White beats Red 5-2

With 5:33 left in the game, Joey Gimberlin/Sibley popped the puck into the Red net off a pile of players stacked in front of Red Goalie Atticus Kelly/St. Thomas Academy.  Gimberlin’s score was the game winner breaking a 2-2 tie, Ryder Donovan got the assist.  The Red followed that score with two more goals in the next 51 seconds to score a “hat trick” of sorts and break the game wide open winning 5-2.

The first 43 minutes of the game saw the Red defense controlling the play in the neutral zone.  The six Red defenders, led by Ethan Frisch/Moorhead and Nicholas Baker/Cloquet, quickly moved the puck out of their zone, controlled the play at the White blue line, and slowed the White attack and drove their forwards wide in the neutral zone.  It led to a 2-0 Red lead on goals by Joshua Long/Stillwater (assist going to Matt Gellerman/South St. Paul) and by Jack Haley/Chanhassen (assist going to Luke Mountain/Shattuck-St. Mary’s).

With three minutes left in the opening half, White’s Jett Jungels/Edina hit Sibley’s Brendan McFadden in the left faceoff circle in the Red zone with a nice pass.  McFadden drove the net beating Red’s goalie William Eckland/Edina with a delayed hard shot under Eckland’s left pad as McFadden went flying to the ice in the right side crease area.  McFadden’s score cut the lead to 2-1; Jungels got the assist.  The first half ended with Red leading 2-1.

Five minutes into the second half, the momentum shifted.  The Red defense started to scramble and the White defense led by Jack Lagerstorm/Shattuck-St. Mary’s and Dylan Egeland/East Grand Forks started to control the game at the Red blue line.  A Red defensive miscue allowed McFadden room on the left side with the puck.  McFadden beat Red goalie Kelly to tie the game 2-2.  That tie held until Gamberlin’s game winner.  Jack Jensen/Edina scored the insurance goal unassisted putting White up 4-2 and Levi Stauber/Duluth Marshall (assisted by Egeland) scored the final goal of the game.

Green ties Light Blue 2-2

This game set up a battle between the Green forwards focused on stopping Luverne’s Jaxon Nelson and Light Blue’s trying to find an effective set of wings for Nelson to skate with.  It took the Blues most of the game before they did.  In the first period, the Green focus on Nelson ended up with him being surrounded by Green skaters every time he neared the puck.  It still didn’t stop Nelson from feathering a nice pass to set up the first score.  Nelson bodied a couple of Green players off the puck and managed to get the neat pass off from the right boards at the Light Blue blue line.  His pass was just hard enough to beat the defender in neutral ice and soft enough to slow allow Blake McLaughlin/Grand Rapids to pick up the puck at full speed at the Green blue line center.  McLaughlin soloed in for the score beating Green goalie Jake Sibell/Providence Academy poke check attempt by driving the puck through the 5-hole for the score.  Nelson got the assist.

Green came back to tie the score 1-1 two minutes later.  Green’s line centered by Travor Janicke with Gavin Hain and Jake Seitz at wings scored.  Janicke put a hard shot on goalie Parker Kieve/Duluth East that rebounded left to Seitz at the left slot for the quick score.  After that goal, it became a battle of Nelson containment and Green forwards aggressive play.  Nelson was having some success, but could not score, playing with different sets of wings.  The Green forwards combined with the Green defense led by Taiyo Larson/Elk River and Jacob Wickham/Providence Academy had the advantage.

After the first half ended in a 1-1 tie, Green scored nine minutes into the second half and a weak side right play.  Wickham broke low right, took a pass from Payton Matsui/Sibley on the left side and one-timed the puck into the net to put Green up 2-1.  Matsui got the assist.  For the next 10 minutes, Green’s forwards continued their aggressive play and kept Nelson in check.  But Wadena’s Max Phillips was have some great shifts playing aggressive down low and physically maintaining puck control in close encounters resulting in pressure on the Green defense.  With five minutes to play, Phillips and Nelson hit the ice together.  Phillips, carrying the puck, drew enough attention to set up Nelson on rush.  Nelson carried the puck to the left faceoff circle and snapped a hard shot past Green goalie Jonathan Terwisscha/River Lakes to tie the game 2-2.

Royal Blue beat Gold 5-1

This game produced some surprises.  Gold’s line centered by Dev McCabe/St. Paul Academy with Hanson O’Leary/Roseau and Will Torgerson/Minneapolis at wings got off to a good start and brought pressure on the Royal Blue defense for most of the game.  That was not a surprise, but the Royal Blue line of centered by Demetrios Koumontzis/Edina with K’Andre Miller/Minnetonka and Dylan Schneider/Rochester at wing was.  That line combined to score three of the five Royal Blue scores with Miller scoring twice and getting one assist.  Koumontzis and Schneider each had two assists.

The Royals took a 3-1 lead at the end of the first half.  Miller scored and assisted defenseman Ryan Petersen/Hill-Murray on the opening goal.  Landon Overbo/Moorhead and Colin Schmidt/Wayzata combined on the second Royal score.  Overbo got the goal and Schmidt got the assist.  The lone Gold goal was scored by Nicholas Belich/Hibbing from the left faceoff circle.

The second half was dominated by the Royal Blue team.  Overbo teamed with Schmidt and Isaac Henkemeyer-Howe/Moorhead had some good shifts.  The Royals line of Garrett Freeman/Sartell, Lucas Newman/Rochester, and Willie Jackson/Forest Lake had their moments.  The Royal defense led by Grant Docter/Minnetonka and Brehdan Engum/Burnsville played well.  The Blues just put in a solid game winning 5-1.

Notes:

1. Light Blue goalie Andrew Beran posted some good numbers for St Paul Academy last year.  He won 13 games, losing only one and tying once.  He posted a 2.4 goals against average while stopping 94% of the shots on net.  SPA and Mahtomedi will battle again for Section 4A’s ticket to the Xcel.  As a result of realignment, Minnehaha Academy leaves 4A and joins Section 6AA in a move up strengthening the potential for a Zephyr/Spartan battle with Beran in SPA’s nets.

2.  Red goalie Atticus Kelly/St. Thomas Academy played on the St. Thomas JV team last season, but with all three varsity goalies graduating, Kelly has a good chance to be on the Xcel ice next March.

3.  Devin McCabe posted 46 points/15 goals in 24 games in his second season playing for St. Paul Academy.  McCabe in 49 varsity games the past two seasons has 78 points/29 goals.  If SPA teammate Matt Dahlseide returns, SPA has a good shot at playing at the Xcel next March. Dahlseide is an HP-16 National Camp Attendee this summer and was drafted by the USHL’s Sioux Falls team in the USHL’s Phase I draft last May. 

4. SPA is the Minnesota high school with the longest record of playing hockey in the state.  If the Spartans win Section 4A, they will be going to their first public school state tourney ever.  SPA played their first hockey game in 1905 and one of their early opponents was the University of Minnesota.

5. The Lake Conference had 14 players in the final 102 at St. Cloud; and the Duluth area high schools (Duluth East, Cloquet, and Hermantown) had 11 players; Iron Range (Grand Rapids, Hibbing and Virginia) had 5 players, South Suburban had 4 players, and the Metro East had 7 players not counting St. Thomas Academy or Hill-Murray.  Edina and Duluth East each had 6 players in St. Cloud; Sibley Area, and Minnetonka have 5 players.  Private schools had 15 players this year attending St. Cloud. 

6.  As a result of high school realignment for next season, there is no truly North, South or West Sectional next fall in Class AA.  Next March’s tourney could produce a Farmington, Prior Lake, St. Thomas Academy, Cretin Derham Hall, Blaine, Edina, Elk River, and St. Michael/Albertville state tourney.  Section 8AA loses three St. Cloud area teams with River Lakes, MAML, and Becker/Big Lake will leaving.  They will be replaced by STMA and Rogers, both verging on the northwest Twin Cities suburbs.  Gone are the days when a state hockey tourney guaranteed a north/south rivalry with a northeast team, a northwest team, and a backdoor Region 3 entry.

7.  The Class A sections also underwent re-alignment resulting in a more regional (geographic) grouping then past sectional (based on student population) grouping.  As a result, Class A will have only two guaranteed Twin City teams in the state tourney field (Section 2A covering Minneapolis and western suburbs) and Section 4A covering St. Paul and eastern suburbs).  Five of the other teams in the field will come from Northwest, Northeast, Southeast, Southwest, and West Central Minnesota.

8.  Offensive players that had good games Monday were by team; Green’s Jaxon Nelson and Max Phillips; Red’s Jackson Perbix/Elk River, Luke Mountain/Shattuck-St. Mary’s, and Landon Langenbrunner/Cloquet; Gold’s Devin McCabe and Wyatt Palmer/Shattuck-St. Mary’s; Green’s Trevor Janicke and Jake Seitz/Virginia; Royal Blue’s Demetrios Koumontzis/Edina and K’Andre Miller/Minnetonka; and White’s Ryder Donovan, Jack Jensen, and Brenden McFadden. 

8. Povidence Academy’s goalie Jake Sibell and defenseman Jacob Wickham will face tougher playoff opponents moving to Section 2A (Breck, Delano, Blake, and Orono).  They leave Section 5A sans Spring Lake Park.  Section 5A will be a mix of Central Minnesota schools with MAML and Chisago Lakes closest to the Twin City Suburbs.  MAML is a short drive across an almost hidden Mississippi River bridge that ends in downtown Elk River.  The only city team is Legacy Christian Academy that skates out of Blaine.  North Branch, Becker/Big Lake, Princeton, Sauk Rapids-Rice, Moose Lake Area, Mora, and Pine City are all outstate teams.