For the past few years, Eagan has held a summer ending hockey tourney.  “Summer ending” because Minnesota State High School League has a rule that no summer hockey tourney can be played after July.  This past last July weekend, sixteen teams from various summer high school summer programs played in the last summer hockey tourney of the year, The Eagan Summer Hockey Festival Tournament.

The tourney is a low key affair.  But it was essentially a South Suburban Conference tourney with six of the conference’s 10 teams (Prior Lake, Eastview, Lakeville North, Jefferson, Rosemount, and Lakeville (South?) entered.  Oddly, host Eagan was not entered.

The tourney was played from July 26-28.  The sixteen teams entered were divided into four pools.  Each team played three pool games.  Each game consisted of two halves of play (25 minute and 22 or so minutes).  Refs were there, but the games had an informal approach.

Pool I’s opening games matched Centennial against Prior Lake and Cretin against Achiever Academy.  Prior Lake beat Centennial 9-3 and Cretin beat Achiever 4-0.  Prior Lake went on to win the pool tying Cretin 4-4 and beating Achiever 4-1.  Centennial beat Cretin 3-2 to eliminate the Hall from Sunday’s Championship games.

In Pool II, Duluth East opened with a 3-1 win over Lakeville North and Eastview beat Shakopee 5-2.  Eastview went on to beat Duluth East 2-0 and Lakeville North 4-3 to win the pool championship.  North beat Shakopee 2-1 and East beat Shakopee 6-0 in other Pool II games.

Holy Family swept their three Pool III games beating Jefferson 5-0, Elk River 2-1, and Rosemount 6-0 to move into Sunday’s semifinal round.  Elk River beat Rosemount 3-2 and Jefferson 5-0 in the Elks’ other two games.  Jefferson beat Rosemount 2-0.

Eden Prairie swept Pool IV beating Saint Paul Academy 6-1, Farmington 3-2 and Lakeville 4-3.  SPA won their other two games beating Lakeville 4-2 and Farmington 6-5.  Lakeville beat Farmington 3-2 in the sixth pool game.

In Sunday’s semifinal games, Eden Prairie jumped out to a 3-0 lead in the first half of their game with Holy Family and held on for a 4-3 win.  The Fire came storming back in the second half.  The game was evenly played for the first 13 minutes and was more a battle of goal tenders.  With 13 minutes left in the first half, Holy Family drew a 5 minute major and did an excellent job on almost killing the penalty.  The Eagles scored as the major penalty ran out.  The goal came on a weird rebound.  The puck was shot squarely into the Fire goalie at the left side of the crease, but the puck rebounded to the left of the crease.  An Eagle forward in the slot slid the puck home by the goalie’s right pad and through a Fire defense man’s skates.

Eden Prairie added two more goals after that in the next two minutes to take a 3-0 lead at halftime.

In the second semifinal game, Prior Lake and Eastview dueled for the first 21 minutes to a 0-0 tie with both teams playing good defensive hockey.  After some hard hits had been thrown halfway through the period, the game started to get rough.  Eastview’s defense anchored by goalie Zach Driscoll and defensemen Mike Stillings and Keith Muehlbauer showed the form that got the Lightning to the Class AA state tourney last season.  They played tough, but the Lightning forwards could not beat Prior Lake’s defense.

The key play of the game came with 4 minutes to go in the first half.  A Laker forward passed to his center coming down the right slot.  The puck hit his center in the left skate and caromed off his skate into the net.  The center’s momentum actually buried the puck in the net to put the Lakers up 1-0 at the end of the first half.  It was a no goal, but the refs didn’t catch the skate.  It counted.  Each team scored in the second half.  Prior Lake won the game 2-1.
The championship game matched Eden Prairie and Prior Lake.  The two teams started the game playing ragged and ended the game playing well.  It was a good game to watch.  Each team went at each other, but kept it fun for all.

Eden Prairie won 3-2 in overtime.  Both goalies had good games, but the Laker’s Nick Vidmar, a back-up goalie last year behind Jordan Moran, emerged as one of the game heroes.  He stopped a number of Eagle shots from point blank range and often had to make sliding saves to the weak side of the net to keep the Eagles off the scoreboard.

The Lakers dominated the Eagles in the opening minutes of the game, locking the Eagles up in the Eden Pairie zone for long periods of play in the first six minutes.  The Laker’s defense men were doing an excellent job of pinching down with to turn the Eagles breakout attempts along the side boards with the wing filling in the vacated spot.  But the Lakers could not take advantage of their puck controll and score.

Eden Prairie’s forwards were settling for an occasional rush into the Laker’s zone.

Ten minutes into the opening half, Eden Prairie started to move the puck into the Laker’s zone and hold the zone.  The Lakers were now the team to have occasional rushes.  Once in the Laker’s zone, the Eagle forwards would often try to muscle the puck to the crease and start banging away at a loose rebounding puck.

With under a minute to go in the opening half, the Eagle’s used their muscle to score.  After coming up with the puck off a rebound in the left shot, an Eagle forward took a shot from the right face off circle with the puck ending up a melee on the at the left crease and being rapped into the net by an Eagle forward.  His low shot found its way through players packed around the Lakers’ net and slid in for the score.  Eagles led 1-0.

The first half ended with both teams playing well; the second half opened with both teams playing better.  The game flow was great with both teams making good play after good play in a high speed transitional game.

Prior Lake scored 6 minutes into the period just as an Eden Prairie penalty was ending.  A shot on the Eagles net off a Laker rush resulted in the puck bouncing clear in the low right crease where a Laker forward put the puck into the net to tie the score 1—1.

For the next few minutes the play turned ragged.

With 8 minutes left in the game, Prior Lake scored to take a 2-1 lead.  The goal came as a result of an error by the Eagle’s defense in their zone.  The defense coughed the puck up along the left boards.  It was sent sliding across the ice toward the slot with no Eagle defender in sight.  A Laker picked up the loose puck, skated to the slot, caught the goalie moving right, and put the puck in the upper left corner.

The game really got going after that.  Both teams skated well.  With less than two minutes on the clock, the Eagles launched an all-out attack on the Laker net.  All five Eagle skaters camped around the Laker net and kept the puck trapped low in the crease area.  Finally in one sequence, the Eagles put two quick shots on the Laker goalie.  He stopped both, the second save went vertical and was falling dead center at the top of the crease when an Eagle forward stepped out from the right side and banged the puck into the net in mid-air.

It was like Maurer sending a line drive double to right centerfield.  It tied the game 2-2 and put it into overtime.  The first three minutes of OT was all Prior Lake.  They had a number of chances but could not beat the Eagles goalie.  With two minutes left on the clock, the Eagles went for the home run bouncing the puck off the left boards at an angle that nearly paralleled the boards.  The puck was somehow controlled by the breaking forward and he set up another jam of players at the Laker net.  The puck ended up at the top of the crease where a trailing Eagle buried it for the 3-2 winner.

It was an entertaining game and ended high shool hockey tourneys for the summer.  Few even knew they had started.