News & Articles

Hermantown’s Kade Kohanski (11) and Zam Plante try for a rebound against North Shore goaltender Chase Mallory in the 12-0 Hawks victory to open Section 7A play. Note the banners hanging at Hermantown arena.

The hockey hopes of northeastern Minnesota rode from suburban Duluth to Saint Paul on the Hermantown Hawks bus earlier this week, for the start of the Class A state hockey tournament. We don’t have a true northern team in Class AA, because a very good Grand Rapids team fell 3-1 to an outstanding Andover outfit, so Hermantown is “our” only entrant in the two tournaments.

Can we expect unanimous support from all our area high schools to get behind the highly skilled Hawks?
Doubtful. Speculation was that among the eight Class A schools, only three teams have a legitimate shot at winning the big trophy – Hermantown, Warroad and Mahtomedi. And all three, the speculation goes, should be moving up to challenge the big boys in Class AA.

It’s not envy, so much as growing weary from the automatic tournament trips assured to Hermantown and its excellent program.

Hermantown carried a 26-2 record with them into the tournament, having lost only to Cretin-Derham Hall and Maple Grove, both among the favorites in the Class AA tournament. The Hawks own victories over AA powers Benilde, No. 1 ranked Hill-Murray, Wayzata, Rosemount, Eden Prairie, St. Thomas Academy and Grand Rapids, and also beat both Mahtomedi (3-0) and Warroad (2-1) among Class A co-favorites – who must meet in Friday’s semifinals if they both win Thursday.

If Hermantown gets past New Prague, and Minneapolis has gotten past Alexandria, a semifinal between Hermantown and Minneapolis would have roughly the same vocal imbalance as when Edina defeated Henry Boucha’s Warroad team in the all-one tournament at Met Center.

Observers also suggest that the Class AA tournament might be the widest-open ever, and it might be, with all the favorites dodging upsets to make it to Xcel Energy Center. Some of the wisest observers think it could come down to an Edina vs. Hill-Murray final, but I think Cretin-Derham Hall and Maple Grove have excellent chances. And Thursday’s final game, with Andover taking on Moorhead, could be the best game of the first round.

Don’t sell Andover short. Coach Mark Manney said the Huskies are only a one-line team, but after they shelled Forest Lake 10-2 in the 7AA semifinals, I told him that a one-line team is OK, if they score every time they take the ice!

And a crop of smart, skilled defensemen led the way against Grand Rapids. The Huskies blocked 28 Grand Rapids shots – 14 of them in the third period.
 

Kobe Roth almost leaped over the glass to celebrate scoring his second goal of Friday’s game at 0:31 of overtime – his second of the 3-2 victory, with Wyatt Kaiser (5) assisting on both.

And next year? Consider that goaltender Dane Calloway is a sophomore, as is Max Plante and Dallas Vieau, while Zam Plante, and the brilliant Ty Hanson, plus George Peterson, Wyatt Carlson, Kade Kohanski and Matthew Kauppinen are all juniors.

You might as well memorize their numbers now, because they’ll all be back.

Hermantown coach Pat Andrews said after the Hawks won 7A, it never gets old, it’s always a new thrill to watch different players let loose with all the emotion from winning another trip to the state tournament.
Andrews has done a masterful job of guiding the Hawks to not only the state tournament, but to a creative and productive style of totally unselfish team play. We can only wonder if any Hermantown coaches, students, parents, administrators or fans ever give any thought to the reality that young hockey players at every other Class A school in Section 7 also might desperately crave to savor that same feeling.

If Hermantown moves up, the Hawks will be a Double-A favorite every year. Every year!

And Denfeld, Hibbing, Greenway, International Falls, Proctor, North Shore, Rock Ridge, Ely – all of them – might someday have a chance to go to the state tournament. That would give us two teams to cheer for at this time of year.

NCAA tournaments

UMD’s athletic teams face a gigantic week of challenges, particularly the women’s hockey team, and the men’s and women’s basketball teams, while the men’s hockey team might face every bit as large a challenge to try to reach NCAA stature.

The Bulldogs women made the 11-team NCAA field but have a daunting task at Ridder Arena, facing Harvard 6 pm Thursday, even though they beat the Crimson 5-2 and 4-3 in Cambridge, Mass., early in the season, because the winner must take on Minnesota, the host of the regional and a team that will be more than just hungry in Saturday’s qualifying game for the Frozen Four.

The Gophers were ranked No. 1 in the WCHA and the nation until Ohio State rallied from a 2-0 deficit in the third period for two tying goals, then beat the Gophers 3-2 in overtime. That dropped Minnesota to No. 2 behind Ohio State.

Maybe the Gophers will be complacent, having whipped No. 8 UMD 5-2 in the WCHA semifinal. But I doubt it. Time for Elizabeth Giguere and Gabbie Hughes to prove their Patty Kazmaier Award finalist stature and pull off the upset.

In basketball, UMD’s women (24-4) have rattled off 16 straight victories to gain the No. 3 seed in the Central Region, held at Hays, Kansas, where they meet No. 6 Nebraska-Kearney (23-7) Friday. Fort Hays (28-3) is No. 1 seed and meets MSU Mankato (21-6). Semifinals are Saturday with the final on Monday. Brooke Olson leads the Bulldogs offense and a tight defense has been their key all season. On the men’s side, UMD (25-5) is No. 2 seed in the Central Region at Sioux Falls, S.D., where they meet No. 7 Washburn of Topeka, Kansas (21-10) in Saturday’s first round. Semifinals are Sunday and the final on Tuesday, with top-seeded Augustana (24-3) leads a strong contingent from the Northern Sun. MSU Moorhead, which beat UMD for the NSIC playoff title, is seeded No. 6.

The UMD men’s hockey team dropped out of the top four in the NCHC by splitting with St. Cloud State in their regular-season final series.

UMD won in a thrilling overtime Friday game, then lost 2-0 as goaltender David Hrenak was brilliant against 34 shots and his ganging-up defense gave him great protection. That regulation victory lifted St. Cloud State ahead of UMD for fourth and gained the right to play host to the Bulldogs in a best-of-three league quarterfinal series starting Friday.

If it goes the limit, the Bulldogs and Huskies will have played seven times from Feb. 10 to March 13. The critical nature of this series is that both UMD and St. Cloud State are strong teams that could win the league playoff and the NCAA title – but one of them won’t advance to the NCHC Frozen Faceoff at Xcel Center next weekend.

The Huskies rose to No. 7 in the Pairwise and should be solidly in for an NCAA berth. UMD dropped to No. 11, however, and could vitally use a couple victories at St. Cloud and a strong performance at Xcel to solidify its stature for the NCAA.

Elsewhere in NCAA competition, Duluth’s Gianna Kneepkens and Wayzata’s Jennifer Johnson wound up 1-2 in scoring as freshmen at Utah, and they led a stirring run through the Pac-12 tournament as No. 6 seed.

The Utes beat California 66-60 as Kneepkens, the former Marshall Hilltoppers sharpshooter, scored 20, then they upset No. 3 Washington State 70-59, and topped Oregon 80-73 in the semifinals as Kneepkens led the team with 24 points. After beating No. 3 and No. 2, Utah made a serious bid against No. 1 Stanford by reaching a 32-32 tie but the Cardinal put an extremely quick defender on Kneepkens and blocked out Johnson underneath, denying them the ball and scoring chances while whipping the Utes 73-48.

Kneepkens was held to 3 points and Johnson to 2 by the highly skilled Stanford outfit. But Utah’s performance solidified an NCAA berth, so we’ll get a chance to see why Kneepkens was the only Utah player to make the all-Pac-12 women’s team.

 In Saturday’s 2-0 St. Cloud State victory, team defense was in evidence as all five Huskies skaters defended goalie David Hrenak from UMD attackers. Photos by John Gilbert.