The juxtaposition of Elli Strittmater’s pregame music choice and Edina’s 4-3 win over Blake on Tuesday night could not be more striking. 

Strittmater, the Hornets’ starting senior goaltender, prefers the classical stylings of Tchaikovsky to the typical booming bass and computerized beats emanating from most high school students’ headphones. 

The complexities of Tchaikovsky’s works were at odds with the Hornets’ style of play on Tuesday, as the green-and-gold ground out the win, on crashing the net and blocking shots on enemy ice. 

“Pucks weren’t always bouncing our way, it wasn’t always pretty, but I love the gritty goals,” Edina coach Sami Reber said after the game. “That means we’re working hard, we’re getting to the net, and we’re doing the little things.”

The Hornets (1-1), the consensus preseason No. 1 team in Class AA, were coming off a 4-3 loss to Andover entering Tuesday’s game, and senior captain C.C. Bowlby said that the team is at its best when it leaves its egos off the ice. 

“I think we have a lot of skill on our team, but when we come together and work our hardest, it’s always better than individually trying to do everything,” Bowlby said. 

Bowlby netted a hat-trick in the win for the Hornets, scoring three of the team’s second-period goals. Sophomore forward Hannah Chorske also scored for Edina, knocking in a loose puck in the Blake crease to put the Hornets up 2-1. 

Madeline Wethington scored all three goals for Blake (1-1), including the first goal of the game where the Minnesota commit merely waltzed into the Edina zone unbothered and sent a wrist shot past Strittmater. 

Strittmater said that she immediately put Wethington’s goal out of her mind, and proceeded to find her chi en route to a 36-save performance. 

“Once I get into my own headspace, I don’t like to talk to anyone on the ice,” Strittmater said of her absence from the huddle during a timeout late in the third period. 

“I was feeling like I was in a really good spot, so I was just going to skate around and wait for the timeout to be over.”

The timeout concluded, and Strittmater and the Hornets shut down Blake’s last gasps to cement the victory, earning high praise from Reber. 

“This is a top team in the state that we just played, with some incredibly talented players,” Reber said. “For (Strittmater) to come up and make almost forty saves is unbelievable. Without her, we couldn’t have done it.”