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BHS: Greenway Dethrones Hermantown

By Peter Odney , 02/27/19, 11:30PM CST

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Donte Lawson scored early in the second overtime to lift the Raiders to a 3-2 win over the Hawks.


Greenway's Donte Lawson (13) scores the game-winning goal for the Green Wave on Wednesday night in the Class 1A, Section 7 finals.

Lawson Sends Greenway to State

In the aftermath of Greenway’s 3-2 double-overtime win over Hermantown, Ben Troumbly held a bleeding hand. Cameron Lantz hugged anyone wearing green. Head coach Grant Clafton dripped with the water from a green Gatorade bottle. 

With reporters in front of him and his players to his right, Clafton told the world he knew this would happen. 

“You can ask every text message in my phone, every interview I did, we were winning this game,” Clafton said. “The mindset never changed. We were winning this game, and that’s what it was. End of discussion.”

For nearly five periods,  the section's No. 1 seed and heavily favored Hermantown Hawks (22-4-2) and the oft-heartbroken Greenway Raiders threw haymakers at each other.

The Raiders (15-13) got on the board first with a goal from the slot by Troumbly, but the Hawks stormed back with two goals of their own, one from Aaron Pionk and one from Minnesota-Duluth commit Blake Biondi. 

Raider goaltender Logan Wright battled a handful of butterflies early in the game, fighting the puck on his way to 20 saves in the first period alone. Wright credited his goalie coach Derek Peterson with calming his nerves between whistles. 

He just said (to) most importantly, have fun,” Wright said. “Don’t worry about what the crowd is saying. Just worry about the puck.”

Wright finished the game with 48 saves for the third-seeded Raiders.

“Logan Wright was phenomenal. I don’t know what else to say,” Clafton said. “He was ice-cold in the net, and he gave us a chance. He gave us an opportunity to win this game with the way he played in the first period because I did think we came out a little soft and flat,” Clafton added. 


Hermantown's Aaron Pionk (11) scores in the first period of the Hawks' loss to Greenway.

Troumbly tied the game at the 11:13 mark of the second period, lifting a backhand shot past Hermantown goaltender Cole Manahan after executing a nifty play while carrying the puck out of the Hawks’ corner. 

Just over three minutes in the game’s second extra session, Greenway defenseman Aaron Elich carried the puck into the Hermantown zone and sent a shot at Manahan that bounced into the slot to a swooping Donte Lawson who buried the game-winner. 

“He’s very crafty at getting open, and you know what, when you have players like that, you try to help them on little parts of their game, but you don’t take away Donte Lawson’s high-end ability.”

The win ends the Hawks’ unprecedented run of postseason dominance, where their nine straight trips to the state tournament have long caused grumblings among other programs and fans about Hermantown's repeated refusal to play in Class 2A.  

Clafton will hear none of the complaints.

“I don’t want to pull anything into the single-A, double-A stuff like that, but you know what?” Clafton said. “It does not matter. The ‘poor me,’ all this stuff,” Clafton continued. 

“If you believe, you can get it done. You gotta believe.”


Logan Wright stopped 48 of 50 shots in the Raiders' win.

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