center blue line.  Boldenow fired a hard quick shot at the net that found its way through a screen in the slot and beat the Elk’s Gauthier on the stick side.  The score put the Eagles up 3-2.  The game momentum shifted to Eden Prairie and lasted four minutes.  The Eagles were pushing the attack when they were called for a 5-minute major for boarding.  With 4 minutes left in the period, things were looking up for the Elks.

That feeling lasted 45 seconds.  With a little over three minutes left in the period, the Eagles Michael Graham beat the Elks’ power play defense for a solo shorthanded score to put Eden Prairie up 4-2.  The goal was scored unassisted and turned out to be the game winner.  Still on the power play, the Elks came back to score 15 seconds later.  Alex Schwab got the goal; Dylan Bouten and Benton Maass got the assists.  The Elks had cut the Eagles’ lead to 4-3 and still had the power play because of the major penalty.  They returned to controlling the puck in the Eagles' zone trying to score the tying goal.  The puck was moved to the right boards where in a race to the puck an Eagle penalty kill player and an Elk defenseman collided along the boards.  The defenseman was playing the angle as shown in MSHSL videos, but the Eagle slipped on his skate along the boards and fell between the Elk and the boards.  The Elk defenseman slowed and avoided a major collision, but was given a 5 minute major for attempt to injure by a ref thirty feet away along the same right boards.  That hurt the Elks.  It forced some changes in their offensive lines.  Jax Murray now dropped to the second line.

The second period ended with Eden Prairie leading 4-3.  Elk River outshot the Eagles 8-7 in the second period.


This Eden Prairie shot was stopped by the Elk River defense (note puck in center of picture)

Period 3: Bad Call

The first four minutes of the third period opened with Elk River having a 4-on-3 advantage for 47 seconds.  They couldn’t score.  Both teams skated 4-on-4 for another 10 seconds since each team still had a player in the penalty box with a major.  Then the Elks drew another penalty.  They killed the following 4-on-3 and 5-on-3 penalty situations.  Neither team scored.  Eden Prairie now had a 5-on-4 for the next minute and they scored.  Marc Sullivan got the goal on a shot from the blue line.  Andy Aguilar and Riley Argetsinger had the assists.  Eden Prairie led 5-3.

Seven seconds after scoring, Eden Prairie drew a penalty.  At this point, the Elks needed something positive to happen.  It did and then it was taken away.  The Elks’ Jensen Zerban gained control of the puck on the right side of the Eagles' net and fired a hard shot beating the goalie low as he tried to make a leg pad save by kicking right.  He kicked the right post off its mooring as the puck went into the net.  The ref looking at the play ruled no goal.  How it could be missed was a mystery?  To make matters worse for the Elk fans that stayed for the next game, Edina’s goalie kicked the net off and the puck was shot into the goal.  It was ruled a score.

Grand Rapids Cheerleaders, a nice Holiday treat, performed on ice between periods.

Grand Rapids Cheerleaders, a nice Holiday treat, performed on ice between periods.

The game settled after that with one more penalty being called.  Eden Prairie’s Graham scored an empty netter from his own face off circle to end the scoring 6-3 with a minute left in the game.  The game, in its own way, was entertaining but the game became a different thing once the refs got too involved.    

Edina beats Grand Rapids 8-3.

The Edina/Grand Rapids game mirrored the Eden Prairie/Elk River game in scoring.  Grand Rapids scored early in the third period to cut the Hornets lead to 4-3.  But the play on the ice was far different.  The Thunderhawks took a 2-0 lead at the end of the first period on goals by juniors Alex Adams and Brendan Mark.  They skated an excellent defense in that period.  The Rapids was outshot 11-7, but most of the shots were from the outside as the Thunderhawks kept the Hornets wide and away from the net.


Grand Rapids Brendan Mark (#16) celebrates scoring to put the Rapids up 2-0.

Seven minutes into the second period, the Hornets’ Bram Scheerer scored.  Scheerer beat the defense at the Grand Rapids blue line and scored skating down the right slot when his hard shot caught only the edge of the puck and slid into the net like a knuckleball pitch flopping into a catcher’s mitt.  That goal opened the door for the Hornets as the Thunderbird defense tired in the later stages of the second period.

Three minutes after scoring, Edina’s Parker Mismash beat the Thunderhawks defense on the left side and cut to the top of the crease beating Rapids’ goalie Sam Gerth to tie the game 2-2.  In the last two minutes of the second period, Edina added two more scores on goals by Sam Fuss and Matt Masterman to take a 4-2 lead into the third period.  The Hornets outshot the T-hawks 16-9 in the second period.

After Grand Rapids’ Adams scored in the first thirty seconds of the third period, Edina took over in the scoring column.  The Hornets' Dylan Malmquist, Casey Dornbach, and Ben Copeland scored.  Malmquist scored twice.  The Hornets did not dominate play, they simply made the best of their scoring opportunities by getting goals on all four third period shots on the net.  Grand Rapids outshot the Hornets 5-4 in the third period.  The game ended 8-3.


Edina's Parker Mismash scores to tie the game 2-2 late in the second period.