The Northern Wings are based in the Duluth area and draw players from Northeastern Minnesota.  They have played Shattuck’s U16 team four times this season and have lost all four games.  This past weekend, the Wings lost at Shattuck 11-2 and 8-1.

Minnesota Northern Wings

The Northern Wings were definitely the underdogs playing at Shattuck-St. Mary’s this past weekend.  The Wings are the alter ego of the Sabres; the Mystery Alaska to the New York Rangers.  Their players were widely recruited mostly from Northern Minnesota.  The Wings have high school players drawn from 11 different high school programs.  Hermantown has six players on the Wings roster at this time; Two Harbors has two; Greenway has one; Moose Lake has one; and Superior has one.  The Northern Wings’ approach to their “before and after” season is low key playing mostly games in the before part.  A number of the players play football or soccer for their high school.  They were no shows for the two game weekend series with Sabres.  At this point of the Wings season, the Wings are juggling their lineups based on the various commitments the players have with other sports.  Practices are not regular.

The players basically show up to play hockey.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Most will play the 2014-2015 Minnesota High School Hockey season and come back to play for the Wings at the Minnesota District playoffs.  That is when the “rubber hits the road”.

Shattuck Sabres

Shattuck-St. Mary’s takes their hockey seriously.  They have a program that starts with their bantam team and spreads out from there.  In all, on the boy’s side, Shattuck fields five teams (Bantams, U16, Midget AA, Midget AAA, and Prep).  Approximately 100 Shattuck students play hockey on those teams.  The Sabres’ hockey program is well organized and well coached.  As a result, they have won numerous national titles.  Shattuck’s U16 team this season consists of 13 players from last season’s U14 National Champs; 6 players from last season’s Midget AA team that posted a 32-15-8 record; and one returning U16 player (Niko Karamanis/61 points-28 goals in 61 games).  The Sabres opened their season three weeks ago beating the Northern Wings twice.  Shattuck is not a before and after team, it plays a full schedule and will continue to play games throughout the 2012-2015 season.

The Sabres U16 team posted a 34-30-3 record last season and represented the Minnesota District at the U16 Tier I Nationals played in Green Bay WI last April (beat the Long Island Gulls 10-7, lost to the Chicago Mission 4-2 and lost to the Chicago Young Americans 3-1).  The Sabres did not make it out of pool play.  The U16 team has not won the national title in the past five years, but they have made the championship game twice (2009 and 2010).  Four Shattuck players on the Sabres’ U16 team come from Minnesota (Erik Dahl and Austin Pratt/Lakeville, Mason Palmer/Plymouth, and Bennett Norlin/Farmington).

The contrasts between Shattuck’s U16 and the Northern Wings team could not be greater off the ice; on the ice the game Saturday proved to be interesting.  The Wings played better than expected.      

Saturday’s Game

On the ice for Saturday’s game at the Sabres’ New Arena, the Wings played Shattuck close until the Shattuck blew the game open with 5 goals in the last six minutes of the second period.  The late second period blowout was not an unexpected thing to happen.  There was only a three minute rest period between the first and second periods and the ice was not cleaned.  With the ice getting rougher and slower and the Wings tiring, the Sabres took over the game and ran away from the Wings to take a 9-2 lead into the third period eventually winning 11-2.

The Wings trailed the Sabres 3-2 at the end of the first period of Saturday’s game.  Bryceton Butkiewicz/Moose Lake scored twice for the Wings.  Matt Valure (2012 Top 50 peewee pick) assisted on both goals; defenseman Peter Grytdahl assisted on one.  Valure made a great pass from the left end boards to hit Butkiewicz in the right slot area for the Wings’ second score.

The Wings’ defensive passing in their zone kept Shattuck in the game early.  It was off.  Shattuck saw that the Wings defense was playing loose with the puck and had the Sabres’ forwards playing high in the Wings’ zone looking to pick off passes and counterattack.  It worked.  Errant Wing passes, especially at the Northern Wing blue line, set up the first two Sabre goals. 

On the first Shattuck score, the Wing defense gave up the puck in the high slot in front of their net. The puck slid to Brandon McManus/Newport Beach CA.  McManus one timed the puck into the net beating Wings’ goalie Kirk Meierhoff/Duluth East high right.  That goal put the Sabres up 1-0.  Austin Pratt/Lakeville South got the assist. 

Two minutes later, another Wings defensive miscue resulted in the puck knocked loose in the low slot.  The Sabres’ Robert Blueger picked up the loose puck skated into the top of the crease, broke left and roofed the puck into the upper left corner with a nice backhanded shot.  Blueger’s goal put Shattuck up 2-1.  Shattuck’s Alex Melia got the assist.

After Shattuck’s Tyler Inamoto scored unassisted with 7 minutes left in the opening period (the goal put the Sabres up 3-2), the Northern Wings pressured the Sabres for extended periods of time in the Sabres’ zone as the first period ended.  The Wings could not score.  Shattuck’s goalie David Tomeo/West Caldwell NJ made some nice plays to keep the score 3-2 going into the second period.

The key play of the game came halfway through the second period.  The score was still 3-2 when Tomeo went to the left corner to clear the puck from his zone.  The puck was batted around and failed to clear leaving Tomeo to scramble back to the crease making several stops outside the crease along the way.  The key stop came with Tomeo sliding backwards on his stomach to stop an attempted Wings’ shot at the open net.  The rolling puck was picked up by Shattuck forward who turned it into a rush on the Wings’ net and a score.  Caleb Rule/Lansing MI got the goal to put Shattuck up 4-2.  After that, the Sabres went on to add 5 more goals in the period.

Shattuck’s Blueger scored the hat trick in the game.  No other Sabre scored more than once.  Charlie Dovorany/Wausau WI, Shattuck’s leading scorer in the early season, had three assists.  The Wings lost Saturday 11-2 and lost again Sunday 8-1, but for a Mystery Alaska type team, they did better than expected.

What is next?

Shattuck’s two wins on the weekend were their sixth and seventh of the season.  The Sabres are 7-1 going into a Wednesday game with Blades at home.  Shattuck beat the Blades last week 4-1.  The Sabres will host defending U16 Tier I national champs, Team Wisconsin, in a three game series this weekend. 

The Blades are ranked the highest of Minnesota District Tier I playoff teams.  The Blades are ranked #17 (out of 162 teams).  The Magicians’ U16 team is ranked #42; they played three games this weekend beating the Rochester NY Monarchs 3-2, losing to Honeybaked 7-0, and losing to Pittsburg Esmark Stars 2-1.  The Northern Wings are ranked #112.  Shattuck and Bauer Emerson have not reported enough games to be ranked.     

The Wings are in the “before part” of their teams’ season.  The “after part” will be basically the Minnesota District Tourney.  The Wings have struggled in part because their roster is fluid.  The Wings are not done playing Shattuck; the two teams are in the same pool at the Duluth Heritage Tourney played October 24-26 in Duluth.  The Madison Capitals and the Chicago Fury are the other two teams in the Wings’ pool.  The Minnesota Blades, Team Wisconsin, Thunder Bay Kings, and Kansas City Mavs Elite are in the other pool.

The Minnesota District Tier I Playoffs could start as early as Tuesday, March 10, 2015; that is two days after the Minnesota State High School Tourneys have been played.  USA Hockey’s Central District Tier I Playoffs (which includes Wisconsin) will be played March 13-15, 2015 in St. Louis MO.  New York District’s playoff is also played March 13-15.  It seems unreasonable to schedule Minnesota’s playoffs on a Tuesday.