Tag Archives: hockey

Building from Within

Through seven games there has been no obvious moment of arrival, no loud statement. But slowly, steadily, the Duluth East Greyhounds are stirring to life. They have some talent, flashing some genuine skill and a deadly power play. There is some real depth. They play feisty hockey, willing to throw some hits without tipping over the edge. After the dark depths of last season, Greyhound hockey is starting to resemble its great legacy again.

The Hounds have taken care of the teams they should beat. They are winless in four games against top 15 teams, and while the first two were lopsided, the more recent ones show signs of progress. First, they took Holy Angels to overtime, pestering a rising power and coming very close to a tie; later, after struggling in the early going against Eden Prairie, they seized the initiative and pushed the Eagles to the brink in a 4-3 loss. They’ve also got a tie against Grand Rapids, a statement to a rival and section favorite that they can hang with them. East hockey is entertaining again.

The key to the fresh look is a youth movement, which is especially pronounced at forward. Marccus Anttila is the lone senior on the top three lines. Sophomore Zane Medlin is starting to flash his skill, leading the team in scoring and looking genuinely scary when he gets loose. Mckennen Kramer and Fin Kuzmuk have some good moves; if they can round into complete hockey players with vision on the ice, they will be a lot of trouble for opposing teams. Jax Edgerton is a candidate for most improved player, while Easton Orhn adds some welcome fire. The lower lines can play intelligent system hockey and hold their own much more often than they could the past few couple seasons.

The defensive corps is solid. Liam Brooks is the showstopping sophomore star, perhaps the best next-level Hound prospect since Ryder Donovan. But Landon Pearce and Henrik Spenningsby are stalwart seniors who have gutted it out through rough years and are now team leaders, Wally Lundell’s big presence makes a difference, and Greyson Medak is contributing right away, too. Throw in a veteran in net in Nolan Nygaard and there is a lot to like on the back end.

There are limitations. Even if Medlin rounds into form rapidly, scoring up front is going to have to be by committee. The team needs to keep flushing out the dumb habits that aggravated me so thoroughly over the past two seasons. There have been and no doubt will be plenty more youthful moments. The coaching staff needs to keep working through its collection of interesting pieces, find combinations that click, and put kids in positions to succeed. (They also need to bring back the black jerseys.) The right-sized schedule gives them a chance at a winning season while still providing a healthy number of real tests against quality teams. I could see them cracking the top 25, but they are not yet the top-15 type of squad we came to expect out of East for decades.

But, in this season’s Section 7AA, what they are is enough for legitimate contention. No team here is elite. Rock Ridge has the flashy top line, but has some question marks in back as they look to play complete games against good teams. Grand Rapids has a lot of returning experience but has not looked particularly impressive in the early going. Undefeated Duluth Marshall has a solid core of seniors and juniors and will likely peak this season; it’s a golden chance for the Hilltoppers to cash in on a quality core. Their high end is not overwhelming, though, and their paper-thin schedule raises real questions about their preparedness for serious playoff tests.

There is a deeper current to my optimism, too: no matter where this season goes, this doesn’t look like a flash in the pan. The Duluth East youth teams, all the way down, are somewhere between good and great. There is legitimate talent, and it will be flowing into the Heritage Center in the coming years. It is a testament to patience, to building from within and the hard work of a lot of good people who knew that the valleys this program has faced this decade could not hold up: the east side of Duluth just has too strong an infrastructure for a good community-based hockey program. Now I will make a few more requests: a renewed student presence, and the families coming together as a group instead of hanging out in clumps of twos or threes. (Can we also get more than three cheerleaders, and perhaps a ten-piece band that shows up for ten games a year instead of a 50-person ensemble that appears at random with such volume to render speech in the Heritage Center impossible? As long as I’m dreaming, I might as well make the request.) Let’s take care of our cultural inheritance, please.

Enough of the soapbox, though. To all of my current and future friends in the program, keep putting in the work; for all the long nights and occasional dramas, we’re doing a lot right. If you’re one of my casual East fan readers, get out there and see this team. It’s not peak Dave Spehar or Garrett Worth Greyhounds, but it is lively, competitive hockey, and a healthy reminder of what this program, and this sport, can be. Just keep building.

After the Darkest Days

I don’t have a whole lot to say in memoriam of the Duluth East 2024-2025 season. It is hard to sugarcoat 4-23. I will give credit for effort, for gutting out a long season, for loyalty when kids could have jumped ship. They made it through, bloodied but honorable, and in a weird way this season ends with a less sour taste than 2021-2022, which came with some ugliness, or 2023-2024, when I thought the team was capable of more than it achieved.

Those four wins were worth something in the end. The victory over Andover was genuinely impressive, as the Huskies rounded more into form and are a mild favorite to win a section championship on Thursday. And if East could have won just one game this year, most people associated with the program would have chosen the one with Duluth Marshall. They pulled that one out with a solid effort from start to finish, a display of what their defense could be, and a diverse cast of forwards doing enough positive things to get the win. I do wish the program had made more effort to match the schedule to the talent level, but I understand why it wasn’t, and I hope for at least some adjustments next season.

This team also finished respectably. They fought back from three down to avoid infamy in a loss to Anoka, and after a painstaking start, they gave top-seeded Rock Ridge a decent run in the quarterfinals. No one will remember it as a moment of greatness, but there was no quit, and I enjoyed watching some of the younger kids come along. The line of Easton Ohrn, Mckennen Kramer, and Cole Licari was a fun little wrecking crew by season’s end, and players like Marccus Anttila and Fin Kuzmuk have some real skill that could be harnessed for good. There was real progress among the underclassman defensemen of Landon Pearce, Henrik Spenningsby, and Wally Lundell, and goaltender Nolan Nygaard did yeoman’s work as he endured barrage after barrage of shots. There are pieces to start climbing back out of this hole next season, and the long-term trajectory looks to be generally upward.

Just how far upward will depend on youth player retention. Duluth hockey does not have the numbers to split several ways and put out a serious contender, and when one looks at the Bantam rosters for this age group, a minority of the players going through ended up at Duluth East. Some went to Marshall, but Marshall itself then lost some players, and in the end the Toppers’ season, when weighted for a cupcake schedule, was not all that far off from East’s. While Marshall has the returning players to be better next season, they’re also approaching a situation where their numbers are scarily low, and this group of East youth players who became Toppers does not look like the start of some seismic shift in Duluth hockey.

Even mighty Hermantown, the dominant local power since East fell off at the end of the 2010s and now an occasional destination for skilled Hounds youth, is seeing some advantages recede, as Hibbing showed the world with a section-shaking win this past Saturday. Looking at youth scores, East is right there with the Hawks over the next few age groups, and with Hibbing surging and a drop-off in Grand Rapids looming after next season, the road to State may not be all that much easier in 7A than it is in 7AA. It is within East’s ability to step in and become the Duluth area power—and a 7AA front-line contender—again in the next few years. They just need the buy-in and the leadership to do it.

Those decisions are beyond my control, and I will be along for the ride wherever it leads. I will conclude by thanking our seniors: Caden Cole, Kyle Peterson, Timmy Balthazor, Christian Cochran, and Ryan Jensen. They stuck it out through a tough season, and they provided some good moments. They are part of the bridge on to whatever may come next for Duluth East hockey. May that era be a brighter one.

Tending the Flame

For the past five Duluth East hockey seasons, I have sometimes felt like a chronicler of dramatic upheaval. From 2019-2022, there was plenty of theater, if often the wrong kind: a first losing season in decades, the craziness of the pandemic, the saga of an outgoing coach, some ugly headlines over fights. 2022-2023 saw a fleeting renaissance; 2023-2024 had elevated expectations after that run that never quite came together. There were storylines left and right, and I never suffered for things to write, even if I did not always enjoy writing them.

This season? Well, we endure. A 2-12 record speaks for itself. I could grumble about goalie rotations and fourth line shifts; there certainly have been some winnable games that slipped away, and a record of, say, 5-9 or 6-8 would be enough to be a legitimate top four seed contender in what passes for Section 7AA this season. But I am not here to criticize a lot. The team is trying, and its talent level doesn’t lie. They are young, trying to bring players along, making do with what is here.

It is hard not to ponder the decline with some bitterness. I could blame certain adults’ egos or wax philosophical about cultural and demographic drift. Some will blame the coaching change, but the start of the downturn preceded Mike Randolph’s ouster. Duluth Marshall pulled more above average kids from the youth ranks than it ever has for a variety of scattered reasons, though they too have now suffered defections that have left them only a marginal contender. Add in a few other departures or decisions simply to opt out and the sheer number of AA Duluth East youth players who are not on the Duluth East High School roster is the largest it’s ever been. While it isn’t realistic to expect perfect retention anymore, even marginal improvement would be worth a number of wins. A new dad friend points out we are moving through the youth group that never played Squirt A hockey, and when one watches head-down dangles out through the crease in one’s own zone even by some of the relatively skilled players, it’s not hard to jump to conclusions about missed lessons. When this team actually moves the puck, it has some life to it.

I confess I am watching less than I have in the past. Even in the stands there are many new faces, fewer buoyant pregame gatherings or shared road trips, more people isolated in their own worlds. But there are still flickers of what make this sport, and devotion to a program, so incredibly fun. A well-played contest with Andover, down but still dangerous, that ended in an overtime win brought back a little of that old feeling. They hung in there with Grand Rapids alright in the second meeting. There are some pieces among the younger players who can be a foundation of something; perhaps not a section champion next season, but at least a top four seed with a better record. When the energy builds, high school hockey can still build to something that no junior league or AAA program can ever muster.

But we are where we are now. Forget any scheme to pull a playoff upset, forget building a case for a certain seed in sections. One some level, forget winning too, though I don’t want it to devolve into participation trophy hockey, either. Build basic skills and try to get some momentum. Keep the seniors together, but start trying to build some chemistry among the younger players for the future. Work on conditioning, and pick an official starter in net. Uphold the honor, and find ways to improve relative to the competition.

I am reasonably optimistic there are brighter days ahead. The youth teams, collectively, appear to be on the upswing, and it sounds like retention should be somewhat better going forward. I have some lingering worries, but the fundamentals for hockey on the east side of Duluth still look decent; even better, perhaps, than they have been in the near past, with Hermantown’s edge on the local scene eroding somewhat. There is something here to be harnessed. Until then, I watch on, finding what I can in it, still in the thralls of a sport that pulls together glory days past and a promise of the future into the fleeting intensity of an adolescent present.

Keeping Hope on Ice

This was a hard season of Duluth East hockey to assess, and I deliberately took my time in penning this annual postmortem. Let’s not pretend otherwise: it was a tough year. In a season that began with high hopes after the last one’s rise from the ashes, the Hounds’ 10-16-1 record was not pretty. While the schedule was one of the toughest out there, not all the frustrating results could be chalked up to superior opponents. It was the sort of season that made it very easy to lapse into frustration or resignation that whatever could go wrong probably would, and staying positive took serious effort. 

Nonetheless, there were some regular season achievements: these Hounds opened well, playing very competitive hockey against quality teams like White Bear Lake and Shakopee, and it seemed like they could contend. Those early good results against the state’s best dried up as the season went along, with the possible exception of a surprisingly competitive showing against superpower Minnetonka. They did, however, play reasonably good hockey within the section and secured a 3-seed with some tight wins against many 7AA rivals, to say nothing of some very close calls with their great rival who went on to become a State Tourney semifinalist. A different break in overtime in the first meeting with Grand Rapids or a held 3-0 third period lead in the second and East might have had a bit more swagger come sections. But what-ifs remain just that.  

This team also deserves some credit for not completely going to pieces. They saved perhaps their best game for the playoffs, when they took apart Duluth Denfeld in the quarterfinals. Thanks to Kole Kronstedt’s acrobatics in goal they stuck around with Andover in the section semis, and if they had ever stopped parading to the box, they might have had a few more chances to bust through that Husky defense and make things interesting. (While this season was a far cry from the debacle of 2021-2022, it never seemed like this group was fully in control, either.) As it was, they seemed to find a level, better than the chase pack but not quite in with the contenders in 7AA, to say nothing of the state powers who left them licking wounds ever so often.  

Thank you to our seniors: Jude Edgerton, Oscar Lundell, Garrett Olek, Stratton Maas, Drew Raukar (whose goalie assist may have been the most entertaining moment of the season); Christian Houser, stepping into a role on defense; Luke Rose, working hard defensively every game. Luke Anderson, who helped shore up a defense that needed it. Kole Kronstedt, the goaltender who found a home at East and stole a few games in two years as a starter. Wyatt Peterson, a four-year reliable workhorse; Noah Teng, a sparkplug and a leader; and Thomas Gunderson, a flashy scorer throughout his time at East who now has a chance to build a strong post-high school career. This class was a major contributor to the thrilling season of East hockey in their junior years, and they carried the bulk of the load this season, salvaging some quality results and offering the occasional glimmer of something more. And thank you to these parents, many of whom have become friends over beers at the bar and over late-night road trips across Minnesota, my fellows in celebration and commiseration and making the most of this wild, all-consuming ride. 

This offseason marks an uncertain place for Duluth East hockey, perhaps even more uncertain than after the last coaching change or the weirdness of 2021-2022; in those cases, it was at least clear who would need to step up to be a contender again. There are useful pieces at hand, of course: Caden Cole and Ian Christian could, with enough development, be very productive seniors, and some younger defensemen showed some promise. There are some other interesting parts making their way toward varsity hockey. One hopes the schedule will be right-sized for the current talent level next season, not to avoid all top-end comers, but simply to give the team a fighting chance in most of the games it plays. Confidence is a valuable thing, and it can’t be willed out of nothing. 

Some things need to change. I do not expect the impossible from what is on hand; all I ask is that a team works hard, adapts to its strengths and weaknesses, and shows improvement over the course of a season. It is not fun to observe that most of a team’s best games were its first few of the season. There are kids on this team who clearly need help, to be put in situations where they can succeed instead of thrown to the wolves for failure, again and again. There are others who need some other method of communication to keep them from the same mistakes over and over; as someone who is not in the locker room and does not know what has been tried, I cannot claim to know what those can be, but there have to be other ways. In general, the community around East hockey felt much more frayed, less in it all together, scattered into small clumps here and there instead of the unified force we saw last winter. 

There needs to be accountability at all levels. From players to parents to coaches to the school itself, actions must match words to show there is an institutional belief that this program can return to greatness, and a willingness to work at it since it won’t happen overnight. It begins this offseason, in those little steps that put in the extra effort, lift kids to better development opportunities, build stronger bonds, and show this team comes first even as some explore what comes next. As any parting senior family will tell you, it is gone all too soon. What do we do with this time we have? 

My annual State Tournament essay is available here on Youth Hockey Hub.

Is There More?

A Duluth East hockey season plods along. It has not been one of joy and great excitement like last season or the decade of the 2010s, but it has also lacked the can’t-turn-away chaos and palace intrigue of 2020-2022. A few wins appear when the schedule eases up, but a signature victory remains elusive, a steady string of more-or-less competitive games that nonetheless result in losses, the offense outgunned and the back end unable to hold up against steady assaults from opponents. Losing games is one thing, but I look for signs of progress, signs of young players stepping up or improved chemistry or lower lines coming together to at least keep opponents off the board even if they are not scoring much themselves. And I find myself frustrated, trying to escape resignation that this is just what this team is. 

It’s not that this team lacks assets. Thomas Gunderson, Noah Teng, and Wyatt Peterson are probably the best line on offer in 7AA. Caden Cole at his best is a second line anchor and a real offensive force. The power play has started to show some real potential. The depth, while a far cry from East teams of previous decades, still features some perfectly capable hockey players who have some strengths in certain roles. If East played the same schedule as Duluth Marshall or Duluth Denfeld or Rock Ridge, the narrative would be very different, a 20-win season probably within reach, and I would rather be associated with a program that reaches for more than that, even if it results in more disappointment. In theory a tough schedule should build resilience, give opportunities for growth, cure bad habits and make those subsequent games with lesser opponents feel easier. There are occasional glimmers, encouraging signs of some heart in overtime wins against the second tier of section opponents, a few pretty goals and solid clears, flashes of steady discipline instead of teetering on the edge. But this team has yet to take that next step into serious contention. 

The glaring culprit to date has been the inexperienced defense. With the noble exception of Luke Anderson, so often running about cleaning up others’ messes, shoddy breakouts and blown coverage have been the norm, too many initial saves left lying there, juicy and ripe for the picking. There is promise in some of the youth here, with Landon Pearce and Henrik Spenningsby playing more and more, but the rebuild has proven a monumental task, and there has been no great adjustment to cover for those shortcomings, which does no one’s confidence any good. If a team cannot break out crisply, it will never be able to hold up in a back-and-forth track meet; they are quite fortunate that 7AA doesn’t include any teams like Champlin Park and Coon Rapids, even if those squads aren’t all that different ranking-wise from 7AA’s crowded middle tier. 

The Hounds have certainly been unlucky at times; an early break against White Bear Lake or Shakopee or in one of the two Grand Rapids games and my tone would lighter. A serious injury to Ian Christian saps the depth and robs them of a second real scorer on a depth line. But luck can also be a byproduct of design. At the risk of hurting some feelings, this program simply does not have the depth to run four lines, even with some double-shifting involved. Either it can continue to play 11 forwards and six D and make everyone happy with playing time, or it can shorten the bench down the stretch and aim to win. This doesn’t mean abusing the top line—I remain a loyal adherent to short shifts and quick changes—but it does mean locking everyone into a very clear role and recognizing those roles will not be equal, and holding the top players accountable if they fail to backcheck or repeatedly try to dangle through four defenders. 

It is of course easy to sit in the stands and gripe and hope a team can add up to more than the sum of its parts; doing it is hard, takes real leadership from players and coaches alike. But it is doable. An example isn’t too far off: two games with Grand Rapids have shown the Thunderhawks are hardly on some different talent level from Duluth East. If this team got a third crack at the presumptive top seed in 7AA, I wouldn’t hate the Hounds’ chances. But the boys in orange are clearly building toward something, playing intense, physical hockey, their belief growing as they play off their strengths and start to collect top-10 wins no one would expect from their talent level. Everyone seems to be rowing in the same direction on Grant Clafton’s very tight ship, but at East I just do not sense that total buy-in at all times. 

For all the lumps, this team is in position to be the 3-seed in 7AA. They will face a hungry opponent in the 7AA quarters, likely either Marshall or Denfeld, and they will need to keep their heads about them. After that, there is a window of opportunity in a down year for the section, and it would be a shame to waste it. We’ve already covered Rapids, whom the Hounds led 3-0 in the third period on the road before the roof caved in. Andover, while deep and a proven winner, has hit some road bumps lately, and is hardly invincible. Neither of those teams has game-breaking scorers, and an East team that can just hold up in its own zone would be well-positioned to poach a couple of goals and steal a playoff win or two at Amsoil. Enough pieces of the formula seem to be there. Is the belief necessary to pull it all together there also? 

The Long Road

Good vibes can only carry a team so far. The Duluth East Greyhounds put three rough seasons behind them with a confidence-restoring season in 2022-2023, going on a 19-1-1 run before a section final loss to an elite Andover offense, and there was good reason to think that would carry into the current campaign. Back came Thomas Gunderson, East’s finest pure sniper since Garrett Worth; he and sidekick Noah Teng had strong fall Elite League campaigns. Wyatt Peterson, the four-year varsity rock, rounds out a top line that can score some points; Caden Cole has the raw tools to bust out and be a high school star at some point, and Ian Christian can be a load to contend with. The defense was a total rebuild, yes, but they had a returning transfer in Luke Anderson to help shore things up, and some of the younger additions looked promising in summer action. The goaltending was back, too. This team, if not a top-ten force, was at least a legitimate contender, perhaps a chic pick to emerge from a winnable section.

A lot of that optimism unraveled during a very busy first few weeks of the 2023-2024 season. The Hounds are 2-6, winless against top 25 competition, down an early section game to Grand Rapids, humbled by an elite Wayzata squad. The crowning indignity came in a 6-0 defeat at the hands of Holy Family, a team that is capable but by no means overwhelming in its talent. The margin was bad enough, but the game degenerated into thuggery and post-whistle slop, and while said slop had plenty of instigation from the victors, in my time watching East hockey it is surpassed in ugliness only by the Duluth Denfeld debacle two seasons ago. I was left wondering where the swagger had gone, where the leadership might come from, and if there were any buttons to press that might invite a different outcome.

There are not many ways to sugarcoat a 2-6 start, but I will, at least, offer some cause for calm. Two of the losses were bad, but four were one-goal losses (one with an empty-netter) to top 15 teams, each one of them winnable if they had held a lead or finished on late opportunities. Their talent at forward is still arguably the best in the section, and Kole Kronstedt has shown he has the skills to carry a team in goal. Perhaps most reassuringly, there is very recent precedent for this situation: last season’s 18-6-1 season was only one win better than this team after eight games, sitting at 3-5 before a win over Andover spawned the memorable run.

Those same Andover Huskies await the Hounds in their next game after an ammonia leak at the Centennial Sports Arena postponed East’s visit to Circle Pines this week. (After this aggressive early schedule of road games, I am not sad to see a week off to regroup.) Andover is not the same team it was a section ago either, with its exceptional top line now a happy memory and a sub-.500 record of its own, albeit against first rate competition. The Huskies may not be a front-line superpower this season, but with their program depth and a collection of solid talents, they are the frontrunner in this section until someone beats them. East has the chance to prove it can do that next Tuesday.

Beyond that, 7AA is weak at the top, full of the intrigue built by balance. Grand Rapids is not going to overpower anyone with its offense, but between a few solid defensemen and its embarrassment of riches in goal, the Thunderhawks will be a nasty out. Rock Ridge is starting to emerge as a sleeper in its first 7AA season, with a deep core returning from a team that pushed Hermantown hard in the 7A final a season ago. The Wolverines haven’t been seriously tested yet, but the combined forces of Virginia, Mountain Iron, Buhl, Eveleth, Gilbert, Biwabik, Aurora, and Hoyt Lakes have some momentum as they build their program, at once the state’s youngest and oldest. Forest Lake lacks the talent of the top four here, but beat Rapids in spite of that, and looked plenty pesky in losses to other quality teams like East and White Bear Lake. And even Duluth Marshall, bolstered by a strong sophomore core, may now be on the upswing into relevance again.

What might move the needle for this East team? Consistent play and steady breakouts on the back end headline my list. But I am also looking for better chemistry out of the top two forward lines, a feature that appears in flashes but has yet to find the comfort zone that Gunderson and Peterson had with Cole Christian a season ago. Coolness under pressure is also part of the equation, and the ability to keep things from snowballing after the bad goals and sloppy periods that will inevitably happen this season. Last winter’s well-earned praise guarantees nothing, but it is a roadmap, and it is up to these players to step up and follow it.

A Merge to Nowhere?

In most Minnesota hockey communities, the youth program it tightly aligned with the public high school whose boundaries it shares. This model has created pipelines from mites up the high schools that compete for State Tournament berths every season. High school teams go out of their way celebrate their associated youth teams. Young hockey players wear jerseys with the same name as their high school heroes, and they get groomed as future Jefferson Jaguars or Edina Hornets or Hermantown Hawks. It is not without its frustrations: of course, not every kid in a public school’s attendance area goes to said public school, programs can sort into haves and have-nots, and there are some who would rather skim off the cream and not have to deal with community boundaries. But this has been, implicitly or explicitly, the foundational model for the sport in Minnesota.

The Duluth Amateur Hockey Association has long put its own twists on this story. The city is famed for its Mite and Squirt-level neighborhood rinks, which have then filtered up into PeeWee and Bantam teams divided by the two public schools, East and Denfeld. But times are changing: this past season, Duluth debuted a unified, citywide Squirt A team. On the heels of this move, DAHA has proposed the merger of its PeeWees along the same lines, followed by a subsequent merger of the Bantams. Duluth East and Duluth Denfeld youth hockey will, effectively, be dead.

Only a blinkered nostalgist would say nothing had to change. The youth rinks have been slowly but surely shrinking in number, pressured by declining player numbers in many neighborhoods and hyper-concentration in others. Some rinks have strained to keep the volunteer bases that keep them viable, and in others, school boards have decided that parking lots were better uses for places where kids once played. By PeeWees and Bantams, Denfeld’s numbers are worryingly low, and while East’s are substantially better, the Hounds aren’t fielding teams at all levels, which creates some talent mismatches. It also shows in the results: despite fairly large youth numbers at the youngest levels, the city’s talent output has dropped off visibly over the past decade, even as a certain neighboring community reaches new heights. Something about the current system is not working as well as it could.

Unified Youth Programs, Sputtering Public School Hockey

But is a single, city-wide youth program the answer? We have some evidence from other communities that feed multiple high schools from a single youth program might be of some use. And a rundown of the case studies exposes a simple fact: in not one case does the hockey landscape in these places with multiple public high school hockey programs fed by a unified youth program look like that classic model.

St. Cloud may be the most immediate analogue, as a similar-sized small metro to Duluth with two public high schools and one private school and a single youth program. It’s hardly a perfect fit, as the St. Cloud schools had little statewide success outside of some very early Tourney appearances by St. Cloud Tech. But because of that, it’s a bit of a canary in the coal mine, as its schools’ hockey numbers dropped as development moved into more suburban areas. Apollo High, after dropping to Class A, did manage to claw out a couple of Tourney berths despite low numbers in its final years before it was forced to merge with Tech and create one single public high school team. The merger had no discernable impact on St. Cloud public school hockey success: the dominant force throughout has been private Cathedral, which has been the magnet for local front-line talent for going on two decades now. The unified public school team, meanwhile, typically putters along in the lower half of 8AA.

In recent years, Rochester has had one single youth program feeding four high schools. It is weaker hockey country, but it has historically had a bit of State Tournament success; John Marshall won a Tourney in the 70s, Mayo had some legitimately good teams in the 90s, and the newest school, Century, scraped together a few Tourney appearances in the 00s, even as the Lakeville schools rose to dominate Section 1AA. But since 2010, there was a brief period when private Lourdes was the talent collector, and ever after it has been fairly bleak. With the likely demise of John Marshall hockey forthcoming, it does not look like it will get better. The fact that a uniquely wealthy, large city with four high schools has landed with a model that cannot muster more than one Bantam AA team does not inspire confidence.

Woodbury is a well-off East Metro suburb, and on paper should be good enough to follow the trajectory of some of its peers like Plymouth and Eden Prairie and Andover and produce hockey powerhouses. Woodbury High did have some abbreviated success in the mid-2000s, but after that burst and the subsequent opening of East Ridge High in 2009, its high school teams have been mediocre at best. The two public schools, while sometimes scrappy mid-level seeds, have mustered little in the way of sustained success, all as the rosters of Hill-Murray and Cretin-Derham Hall and some other East Metro powers are littered with Woodbury kids. Perhaps not coincidentally, an East Ridge group has emerged to advocate for a breakaway that would create separate youth programs for both.

The unified Chaska-Chanhassen youth program is somewhere on the Woodbury trajectory, just a decade or two behind in the cycle and just now rising to potential greatness. And yet, just like these other examples, the youth program has seen a steady drain of talent, and a substantial herd mentality seems to take hold, with the bulk of the good players going to Chaska for a few years, and now with many of them off to Chanhassen. While it is entirely possible that this Chanhassen group will break through in the near future, the two schools have yet to land a State Tourney berth for their efforts.

The story of Minneapolis over the past few decades is unlike that of any other Minnesota city, and major demographic shifts and reactions to it changed the hockey environment more drastically than anywhere else. A city that once constituted almost an entire section and now musters just one hockey team for the entire public school system. (I told that story of urban change and high school hockey in a post some eight years ago; some details could use some updating, but the overarching narrative is as true as ever.) In some ways, this is the most uplifting story of what a unified youth program can do: after a long time in the wilderness, youth numbers started recovering maybe 10-15 years ago. Under Joe Dziedzic the high school team has become a semi-contender in Class A over the past few years, including a 2022 State Tournament appearance. Such success would not be possible without the allowance that they play in Class A, though: Minneapolis’s best players routinely attend Benilde, Blake, Breck, and Holy Angels. The city schools have not produced a D-I player in over 20 years.

Other Roads Taken

Not every youth program that feeds multiple high schools has gone the route of unified Bantam and PeeWee teams. The results here are scattered, suggestive of potential but far-from-guaranteed advantages. Separate youth programs on their own aren’t enough: both Bloomington schools, including former blueblood Jefferson and blue-collar Kennedy, have been on a steady downward trajectory, with all their talent draining outward, even without Minneapolis-style demographic change, especially in the Jefferson attendance area.

But there does appear to be some limited success when separate feeders for high schools can remain viable. The Lakeville schools, which split into North and South a bit before East Ridge and Chanhassen Highs opened, are not as large as some of the west metro powers and benefit from a weak section 1AA. But they have managed to put out some very good hockey teams and some very high-level talent, despite having separate youth teams. St. Paul has faced many of the demographic pressures Minneapolis has, but kept its youth teams separate for as long as it could. While its teams have also struggled for a while now, it has at least maintained more high school programs with a smaller population, and even with weak numbers, the soon-to-be-late St. Paul Johnson has still put out some sporadic stars and pulled the occasional playoff surprise. Now, however, even that long play seems to have run out.

What This Means for Duluth

I am in no way saying it is a sure thing that a unified youth program will cause the demise of local public high school programs. But the claim that it may forestall such trends appears unsupported by evidence from comparison cases, and there is at least some evidence that a single youth program serves instead to weaken any ties to the public schools and strengthen funnels to a place where all the good players can come together (namely, private schools) or just leads to a general dispersal far and wide. Of course, it is not the goal of a youth program to prop up public high schools; it is to develop hockey players. But we can’t pretend that this shift isn’t a concession to a change in the landscape.

Maybe hockey roots are deep enough in Duluth that the city can buck some of these trends: maybe Denfeld can find the resources it needs to stay alive through a time of thin numbers, and maybe the new East regime has the desire and the design to harness the program’s great legacy and keep it what it has been. But it is also entirely possible that we see a merged public high school program in the next few years, and no one should be too surprised if that product ends up being very mediocre amid a general talent exodus. With Stella Maris looking to get hockey off the ground, the vultures are already circling.

Maybe that’s how it will be anyway. Maybe political and economic changes in Duluth are too significant; the city is in a strange and complicated place right now, and my thoughts there are too complex to summarize pithily here. Maybe the escalating costs and year-round cycles that increasingly define this sport are too powerful, and this is just another marker in a slow but steady death march for community-based hockey that no realignment within a youth program could ever stop. The drift toward hockey domination by private schools and a few affluent talent magnet publics may continue, and that itself may just be a waystation on the road to the AAA hockey that a small but influential core of hockey maximalists desire. The forces are what they are. (For that matter, maybe the forces at play are such that even Stella hockey will be stillborn and Marshall will remain mired in the tough place it has landed since the loss of Brendan Flaherty. The AA landscape has become hard enough for even good, deep East teams to compete with, and Hermantown hegemony in local Class A hockey blocks the easier road some privates have used as a stepping stone.)

My point, then, is that decision-makers should be clear-eyed about what has happened in other places. Relying on the exceptional efforts of committed volunteers is not a long-term strategy, and all the celebrations of unity that will come with a single Duluth jersey for the youth ranks will mean little if broader incentive structures for families aren’t in alignment. The strategy is in the much harder work of growing numbers, retention, and finding ways to make sure this sport is accessible to people who aren’t just a who’s-who of the wealthiest locals and well-connected hockey people.

Easy for me to say, I know. I will remain a loyal, no matter which course DAHA follows, and I am sympathetic to anyone who has to struggle with these decisions. But as someone who still thinks Minnesota is the State of Hockey because it has followed the old Herb Brooks maxim on building the strongest possible base of the pyramid, I can only think of this merger as another chink in the armor of the culture that makes this state unique.

A Winter to Remember

It is never easy to say goodbye at the end of a great run. None of it quite feels real, even if we know this was it, that everyone must ultimately go their separate ways for the world to go on. This season’s Duluth East boys’ hockey team went on one of those runs, exceeding every expectation I had and bringing me a barrage messages from hockey friends across the state: are we really going to see those black jerseys and red breezers in St. Paul again? (The jerseys aren’t black anymore, I patiently explained.) Suddenly it seemed possible, a rebirth at hand. But the time for those goodbyes arrived abruptly, one step before a team could reach its ultimate dream.

But if it wasn’t going to be a storybook ending, it was still a tale to remember. A 5-1 December win over Andover served notice that Duluth East hockey was back, and a 6-0 blitz of Grand Rapids slew any demons with that old rival. The team was potent, fun to watch, going off on lesser competition and rattling off a 17-1-1 stretch ahead of the section final. Two improbable wins near the end, a dramatic comeback against Champlin Park and a defensive survival against powerful Rogers, gave off team of destiny vibes. This team didn’t have top five talent, didn’t run some genius scheme, but it just seemed rock solid from top to bottom, free to play good hockey, a whole host of good things running together and building toward playoff success.

I had my lurking doubts that I didn’t dare voice too loudly. The less charitable interpretation of the Champlin Park and Rogers games would suggest they struggled with a borderline top 15 opponent and couldn’t quite skate with one of the state’s elite. The offense was clearly a beat off after Thomas Gunderson’s injury in the final game of the regular season, and though he gave a valiant effort in the section final, the prolific top line never quite got on track against Andover. The regular season meeting had perhaps given the impression that the Hounds could skate stride for stride with the Huskies, but when Andover’s three bringers of doom came off their leashes in the second period, there was no keeping up. The Hounds started to press too hard, while the Andover defense, noticeably improved since their December effort, swatted aside the comeback push. Before long it had spiraled out of reach, a rare laugher of a playoff defeat for a good Hounds team, and a tough pill to swallow after all they had built. For all the steps taken this season, the final one was a bridge too far.

It is the nature of these season wraps to linger on what could have been, but what simply was did the job this year. Coach Steve Pitoscia and his staff buried the ghosts of last season and built a team that played exciting, clean, consistent hockey. The ever-ratcheting pressure of the Mike Randolph years was conspicuous in its absence; this team was going to win or lose with what it had, no more, no less. What they had was considerable, and such a positive season should dispel much of the peddling of decline and fall, or any instinct toward exodus at the youth level. This group can now confidently build toward the future now, and while the East of the mid-90s or even the mid-teens can’t be remade overnight, they can continue to build the foundations and open the doors for another virtuous cycle of upcoming and inbound talent.

As always, I thank the seniors. There are the four defensemen, all varsity players for at least three seasons, who leave behind a large hole: Grady Downs, the puck-eating redemption story; Aidan Spenningsby, the dangling sparkplug; Henry Murray, so often the steady rock who blossomed into a great high school defenseman this past season; and Grant Winkler, who played five years for the Hounds, by the end becoming the two-way force at the center of everything the team did. Nathan Teng was the fan favorite, Hunter Cooke put in the work, and Boden Donovan had his bursts that sometimes reminded me of another Hound who once donned number 22. (How strange will it now be to have the Hounds without a Donovan boy?) Makoto Sudoh developed into a true horse, logging heavy minutes and making his presence felt. And Cole Christian was the true catalyst, a long way removed from his pretty freshman dangles as he exploded with a monster senior year that I’d hoped would get him more Mr. Hockey Finalist consideration but at the very least showed the world what he is capable of.

With belief in this program restored, next season looks bright, even without Christian and the four stalwarts on D. The team brings back an interesting array of offensive toys, including Gunderson, Wyatt Peterson, Noah Teng, Caden Cole, and Ian Christian. Kole Kronstedt offers stability in net, and his backup, Drew Raukar, will also be back in the fold. There are a few other pieces worth a look from the ranks of the JV and the swing liners, and a respectable season from the bantams provides added reinforcement. Moreover, 7AA is in flux, with comings and goings amid opt-ups and an excess of teams to begin with. Andover will remain the favorite as long as it is still in the section, but it does have to replace its sublime trio, which is no small feat. Grand Rapids will be on the young side, down the rigid back side that kept it relevant this season; Blaine’s rebuilding road is long, Coon Rapids still has some gap to close, and Rock Ridge has to prove it can hang in AA. Even with the defensive rebuild at hand, East is in good shape to be right there again next season.

* * *

I close this postmortem on a personal note. After three straight rough seasons, I had begun to wonder if it was time to start taking some steps back from this East hockey fixation of mine. I have plenty of other demands on my time, so many things I want to do, and producing content on bad hockey felt less and less compelling. The team’s success this season helped correct for some of that, of course. But it went much deeper.

This was the sort of season that took all of that blather about community in hockey, the sort of thing we reserved skeptics are supposed to shrug off or pick at, and made it real. It came through Mom Bus road trips and late night beverages with the dads, via chaotic karaoke and casual warm-ups at Clyde. Whether through the works of the old hands looking to restore a program to its former glory or the newcomers seeing it with fresh eyes, and by all accounts through the concerted effort of a very tight group of boys, it all became what so many of us dream a sport can be. And in that final week, which was among the toughest I have ever lived, hockey became a balm and an escape for me, the final result in no way dimming the glow of a brilliant ride. Thank you, fellow Greyhounds, for a winter to remember, and even for those who are moving on, let’s come back together again next season. These goodbyes, it turns out, are never truly the final word.

Beyond Moral Victories

If you had told me ten or even five years ago that I might be relatively pleased with a 1-4 start out of a Duluth East boys’ hockey team, I would have run away in terror. I also would have dreaded to know what happened in the interim, and my darkest guesses would probably resemble something like what East has gone through these past three years. It has been a long, unpleasant tunnel, but suddenly, despite losses, the team looks like it could do some good things. “Duluth East hockey is fun again!” I exclaimed out of the blue midway through a competitive showing against Wayzata this past Saturday.

I don’t want to oversell this start. 1-4 is still 1-4. White Bear Lake and St. Thomas Academy, and even Wayzata, are all plenty beatable, and a top fifteen team probably would have pulled out one of those. The Hounds have lost to an offensively challenged Grand Rapids team, a seventh straight defeat against a section rival they once owned, and will likely have to solve that tight Thunderhawk defense and goaltending to go anywhere in 7AA. And that, of course, is before the get to the elephant in the section, an increasingly dynastic Andover program that returns its top line from a state championship a season ago.

And yet there is promise. The Hounds play at a lively pace with good tempo, and have proven they can skate with three teams that are in the top ten or at least around it. The top line of Cole Christian, Thomas Gunderson, and Noah Teng has shown some quality flashes against good teams, and if it builds its chemistry, it could round into one of the better units in the state. Wyatt Peterson and his sophomore sidekicks, Ian Christian and Caden Cole, could give them some scoring depth, which has been in short supply in recent years. A grinding third line, if it sticks to its game, could play a vital role. A defense with four three-year-plus players—Grant Winkler, Henry Murray, Grady Downs, and Aidan Spenningsby—is a real strength. Newcomer Kole Kronstedt looks smooth in goal, safely filling what looked to be a void. The schedule has a bunch of winnable games coming up that could let them find some confidence, along with a few state powers sprinkled in as measuring sticks.

This team has no glaring flaws, and the ones that do exist seem fixable. Discipline, their bete noire a season ago, still simmers beneath the surface as a challenge that requires management, exemplified both in the occasional parade to the box and just in the occasional ill-advised pinch out of a defense that otherwise looks relatively good. The offense must also find ways to turn shots into goals, to break down rigid defenses and finish the golden opportunities that do appear before them. Cleaning up those two challenges will leave the Hounds competitive on any given night.

Sometimes not having glaring flaws, however, makes it hard to find the pick out the opportunities that could move a team from the realm of the merely good to the great. The talent is not on Andover levels, nor does the depth match the West Metro powerhouses. Perhaps the senior stars, like Cole Christian and Grant Winkler, can put this team on their backs; perhaps breakthroughs by some of the younger talent can move them toward a reliably dangerous offense. Perhaps the veteran defensemen can lock down in front of strong goaltending to create a real fortress around the net. Perhaps the special teams, brutal a season ago and modestly better through five games but still with plenty of room for growth, can become the source of strength they have so often been in Duluth East history. Some combination of these things will need to fall into place to put together a strong season; to have a shot at Andover, they will need all of them, and maybe more.

Beyond any individual performances or newly discovered discipline, though, I sense that this team needs to learn how to win. Duluth East playoff success is a childhood memory for this group: only Grant Winkler, as an injured eighth grader, has been on an East team that won a section quarterfinal. These players have never beaten Andover or Grand Rapids, or even Forest Lake, in high school. Without being in the locker room, I don’t know if that self-confidence can come from cranking up the stakes and pushing the team to the brink, as was the method under the old regime, or if they can drain away all the pressure that comes with high-stakes high school hockey and just go out there, be loose, and have fun. The answer may vary for different players, or in different moments. But unlocking that formula will be the key for second year coach Steve Pitoscia and a program looking to regain its stature after a few years in the wilderness.

There are enough pieces, enough opportunities, for this team to stop winning moral victories and turn them into actual victories. It all starts this Tuesday in Forest Lake, the place where the last East dynasty ended, and where perhaps some sort of return to high school hockey contention can begin.

State Tournament Look Back: 2012

As usual, I’ll wrap up my annual hockey coverage with a look back to the Tourney from a decade ago, complete with a snapshot on the careers of participants after high school, with breakdowns on both Division-I players and those who played after high school in any venue.

The 2012 Tourney might just be the most memorable one I’ve ever seen. Upset Thursday was one of the most dramatic days of quarterfinals ever, St. Thomas Academy cemented its status as the foremost power in Class A, and Grant Besse’s heroics put an exclamation point on a storybook run for Benilde-St. Margaret’s in the aftermath of Jack Jablonski’s paralyzing midseason injury. It was a Tourney that padded the event’s mystique, and the amount of front-end talent on display that weekend was particularly memorable.

Class AA

The 2012 Tourney is most memorable for the defeat of all four seeded teams in the quarterfinals. In some respects, it wasn’t a total shock: this was a loaded Tourney field. All eight entrants were ranked in the top 11 in the state heading into sections, and seven of the eight were the top seed in their respective sections, the lone exception being a powerful Benilde-St. Margaret’s team that came out of a loaded section 6AA and decisively knocked off second-ranked Minnetonka to make the Tourney.

Against that backdrop, the first of the upsets is one that, in retrospect, seems less shocking than it was at the time. Maple Grove had been a force all season and obliterated Blaine 15-1 in the 5AA final, but their talent level was not otherworldly. Wily Hill-Murray, in reload mode after a senior-heavy team fell short the previous season, had more than enough skill to match them. And sure enough, after conceding an early goal, the Pioneers went to work and scored five times in a row, with Zach LaValle having a hand in four of the tallies. The Pios finished off Maple Grove 5-2 and advanced to the semis.

If the first upset was an impressive showing by an underrated team, the second one was a good, old-fashioned theft of a game by a star goaltender. Moorhead senior Michael Bitzer would win the Frank Brimsek Award in 2012, and his quarterfinal performance helped cement his reputation as one of the greatest high school goal tenders of his era. Powerful, grinding Eagan was title favorite, but they lacked the finishing touch to get by Bitzer, and in short order they too were on their way to Mariucci. The loss set back what was, on paper, Eagan’s best team ever.

Matching a new State entrant with a skilled blueblood often ends in an upset; great goalie performances happen. But the upset in the third quarterfinal looks just as jarring ten years later. Duluth East had been ranked number one most of the season, its core almost entirely intact from the AA runner-up edition from the season before. The Hounds’ sole regular season blemish was an ugly Hockey Day loss to Minnetonka, and while there were some warning signs down the stretch that they were perhaps doubling down too much on an elite top line instead of relying on the whole team approach that won them the Schwan Cup Gold, they were the clear top seed in the field. Their opponent, Lakeville South, boasted eventual Mr. Hockey winner Justin Kloos but otherwise attracted little attention despite a top-10 caliber season. The Cougars’ speed gave the Hounds fits, and the top-ranked team had no answers as the pressure mounted. Down went arguably the best East team of the new millennium, and South, improbably, advanced to the semifinals.

The final game of the day would be hard-pressed to top the three before, but this matchup, which looked good on paper, lived up to its billing as well. For long stretches it looked as if a very young, reloading Edina team would pull it out and suddenly become the favorite for an unexpected title. But Benilde had the air of a team of destiny, and despite the Hornets’ 19-6 shot edge in the final frame, Christian Horn’s goal in the final minute of regulation sealed a Red Knight win.

Moorhead failed to generate much offense in the semifinal with Hill-Murray, but an early Cody Rahman goal seemed, for a spell, like it might be all Bitzer needed. He held up under the Pioneer attack into the third, but Conrad Sampair had other ideas, scoring first to tie the game, and then to win it just 1:51 into overtime. Meanwhile, in the second semifinal, Lakeville South’s luck ran out: Benilde, now the prohibitive favorites, put up five goals in the first period and proceeded with a 10-1 obliteration. South would slip out with third place honors the next night, while Duluth East marched through the consolation bracket.

Saturday night, meanwhile, belonged to one Grant Besse. He scored his first goal just over eight minutes in, and a second less than two later. Guentzel, Hill’s star, at first looked like he might be able to carry his Pioneers through a blow-for-blow fight, but the Hill power play, with Guentzel alone atop an umbrella, may well have been his team’s undoing. Defensively, the Pios had no answer for Besse’s speed the other direction: the first shorty gave him his natural hat trick late in the second, and after Hill clawed a goal back, he promptly got a second. The exclamation point came with just under three minutes left, when Besse lasered home his third shorthanded goal and fifth total goal of the game. The finish was a coronation for Besse, whose performance in the modern State Tournament has few modern era rivals not named Dave Spehar. The crown was Benilde’s, the storybook season marred only by a strange kerfuffle over Jablonsky’s allowance on the ice for the celebration.

Class A

In Class A, 2012 brought the second of three championship showdowns between Hermantown and St. Thomas Academy. This time around, the undefeated Hawks earned the top seed, while St. Thomas slotted in second, Breck third, and Thief River Falls fourth. None of the lower seeds really had a chance. Little Falls and Duluth Marshall, both back in the Tourney after brief absences, did not have the talent of their entertaining counterparts from a few seasons earlier, and lost by twin 7-0 scores to St. Thomas and Breck, respectively. In the evening quarterfinal session, Hermantown dispatched of Rochester Lourdes, while Thief River Falls marched past new Ulm.

Things got better in the semis. St. Thomas and Breck, winners of the past four Class A tournaments, went back and forth in a nervy affair. David Zevnik made Peter Krieger’s second period goal stand up, and the Cadets advanced to the final by a 1-0 score. In the second game, Hermantown staked itself to an early lead and similarly seemed to be holding on in a tight one before the game erupted four minutes into the third. Two quick goals put Thief River on top, but Hermantown answered right back just a minute after the Prowlers’ second score, and Jared Thomas hit paydirt with 5:15 left to lift the Hawks to a third consecutive state title game.

This one did not go well for Hermantown. After giving the Cadets all they could handle the previous season, the undefeated Hawks got pummeled this time around. St. Thomas scored twice in the first and three times in the first ten minutes of the second, and the rest was academic. It wound up as a 5-1 final, and the Cadets claimed their second championship in a row and their fourth in Class A. The chorus of cries for their graduation to Class AA grew louder, most notably in some biting remarks from Hermantown coach Bruce Plante, but the Cadets’ status was clear: far and away the best team in Class A in 2012. In retrospect, the talent gap appears glaring, and the Cadets may have been the best team in either class.

That dominance would continue as the state looked ahead to the following season: in Class A, the two finalists were on a collision course for a third straight year. The AA powers’ positions weren’t getting any weaker, either, as Edina, Hill-Murray, and Duluth East would all return in search of redemption in 2013. But not everything was preordained: the Benilde dynasty this Tourney seemed to herald did not come to pass, as the senior-loaded Red Knights would lose in sections the following season, and (as of this writing) have not been back to State since. Lakeville South’s quarterfinal win also heralded the rise of the Lakeville schools, long State Tourney doormats, as serious contenders over the next decade, while the full arrival of Maple Grove would take a bit longer. But in 2012, the show belonged to Besse, to Jablonski, to the Red Knights, and to the St. Thomas machine.