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Duluth East's Austin Jouppi (8), who had assisted on two goals, crashed over Marshall's sophomore goaltender Alex Busick after the puck had already gone across the line to give East a 4-1 lead. Photo credit: John Gilbert

It seems to me, the UMD men’s hockey team better start playing again pretty soon! A whole crop of spirited high school hockey teams are filling our appetites for exciting hockey during UMD’s long holiday break, and this week’s tournaments at Mars-Lakeview and Heritage Center are two good examples why.

And then we have the Minnesota Wild. This is the most incredible run the Wild have ever made in the history of their franchise. When they battled at Nashville to get a 2-2 tie, and then won it in the 3-on-3 sudden-death overtime, it became the Wild’s 11th consecutive victory. And this isn’t one of those undefeated streaks, where you get to count ties; the Wild have won 11 straight games.

At Nashville Tuesday night, it was a tough battle throughout, and in the overtime, Jordan Schroeder got the puck and took off up the right side. Schroeder is a former Gopher from St. Thomas Academy, and he has been shuttled up and back to Iowa a dozen times already. Last time when he came up, he scored a huge goal, and went right back do to help the Iowa farm club. Then he came back up for the Nashville game, and he was in full flight up the right side with a defender playing the rush perfectly.

But Schroeder made a deft pass across the slot, angling it back a bit and feeding it while about 30 feet out and closing. Jared Spurgeon, racing up the left of the 2-on-1, is a right-handed shooter, which meant he had a great angle on the left side, and he swung as the pass arrived, drilling his show in for a 3-2 victory.

Go back to Numbers 9 and 10. No. 9 came when the Wild went up to Montreal, which is leading its division and has the league-standard goaltender in Carey Price. Well, maybe not. Devan Dubnyk is the new standard of NHL goaltending. The Wild came from behind 1-0 and 2-1 to gain a 2-2 tie, grabbed the lead in the third period, and hit an empty net for a 4-2 victory.

One night later, it was on to Madison Square Garden to face another top team in the New York Rangers and Henrik Lundkvist. If Price isn’t the best goaltender in the league, then Lundkvist undoubtedly is. Well...again, maybe not. While Dubnyk got the night off and Darcy Kuemper played, the Wild filled the net behind Lundqvist, who was pulled after making 9 saves and allowing 4 goals. The Wild built a huge lead and kept on scoring, for a 7-4 triumph.

This team is on fire. Bruce Beaudreau has the hot hand, the players seem to respect and admire him enough to do his bidding, Mikko Koivu is leading the way by example and by performance, and the raft of strong, balanced, quick, young forwards are responding to the sizeable impact of Eric Staal. Even while Zach Parise and Jason Pominville are having terrible trouble scoring, everybody else is picking up the slack and it doesn’t matter where the scoring comes from.

East goaltender Kirk Meierhoff got help from East defenseman Reid Hill (10) and Nick Lanigan (11), who sandwiched Marshall's George Grannis. Photo credit: John Gilbert

Back on the home front, somebody asked Mike Randolph if his Duluth East team’s 4-1 victory over Marshall meant anything to him. Mike deadpanned that, yeah, it did. In reality, it meant a tremendous amount. A year ago, the Greyhounds did what Randolph had said they would do, and scheduled Marshall to play at AMSOIL Arena. He said the Hounds would play Marshall or Hermantown as soon as they moved up from Class A to Class AA.

Marshall moved up to AA, so East played them. The shock, to Randolph, was how his guys took the night off and Marshall blasted the Greyhounds 4-0. So last week was the rematch. In the midst of a hectic schedule against all the 7AA and other top teams he can find, Randolph booked that Thursday game at Marshall.

So when the Hounds came out with a textbook performance of this year’s best East style, it reflected well. Marshall has good talent and quickness. “That’s a good hockey team,” Randolph said in his final assessment.

But this East team attacks with great hustle and tenacity. Even a heavy-hitting attack by the Topper didn’t get East off its game, and on a team where everybody seems to score as needed, sophomore Jack FitzGerald scored two goals, and Ryder Donovan, another sophomore, scored one, while junior Austin Jouppi assisted on both of FitzGerald’s goals and scored the clinching fourth game himself, on a goal-crashing rush that sent him hurtling over Marshall goaltender Alex Busick – yet another sophomore – as the puck snuck through.

Indicating how sweet avenging last year's loss, inside a jam-packed Mars-Lakeview Arena, East's Greyhounds poured off the bench after their 4-1 victory. Photo credit: John Gilbert

FitzGerald and Donovan scored less than a minute apart midway through the first period, and after Randy Erickson got one back a minute after those two, Fitzgerald scored again on a shot from wide to the left. The 3-1 score held through the second period, and at 4:34, Jouppi sealed it with his low-flying tally.

Marshall coach Brendan Flaherty didn’t have time to gather sympathy, however, he put his Toppers to work to get ready for this week’s Hilltopper Classic, the best area hockey holiday tournament, although not the only one. This one started off Tuesday afternoon when Cloquet-Esko-Carlton took a run at No. 1 Class A power Delano-Rockford, and while Delano won, it came only after the teams had tied 6-6 and gone to 3-on-3 for the second overtime.

Hermantown came out next, and after a long, tough battle with Class AA Bemidji, the Hawks took a 1-0 lead, and didn’t expand on it until a wild third period when they ran it up to 4-0. That created a perfect semifinal showdown between No. 1 Delano and No. 2 Hermantown.

It’ll be sectional playoffs before we see that kind of fierce play.