Another Duluth East season has come and gone, this one watching the curtains come down in an agonizing 5-4 double overtime loss to Rock Ridge in the 7AA semifinals. It was a season of both hope and struggle, a few steps forward and a few steps back, flashes of talent and stretches of absolute aggravation. The final game encapsulated it all, and while the end result stung, it was also a hint of what may be to come.

Toward the end of the season, the Hounds showed signs of making good on their promise. The 4-0 win over Duluth Marshall was an authoritative statement: a Hilltopper core built on the backbone of the East youth program failed to beat the Hounds across its three-season window, and was relegated to a quarterfinal road game in a season they had State Tournament aspirations. East nabbed a 3-seed that it frankly did not deserve, but I appreciated the tenacity to fight for it. The Hounds took care of business against Denfeld in the quarterfinals, applying the gas and showing some puck movement that wasn’t always there previously. Their forecheck in the first period against Rock Ridge harassed the Wolverine defense, and their decision to run three pretty even lines—one that had me raising my eyebrows a few weeks earlier—looked like it might be the secret to wearing down some thinner section opponents. Some whispers crept into my feed, friends and friendly foes alike wondering if Duluth East was back.

They didn’t quite keep it up. The later stages of the game had a few too many lapses into the selfish play that was so often their undoing, a few too many overcommitments and sloppy breakouts. An injury to leading scorer Zane Medlin certainly did not help the cause, either. The penalty that was their ultimate undoing was an entirely defensible one, denying Rock Ridge star Caz Carlson a breakaway. We could quibble about this or that decision, but in the end the team poured out its hearts across five periods of hockey against a slightly better team, and that, as a fan, is all I can really ask for.

This was often a frustrating team. My December hype was a high point until the run at the end, and I was irked enough by their inconsistent effort that I did not feel too bad about a rare midseason vacation. (Yes, Twitter followers, I apologize for my dereliction.) The final record, an unpleasant 9-16-2, does not really reflect the talent level. I thought they could be a .500 team this season, and I don’t think I was wrong about their ability. There were so many winnable games that slipped away, frustrating efforts against very beatable mid-tier opponents like Roseville and East Ridge and Holy Family and Totino-Grace and Champlin Park and Mounds View (ugh, that Mounds View game). Win half of those and I think the vibes around this team would have been very different, to say nothing of some of the games against better teams in which they put up a good fight. Any high school team will have its highs and lows, but the resilience was not always there for this group, and one had the sense they have to learn how to believe they can win. Maybe at the end they found some sense of it again, but it was an arduous process, a slow trod up a very tall mountain.

As always, I thank our seniors: workhorse Marcus Anttila, defensive stalwarts Landon Pierce and Henrik Spenningsby, reliable and steady goalie Nolan Nygaard, and additional contributors in Zach Vallie, Jackson Spoden, and Breck Burns. They endured a valley in East hockey and started the push to climb back out, and while they may not get to enjoy the rewards that I hope this effort will eventually produce, they were an important part of the rebuild.

The future, meanwhile, looks bright. This modern era of sports free agency of course guarantees nothing; while I hope the young guns are willing to build on this season, they may have opportunities dangled in front of them. But I would encourage them not to forget the bitter feeling of this double overtime loss and recognize they have an opportunity to atone for it and be the players who rebuilt East hockey. The bantam team is strong, and more talent is coming in. Everyone else in 7AA is likely to take a step backward next season: the rest are all senior-heavy, with lots of holes to fill and not a lot of obvious reinforcements on the way. This program is primed for something big, and as someone who has watched this movie many times now, I will politely submit that making at least one more run of it as a group would be a memory for a lifetime, and that it will not hold back any long-term development. But I respect the decisions people make, and even if there is a departure or two, this team will still probably be the 7AA favorite next season.

So let’s enjoy these final few weeks of high school hockey and get to work in the summer. This season gave hints of how great high school hockey can be, and a US gold medal at the Olympics is another healthy reminder of what it can mean to represent the place you’re from on a grand stage. Let’s go see if those hints can turn into something more.