For years, Lakeville Hockey Association called Farmington’s Schmitz-Maki Arena home ice.  At a time when surrounding neighbors Burnsville, Jefferson, and Apple Valley Associations had home ice, the Lakeville Association had none.  It was not until 1994 that the Lakeville Association got its first sheet of ice and could actually allocate hours to its youth teams.  Ames Arena was built just south of the then new Lakeville High School (now Lakeville North) just off Highway 50.  It took hard work by the Lakeville Association and a generous work donation by the Ames Construction company (they did the earthwork at no cost) to make it happen.  Since then, Lakeville Association’s ice assets have grown to three sheets.  The Association is fielding 58 teams (Lakeville North and Lakeville South) this season; and Lakeville is celebrating Ames Arena’s 20 year anniversary.

Last night, the celebration continued as Lakeville North beat Edina in the Panther’s home opener of their 2014-2015 season 3-1 in front of a capacity crowd at Ames Arena.  The game was a re-match of last March’s Class AA State Tournament Championship game won by Edina and a precursor for what many believe will be next March’s Class AA Championship game.  As an Edina coach remarked while surveying a capacity crowd and the Lakeville High School marching band roaring in one corner of the arena, “look at this place!”.  

In their first game of the season, Lakeville North edged Farmington 6-5 in a game played at Farmington.  Panther goalie, Ryan Edquist, struggled in the opening game stopping 16 of 21 Tiger shots.  North’s Poehling line returned to last season’s form scoring five of the six Panther goals including the winner in the overtime.  Nick Poehling got the hat trick.  The Panther defensive corps led by a pair of Jacks (McNeely and Sadek), Angelo Altavilla, and the emergence of Luke Seper (Seper has grown 5 inches and put on 50lbs since being a sophomore Panther in 2012-2013) struggled against the Tigers’ forwards quickness in the Panthers’ zone.  They did not have a good night.

Edina beat Lakeville North last March 8-2 at the Xcel to win the Class AA title.   The Hornets lost six seniors from that championship team including their top two scorers.  But also gone from this year’s team is Ryan Zuhlsdorf, Kieffer Bellows, and Calvin Pugh.  All three played on the Edina championship team at the Xcel last season.  Zuhlsdorf and Bellows would have been juniors this year; Pugh would have been a sophomore.  They have been replaced with two freshmen, Sam Walker and Clayton Phillips; and with two sophomores, Bram Scheerer and Ben Copeland.  Walker, Phillips, Scheerer, and Copeland all played for the 2013 Machine Orange.

Despite the players lost, the Hornets opened their 2014-2015 season with four big wins (Holy Family Catholic, Champlin Park, Centennial, and Cretin-Derham Hall) and a 3-3 tie with Wayzata.  Their offense going into last night’s game is led by the line of Garrett Wait, Dylan Malmquist, and Matt Masterman.  Collectively, that line had posted 40 points/17 goals in the Hornets first five games.  But the question to be answered last night is how deep would the Edina offense be and how the Hornet lines would be matched against the Poehling led Panthers.   

Period 1: Top lines matched

The opening faceoff matched Edina’s Malmquist/Wait/Masterman line against the Poehling line.  For the rest of the period, the two lines played against each other until late in the period.  Typically, a big game played early in the season means each team opens cautiously.  That happened.  Most of the play for the first five minutes after the opening faceoff took place in the neutral zone and when the puck ended in the corner, some hits were delivered.  Thngs changed when the Hornets drew their first penalty.  It took the Poehlings thirty seconds of penalty time to score.  Setting up in the Edina zone, the Panthers worked the puck around the perimeter to the right side to Jack Poehling along the boards.  Jack fed his brother Nick breaking into the weak side at the lower edge of the faceoff circle.  Nick buried the puck with a hard one timer before the Hornets’ goalie Kobi Boe moving right to left could react to the shot.  North led 1-0.  Jack Poehling and Jack Sadek got the assists.

The Malmquist and Poehlings’ lines took the following faceoff.  Malmquist  and Wait had been on the ice before the penalty, during the thirty seconds of the penalty, and stayed on the ice for the center faceoff against the Poehlings.  A minute later, the Hornets turned the puck out of their zone, drove the puck into the Panthers’ zone, and made a line change.  The puck did not go deep and the line change was slightly slow.  It resulted in a Panther goal.  Ryan Poehling and Angelo Altavilla combined with passes to set up Nick Poehling on the left side again.  Nick beat Boe for the second time to put the Panthers up 2-0.  Ryan Poehling and Altavilla got the assists.  With the first period ending, both goalies, Boe and Edquist, had to come up with big saves and Edina started to change their tactics.  The Hornets started to shift the Malmquist line away from the Poehlings.  Edina needed the offense and Malmquist and company were spending most of their ice time in the Hornets half of the ice defending against the Poehlings.    

Period 2: Defensive duo matches

A late first period penalty, but Lakeville North on the power play for the first 71 seconds of the second period.  The Hornets killed the penalty easily and went on the attack.  The Hornets’ second lines were having success in slowing the Poehlings down and Malmquist’s line was gaining control of the puck in the neutral zone and trying to generate an attack.  The Hornets ended up outshooting the Panthers 13-2 in the period, but the majority were not good shots.  The Panthers countered with the Edina shift of the Malmquist line by always having with defensemen Altavilla and McNeely on the ice when Malmquist’s line took the ice.  The two blocked a number of Hornet shot attempts and consistently slowed the Hornets’ attack in the neutral zone.  What Altavilla and McNeely didn’t block, Edquist took care off until the five minute mark of the second period.

Lakeville North went to a power play at the five minute mark; they had moved the puck into the Hornets’ zone and set up on the power play only to have an Edina wing pick up the puck and lob a high pass over a leaping Lakeville defenseman at the center line.  Malmquist, breaking on the pass, caught up with the puck as it dropped behind the Panther’s outstretched glove.  The Hornet center soloed in on Edquist and beat him with a low right shot to cut the Panther lead to 2-1.  No assist was given. The period ended 2-1, Lakeville North leading. 

Period 3: Edquist comes up a winner

The third period opened with the Poehlings matched against the Malmquist line and for the first minute or so, the two lines went at each other and neutralized each other.  That was the only shift that the two lines faced each other.  After that, both top lines skated against the two or three lines.  But Malmquist’s line always had to face defensemen Altavilla and McNeely.  The Poehlings struggled also, but when on the ice tended to keep the puck in the Edina zone.  Despite have the home advantage with “last line change” on faceoffs, the Panthers did not try to match lines after the first period with the Hornets except for putting the two defensemen out against Malmquist’s line.

The third period turned into a battle of Edina’s #2 and #3 lines keeping the Poehlings in check and the Malmquist line being stymied by Altavilla and McNeely.  Nick Poehling scored an empty netter in the last minute of play to get his second hat trick in two games and to end the scoring at 3-1.  In the end, both goalies played well, but Edquist was the winner in last night’s game.  His play in the second and third periods was solid and within the flow of the Panther defense.  Edquist is starting to fit in as the Panthers begin their run to the state tourney this year.  

What is next?

Lakeville North plays three games next week; hosting Apple Valley and Burnsville and then traveling to Grand Rapids for a 3:00 PM game Saturday December 13th.  The Grand Rapids arena will likely be as jam packed as Ames was last night and more vocal (sans eight tubas).  If the Panthers win at Grand Rapids, they will solidify be the #1 team in the state; if not they could fall as low as #5.  But do they really care?  They beat Edina last night. 

The Hornets play Rosemount Saturday at Braemar as Edina hosts both Rosemount Girls and Boys teams in a double header.  Edina should win.  The Hornets will be off for two weeks after the Rosemount game before opening play in the Edina Invite Tourney Thursday December 18th against Grand Rapids.  The Hornets will play Elk River led by Jacob Jaremko and Reggie Lutz and Eden Prairie led by Michael Graham and Casey Mittelstadt in their two other Edina Invite games. 

The Edina Association has developed numbers of strong players that ebb away from the high school in different ways as Hornet youth players leave the Association’s bantam teams.  Youth A team players like Grant Mishmash (Shattuck), Ryan Zuhlsdorf (USHL), and Kieffer Bellows (USHL) are gone.  Benilde-St. Margaret’s has a number of former Edina youth A team players (Mark Kaske, Chase Jungels, Ben Newhouse, and Auggie Moore).  Kaske and Jungels are leading the Red Knights in scoring this season.   This year, the depth of the Edina Hockey program will be tested.  All the players on the roster last night played for the Edina Association’s 2010-2011 Bantam A/B or Peewee A/B teams.  The majority played for the association’s B teams.