The Edina Hornets beat Prior Lake/Savage Lakers 4-2 in an exciting, tension packed, high school game played at Braemar Ice Arena in Edina in front of estimated crowd of 1200 hockey fans.  It was Edina’s fifth game of the 2013-2014 season, the Hornets are now 4-1 on the season.  Prior Lake (1-1) played their second game of the season.  The game was a key game; it’s outcome will affect the Class 2AA Sectional seeds next February.

Last night’s game matched 5 tenth and ninth graders on Edina’s team (Calvin Pugh, Kieffer Bellows, Ryan Zuhlsdorf, Garrett Wait, and Casey Dornbach) against 4 tenth and ninth graders on Prior Lake’s team (Connor Clemons, Matt Denman, Curtis Hanson, and Kevin Fellows).  YHH has followed these players for years.  For them, last night’s game marked the start of the stretch run as they start their high school careers and it marks the start sixth year YHH has followed these players’ hockey careers.

Our site’s stories revolve around kids learning to play hockey and the stories are archived year to year to provide our readers with an extended view of kids learning to play the sport.  We are working on putting that archive together for the new site and will be building an easy way to access those stories over and over again.  One thing was clear last night, the teams started out showing a general dislike for each other, played a extremely fast paced two and a half periods banging each other around, and slowed in the waning minutes of the game from exhaustion.  At the end of the game, like or dislike didn’t matter. 

A Physical First Period

Edina came out in the attack mode in the opening moments of the game.  Cullen Munson (former YHH top peewee A pick) and his line started and opened the attack driving the puck low into the Lakers’ zone.  Munson, Edina’s leading scorer, chased the puck low and took three tough hits in the first 30 seconds of play with no call.  The refs were going to let the game get physical.

The hitting continued on both sides with physcial play happening all over the ice for most of the first period.  At the13 minute mark, the Laker’s Will Reedy picked up a rebounding puck off the left side boards in neutral ice, beat the Edina defense, and cut across the net trying to drive the puck through Hornet goalie, Andrew Rohkohl.  Rohkohl made the stop, but the Laker’s Jeff Pieper trailing the play rapped the puck in the net to put Prior Lake ahead 1-0.  It was a shorthanded goal.

At the 10 minute mark of the first period, the Hornets started to roll.  Their forwards were successful carrying the puck and beating the Lakers’ right defense at the Prior Lake blue line.  When they did, the Hornets turned the rushes into 2-on-1 attacks on the Prior Lake goal.  Nick Vidmar stood his ground, making some great saves, to zero the Hornets in the first period.  Lakers led 1-0 at the end of the first.  Edina outshot Prior Lake 17-9 in the first period; Prior Lake’s physical play started to slow and Edina started to develop more and more of their attacks low in the Lakers’ zone.

The Hornets start to buzz in the second

The Hornets came out of the locker room starting the second period on the power play.  The game had become less physical and the Hornets dominated the opening minutes keeping the pressure on the Laker defense in the Prior Lake zone for the first 5 minutes of play.  An Edina penalty ended the pressure and altered the flow of the game.

Prior Lake failed to score on the power play, but the Laker forwards started to move the puck and generating attacks on the Hornets’ net.  Both teams traded attacks for the next few minutes and Prior Lake survived another penalty.  Finally at the 7 minute mark, the Hornets beat Vidmar.  It took three hard close-in shots to do so.  Vidmar stopped the first two, but could not stop Edina's third rebound shot by Matt Masterman from the edge of the right crease.

Edina had tied the game 1-1 and  the up and down game flow continued with both teams trading attacks.  Edina got the last attack in the period.  With less than 20 seconds left in the period, an Edina 2-on-1 rush developed with the puck carrier on the left side passing through the overshifted Laker defense to Miguel Fidler alone at the top of the right crease.  Fidler blasted the puck through Vidmar from less than five feet to score.  The period ended with the Lakers down 2-1. 

Attacking Fortress Vidmar

From the opening of the third period, it was apparent that the Laker defense had tired.  Edina, like Washington taking one redoubt after another at Yorktown, the Laker outer defense collapsed to a defensive position around their goalie, Nick Vidmar.  And Vidmar played magnificently, stopping 57 of the 60 Hornet shots on goal for the game (19 in the third period).  But Vidmar needed to stop 20 in the third period to preserve a tie.

Prior Lake’s Hayden Maxfield scored to tie the game at the 14 minute mark.  On the power play, the Lakers’ captain Jack Murphy drove the net trying to stuff the puck through Edina’s goalie Andrew Rohkohl.  He failed but the puck rebounded to Maxfield at the top of the crease.  Maxfield buried the puck to tie the game 2-2.  It was a repeat of the Laker’s first goal.

Still celebrating, the Lakers lost focus for a minute after Maxfield scoring and Edina loaded up to strike quickly.  They did.  A minute after Maxfield’s goal, the Hornets beat the Laker defense low and ended up with a point blank shot on Vidmar from the right side.  He somehow made the stop, but the puck rebounded to the edge of the left crease to Miquel Fidler who one-timed the puck into the upper left corner to put Edina up 3-2.

The Hornet attack did not stop after that goal; they took the ensuing faceoff and pressed Prior Lake’s defense in the Laker zone for most of the remaining game time.  The only scoring opportunities that the Lakers could develop for the rest of the period came of rushes.  Few resulted in good scoring chances.

Vidmar kept the game close.  He made some outstanding and sometimes unbelievable stops until he was pulled with a minute to go.  Edina’s Dylan Malmquist scored the empty netter to end the game and the scoring 4-2.

These two teams may not play each other again this season unless they meet in the 2AA Sectionals.  With seven teams playing in that sectional, the odds are they likely will play each other.

The players in the past

If you look at the current roster of high school Hornets, the team has 8 players from the 2009-2010 team that won the State Championship at Faribault beating Elk River 5-3.  The Hornets on that peewee A team posted a 59-6-1 record in the 2009-2010 season and won the state championship led by Dylan Malmquist.  Last Saturday, the high school Hornets lost their first game of the season to Elk River 3-1 on goals scored by the Elks’ Ben Johnson and Jake Jaremko.  Both Johnson and Jaremko were on the Elk’s peewee A team that lost to Edina in the 2010 state championship played at Faribault.

Seven players from Prior Lake peewee A 2009-2010 team are on this season’s Laker high school team.  That peewee A team lost big twice to the Hornets 11-1 ad 9-2 in their two meetings in 2009-2010 and never got out of their districts.

Five of this year’s Hornets are from the last year’s Bantam AA State Championship team and four are from Prior Lake’s Bantam AA team that won the Bantam AA State Consolation Title.  The two bantam AA teams played each other five times last season.  Edina won the first two games 6-3 and 6-2 and lost the last three meetings 4-2, 9-2, and 2-1.  The 2-1 lost almost eliminated the Hornets in the East Regionals forcing them to come back with a tough win over Woodbury AA 6-5 to make it to the state tourney.

Both teams have similar mixes by grade.  Edina has 6 seniors, 8 juniors, and 5 sophomores/freshmen; Prior Lake has 8 seniors, 5 juniors and 4 sophomores/freshmen.

There are some players that have moved in and out of the Edina High School program in the past few years.  Connor Hurley is gone from last year’s Class AA State Champs, playing for the Muskegon Lumberjacks in the USHL this season and for Notre Dame in the 2014-2015 season.  However, move in Cullen Munson (from Apple Valley) has returned and is currently leading the Hornets in scoring.  Prior Lake’s Tyler Bump has returned to the Lakers after playing two years at Shattuck-St. Mary’s posting 85 points (44 goals) in 110 games.  Bump played on Prior Lake’s 2009-2010 peewee A team.