East side hockey is back when St. Paul Johnson pushes Jefferson to overtime before losing 6-5.  Part of the reason the game ended 5-5 in regulation was the outstanding play of the Governors’ goalie, Sam Moberg.  Moberg stopped all 18 Jag shots in the first period.  Johnson’s Christian Sanda beat Jefferson’s goalie with two minutes left in the period to put the Govs up 1-0 at the end of the first period.  Jesse Solheid got the assist.  The first period was all Jefferson except on the scoreboard.  The second period was a wide open affair with 27 shots put on the nets by both teams.  Where Moberg stopped them all in the first period, the Jags’ goalie Mike Vande Waa stopped them all in the second period.  Jefferson scored twice in the second period.  The first came off a Jefferson power play one minute into the period.  The Jags’ Jay Johnson got the goal; Ryan Graff and AJ Robbel got the assists.  Jefferson got their second goal halfway through the period with Michael Goedderz scoring and Tristan Larson and Hunter Jacobs getting the assist.  Jefferson led 2-1 going into a wild third period that started with a Johnson power play.

Johnson opened the second period getting possession and controlling the puck in the Jefferson zone.  When the puck shot from the right side bounced left to Solheid in the faceoff circle low, Solheid shot the puck past Vende Waa to tie the game 2-2.  Carl Fish got the assist on the power play score.  Three minutes later, Johnson drew an elbowing penalty.  Johnson’s Anthony Seeley beat the Jag defense at the point off the face off in the Johnson zone and set sail for the Jefferson goal.  Seeley let fly with a shot from the right faceoff circle beating Vande Waa on the right side to put Johnson up 3-2.  A minute later, still on the same power play, Jefferson’s Johnson scored to tie the game 3-3 with Bob Lescarbeau getting the assist.  Ten seconds later, Jefferson’s Michael Goedderz scored to put the Jags ahead 4-3.  Noah Ganske and Talon Medure got the assists.  Goedderz’s goal was the only third period goal scored with both teams at even strength.  A Jefferson roughing penalty with ten minutes play put St. Paul Johnson on the power play.  A minute into the power play, Luke Heffernan’s shot from the blue line was slowed by the Jags’ goalie.  The puck trickled through Vande Waa into the area behind him and Seeley reached rapping the puck into the open net to tie the game 4-4.  With eight minutes to play, Johnson drew a holding penalty.  One minute into the power play, Jefferson scored again.  This time, Jay Johnson hit Weiland Parrish with a pass along from the right faceoff catching the Governors defense overshifted right.  Parrish, alone in the left slot, fired the puck into the open net from the weak side before the Govs goalie Moberg could recover.  The Jags led again 5-4.  The lead would last five minutes.  With just under two minutes to play, the Jags pulled a tripping penalty.  The Governors setup in the Jefferson zone and executed a neat scoring play.  The moved the puck to the left point area and took what appeared to be a long shot at the Jags net.  Instead, the puck slid along the ice to the Govs’ Ethan Ranum.  Ranum simply put his stick on the ice and deflected the puck into the net just inside the right pipe to tie the game 5-5 and send it into overtime.

St. Johnson had some scoring chances to win the game in OT, but Jefferson’s Lescarbeau got the game winner with two minutes left in overtime.  Larson and Ganske got the assists.  A total of 81 shots were put on the net in the game.  Moberg stopped 43 of 49 shots; Vande Waa stopped 27 of 32 shots.  Johnson, now 8-3-0, plays New Prague in the first consolation semifinal game Monday and have clearly identified themselves as a contender for the Section 4A ticket to the Xcel (along with Mahtomedi and St. Paul Academy).  The Jefferson loss did not hurt them in the 4A seeding, but a loss to New Prague Monday will.   Jefferson remains an unknown in the race to the Xcel.  They get there by winning Section 3AA and the Jags principle contenders in 3AA are St. Thomas Academy and South Suburban teams.  St. Thomas Academy is struggling in the early going, but still strong.  The top South Suburban teams (Prior Lake is dominating the South Suburban Conference with Lakeville North and Farmington chasing the Lakers) play in other sections.  Jefferson is favored to beat Woodbury in the championship semifinals Monday and the Jags are likely to face Eagan in the championship game.  If they do, that game will have an impact on their Section 3AA seed next February.  A lost would most likely dropped the Jags to a fourth or lower seed.

Edina beat St. Louis Park 7-3 in a game that matched Section 6AA teams.  The Hornets used a strong defense to stop the Orioles’ offense and in the process created a strange statistic for Hornet goalie Charlie deGrood.  The stats show that deGrood stopped no Oriole shots, but this corner of YHH can’t dispute that stat with no visible proof of a save.  The Hornets took a 1-0 lead at the end of the first period on a goal by Ben Tucker with Calvin Pugh getting the assist.  Edina managed only four shots on net in the opening period.  In the second period, eight goals were scored and the Hornets broke the game open taking a 6-3 lead into the third period.  Defenseman Jared Mickelson scored to put the Hornets up 2-0 with Evan Shoemaker getting the assist three minutes into the second period.  Bram Scheerer and Sam Walker teamed up on the third Edina goal, Scheerer getting the goal and Walker the assist.  Walker scored the fourth goal with Ben Copeland getting the assist.  With less than five minutes gone in the period, the Hornets led 4-0.  Park’s Willy Basill scored the Orioles’ first goal a minute after Walker’s score to cut the Hornet lead to 4-1.  Scheerer scored with six minutes left in the period to put Edina up by four again 5-1.  Luke Johnson got the assist.  Lewis Crosby scored the sixth goal three minutes later.  Casey Dornbach and Johnson got the assists.  St. Louis Park scored in the last two minutes of play to cut the lead to 6-3.  Patrick Bordewick scored both goals.  Basill and Jonathan Sorenson assisted Bordewick on the first score; Lexi Robello and Bauer Neudecker assisted Bordewick on the second score.  The period ended with the Hornets up 6-3.  Dornbach, Walker, and Copeland combined to get the final score of the game in the third period.  Dornbach got the goal, Walker and Copeland the assists.  Edina won 7-3.  They play St. Thomas Academy at Ridder Monday in the quarterfinals of the Schwan Gold Tourney.  The win over Park puts the Hornets firmly into a #2 or #3 seed at a minimum with Wayzata.  If Benilde-St. Margaret’s stumbles in their Sports Authority Tourney this coming week, that could change.  The loss keeps St. Louis Park in the middle of the Section 6AA rankings.  The Orioles were upset by Minneapolis (the Novas are a dangerous team) 3-1 before losing to Edina.  They head to Duluth to play in the Duluth Heritage Classic.  The Orioles draw Denfeld in the final game of the quarterfinal round Monday.

But that is not what happened Saturday.  After a scoreless first period where Eagan outshot the Cardinals by five, the game turned in the second period as a result of a couple Cardinal mistakes that led to Eagan goals.  Fond Du Lac fell behind not because of the line play.  The Cardinal lines were holding their own.  But the Fond Du Lac players made mistakes getting off the ice in line changes.  The Cardinals rolled three lines at the start of the the second period.  For those who think statistically (and from a Cardinal perspective) Fond Du Lac rolled one round of three line shifts every three to four minutes.  In the first six plus minutes of the second period, they rolled their three lines twice.  The Cardinals dodged some bullets, but the score was still 0-0.  The second and third lines struggled and were just escaping getting trapped in their own zone and being forced to over stay their shifts.  They were getting that lucky whistle that stopped play.  If Eagan could have switch lines and gotten fresh players on the ice against the second or third line, they could have scored.  But that did not happen.

The Cardinal’s top line had success in attacking the Eagan goal but could not score.  The other two lines were successful in keeping Eagan off the scoreboard.  At the start of round three, the top line again got pressure on the Eagan goal, but could not score.  Two of the top line players came off the ice and one didn’t.  That player stayed.  He got caught in his defensive zone and couldn’t leave the ice skating part of the second shift and in the process altered the rolling line changes.  When he came off his substitute was not one of the second line players.  The second line had lost its cohesiveness on that shift and that led to a scrambling defense in the Fond Du Lac zone and Eagan’s first score.

With seven minutes left in the second period, the Wildcats’ Nate Oeltjenbruns got the first goal of the game with Tony Juricko getting the assist.  Now trailing 1-0, the Cardinal bench came back with their top line that now included a player that had been on the ice for the previous shift.  Fond Du Lac rolled only two lines the rest of the period, trying to create some advantage but the two lines were tiring.  Eagan out shot Fond Du Lac 15-2 in the period, but overall, the Cardinals had recovered trailing by a goal going into the third period.