Tag Archives: hockey

The Hounds’ Run for the Ages: 2014-2015 in Review

The Duluth East season is at an end, though Greyounds young and old are still trying to figure out what exactly happened over the past two weeks. The Hounds took us on a ride for the ages, as a mediocre season culminated in a second place trophy. The streak included one of the greatest comebacks in State Tournament history and one of the greatest upsets in State Tournament history on back-to-back nights, to say nothing of one heroic goaltending performance and yet another crazy comeback in sections. Much of the praise for the run, some of mine included, has been directed at Mike Randolph, and he certainly deserves the credit for devising a system that turned a defensive sieve into a trapping machine that shut down Edina’s bevy of forward talent. The old Hound found new tricks, even in retirement.

Importantly, though, Randolph gave all of his praise to the players, and it was those players who made it happen. It was largely forgotten after the first half struggles, but East was ranked in or around the top ten by most people in the preseason, and while there may not have been any can’t-miss D-I upperclassmen, over half of the players on this team will have the chance to play some hockey after high school if they so choose, some of them at a fairly high level. This team was deeper than many, including all of 7AA; by the end of the season they had three competent lines that could score, and rolled six defensemen for the first time in several years. As Edina so often shows the rest of the state, depth kills, and any team with confidence in its full bench is in a position to outlast teams that may have a few more front-end stars.

East didn’t score much this season, but the numbers there are a bit misleading. Thirteen different skaters recorded a point in the State Tournament, and while it was only ever a Plan B, they did show some genuine offensive talent when they had to, rallying back against teams like Blaine, Minnetonka, Elk River, and St. Thomas Academy. Luke Dow and the Altmann brothers are high-quality high school forwards, while Ryan Peterson was one of the stars of the Tourney, and Brian Bunten was a consistent presence. Garrett Worth has the potential to become the next in a line of great East snipers, and Ian Mageau and Ryder Donovan will likely join him in some offensive prowess in the coming years.

This East team had its issues, though, with only one returning defenseman who played defense last year. There were signs of promise from the whole corps, but sloppy or boneheaded moments often did them in; a number of East’s losses involved two reasonably good periods that were undone by one abysmal one. In net, Gunnar Howg hit enough speedbumps to see two other goalies cycled through the job before winning it back with a stellar performance against Lakeville North. A young group including three freshmen and a sophomore slowly found its way against that typically brutal schedule. The first half was a laundry list of can-you-top-this frustrating games: a narrow escape against St. Michael-Albertville, a blown lead in Centennial, a 7-1 shellacking (despite nine power plays!) at the hands of Edina, a loss to Eastview in a winless holiday tournament, and then rock-bottom, a 5-1 home loss to rival Grand Rapids.

It is hard to pin down any one turning point in East’s season. Nick Altmann pointed to a narrow loss to Eden Prairie in January, a solid effort in a bounce back from the Grand Rapids game two days prior; immediately after that came Howg’s performance against North. But there were still bumps. A loss to Anoka led to the adoption of the radical 2-3 forecheck that was the star of East’s best regular season game, a tie at Elk River that proved they had a shot at the section. But even though that scheme played a huge role in some of the Hounds’ wins down the stretch, there were other games where they never really got it going or had to drop it to make up for big deficits.

To pull off this run, this team needed to have something else going for it, some intangible quality that takes all of those clichés about sports and makes them real. Grit, heart, character, determination, belief: whichever word you like. Randolph’s line from the 2014 section final reappeared: “deny losing.” They played each of their six playoff opponents during the regular season, and didn’t beat a single one of them. But yet they got it done. They took down a goalie with a bright future who’d flustered them in a regular season tie, an archrival out for their blood that threw everything they had at them, the Mr. Hockey winner and his team of section destiny, high-powered St. Thomas Academy in its AA Tourney debut, and then the two-time defending champions, a team that had lost just once in its previous 37 games.

The heroes were different every night: Howg against Grand Rapids, a couple of third-liners against Elk River, Ryan Peterson against St. Thomas, the Altmann brothers against Edina. A big hit from Bryton Lutzka here, or desperate goal line clearances from back-checkers there; Alex Spencer throwing it down with Parker Mismash, showing Edina that East wasn’t going to take his agitation lying down. It was a total team effort, and while they exceeded my wildest expectations, after each win, the next one didn’t seem like it would be so implausible. They’d done it before, so why not do it again?

Luck played its part, as it must in every miracle run. There were so many pipes, trickling pucks, and convenient bounces. Dylan Malmquist’s injury will forever be an asterisk on the Edina game. Even so, the Hornets had more than enough firepower to win, and the Hounds made Edina’s other stars look ordinary with their discipline. Their reward was, hands down, the best sports memory I have ever had: 21,000 people in a record-breaking crowd, rising to applaud the darlings of the north. (Call it the East fan’s paradox: we spend the entire regular season as the Evil Empire of 7AA, only to come down to St. Paul to adoration.) It helped that they took down two of the most hated teams in the state, but it was a run that reminded many why it is we love this Tournament so much, and why Minnesota high school hockey has no equal.

The final against Lakeville North wasn’t to be: the Panthers were too good, too precise, and too smart to fall into some of the same traps that others before them had. East lost to one of the all-time great teams to come through the state, and did a decent job of hanging in there, giving some faint hope for yet another comeback. There was no shame in the effort, and while the fourth title remains elusive, another big-time trophy is on its way back to Duluth, none more improbable than this one.

And so we bid farewell to our seniors: Nick Funk, Matt Lyttle, and Evan Little, all of whom came into their own as regular forwards down the stretch, and chipped in big plays in the playoffs. Backup goalie Lucas Hedin, who gave a delicious salute to St. Thomas Academy after East finished them off. Bryton Lutzka, whose experience and big hits led the way on an otherwise green defense. Gunnar Howg, a two-time Tournament goalie who found his niche as a Hound. And the captains, Brian Bunten and Nick Altmann, two hardworking longtime linemates who drew their coach’s highest praise: “you see those two guys right there? They drive the bus.” We wish them all the best, whether in hockey or in life beyond dear old East. Together, they made some memories to cherish.

For the rest of the team, meanwhile, it’s back to work: time to hit the weights, plan an offseason regimen, and probably enjoy some free time away from the rink, too. This was a pretty young team, and there will be a lot of talent coming back next year. Grand Rapids will be loaded, Elk River will be out for revenge, Cloquet is still there, and Marshall is joining the AA party. Seven in a row is nice and all, but eight has a pretty good ring to it, don’t you think?

My annual State Tournament reflection essay (which also, unsurprisingly, includes some stuff about East) is available here.

Karl’s 2015 State Hockey Tournament Coverage

Happy State Tournament week! Here’s a quick rundown on what you need to know for four days of nonstop hockey.

I’ve posted game capsules on each of the quarterfinals, complete with players to watch, to mnhockeyprospects.com. Here they are: Class A | Class AA

Brackets are available from the MSHSL here: Class A | Class AA

Throughout the Tournament, I’ll be tweeting from @KarlEastHockey, and will give longer updates on the Forum, including notes from most of the press conferences. Life has conspired so that I may miss a handful of games this Tourney for the first time in eight years, but I’ll try to give some forewarning if and when that happens. As usual, there will be some sort of reflection essay at the end.

To whet your appetite, here are five of the better storylines heading into this Tournament:

Chasing the Jags

Bloomington Jefferson won three straight titles from 1992-1994, and the 1993 champions went undefeated. No AA team has achieved either of those feats since, but there’s a very large possibility of one of them happening this season. Smart money is on Edina, despite being the two-seed, to win a third straight championship, while the one team to beat them this season, Lakeville North, enters the Tourney 28-0. This sets up the possibility of a mouth-watering final, a rematch of last season’s convincing Hornet win. If it’s those two on Saturday night, there won’t be an empty seat in the house.

Northern Hope?

Bemidji and Duluth East are this season’s two northern AA entrants, and they open up against two teams that are not exactly Tourney fan favorites—Edina and St. Thomas Academy, respectively. The arena will be behind them, but they both face very long odds; Edina is the cruelest first round opponent imaginable for Bemidji in their first visit to State since 1985, and East is the surprise team in the field—if East can ever really be a surprise—and will have its hands full with STA’s skilled forwards. Still, both are playing well right now, with Bemidji shutting out everyone in their path through 8AA and East showing sizeable improvement over the season and a knack for pulling out the close ones. We’ll see if either one can carry the 218 pride this season.

Is This Finally Hermantown’s Year?

Five straight second place finishes will strain anyone, and Hermantown coach Bruce Plante might just go ballistic if the Hawks fail to clinch the Class A crown this season. This is the best team they’ve had over this stretch, and there’s reason to suspect they could roll through the field in a manner reminiscent of St. Thomas Academy at its best. Still, there are plenty of possible roadblocks, from the East Grand Forks team that took them apart last season to surging Mahtomedi to one of those dreaded private schools, Breck. Still, this is a golden opportunity for the Hawks to put all those demons to rest.

Star Power

If you want to see many of the top talents in the state, this is a good year for you. The six Metro AA teams have 19 combined D-I committed players, with plenty more to come. Seven Mr. Hockey finalists will be on hand, along with a handful of others who could have easily made the cut. Edina and Lakeville North are about as deep with stars as it gets these days, while it’s no surprise to see Hill and St. Thomas putting out a bunch; the AA quarterfinal nightcap matches two of the best, Blaine behemoth Riley Tufte and Eden Prairie wunderkind Casey Mittelstadt. Mahtomedi junior Jack Becker and Breck junior Chase Ellingson should finally get some recognition this weekend, too. I could go on and on.

A Stacked Field

When Hill-Murray has a strong regular season and still gets stuck playing the top-ranked team in the state in the first round, you know we’re in for some good hockey. Six of the top seven teams, according to nearly every AA ranking, are in the Tournament, and the two northern teams have some intrigue around them as well. The top four in Class A are also there, and St. Cloud Apollo isn’t a pushover, either. It doesn’t get much better than that; the 2012 AA Tourney is about as close as it’s come. That year, in case you’ve forgotten, saw the four seeded teams all go down in the quarterfinals. That seems a longshot this season given the strength of Edina and Lakeville North, but the potential is there for an awful lot of good hockey.

I hope you’ll join me for part of the way, either virtually or in person at the Xcel Center. There will also be a Forum meet-up at McGoverns on Saturday afternoon after the conclusion of the Class A title game and any Bruce Plante press conferences. Enjoy the games.

The Golden Years of Mike Randolph

Three years ago, one of the most loaded teams in Duluth East history finished off a 4-1 win over Eagan on a Saturday in early March. That game, however, was not at the Xcel Center in St. Paul; it was at a consolation final in front of a half-empty Mariucci Arena. Their pride was intact, but Greyhounds Nation was left wondering what could have been. Mike Randolph, the Hounds’ longtime coach, made his way across the ice to salute the East fan base, as he always does at the end of the season.

I made sure to preserve that sight in my memory. At the time, there was good reason to think Randolph would call it quits after 23 seasons; his son was about to graduate, and he had just hit 60. Had he left then, his legacy might have been a somewhat complicated one. Yes, any reasonable observer would acknowledge his work in building up the program in the 1990s, and his two state titles with those loaded teams back then. But after that came a wacky saga that saw Randolph dismissed for a year before getting his job back, a series of section playoff upsets, and two bad upset losses once they did get back to State, the most glaring of those the 2012 affair that had wrecked his best season in over a decade. Every year, there was some grumbling from the stands, and while I had plenty of respect for Randolph, I would have been fine starting off a new era, too.

Randolph, however, came back. The results since have been nothing short of golden. Tonight’s 5-4, 3-goal comeback, double-overtime win over heavily-favored Elk River is the crowning moment of one of the all-time great runs in Minnesota high school hockey history, a streak of seven straight tournament berths, each more impressive than the last.

Sure, he still has plenty of talent to work with—though it’s gone down some each year. And yes, whiny southern fans, the section final is in Duluth. But anyone who thinks for a moment that this is at all a fluke or a function of game location isn’t paying close enough attention. In watching this team closely over the past three years, I’ve picked up on so many of the little things he does, so many of the little strengths he brings to the table that no other coach in the state does.  It helped that I had a chance to sit down with him and pick his brain for a while during that stretch, but it took careful observation to realize the totality of his control, and just how unique it is. Minnesota high school hockey fans are in the presence of a master at his craft.

Did anything change over time, to turn those disappointments into three straight thrilling Tourney berths, each more improbable than the last? Probably. Randolph sure thought so, saying “everything” had changed in how he handled his players over the course of his career. After the 2013 run, a few players joked about his wry sense of humor, a side of him I don’t ever recall hearing about when I was in high school. I told friends that he was going soft in his old age; I don’t know if the current players would agree with that after one of his famed bag skates, but whatever it was, he found a way to strike the perfect balance between pushing his players to give all they could without going overboard. This is the essence of good coaching, and performance in any sphere of life: to know how to push things to the limit and stay there, getting the most out of one’s own unique strengths.

He’s pulled just about every lever imaginable over the past three years, though I don’t doubt that there’s something else left in the bag of tricks. The 25 regular season games are merely a training ground for those three in late February that decide East’s fate. He preaches his systems, and makes his players believers, even when down 3 goals in the first period to a more talented team. 2013 and 2014 saw the creation of the most lethal power plays in the state, using East’s handful of top players in perfect positions to make up for a relative lack of scoring depth. Defense always comes first, and yet East never falls too far back into its shell, and by season’s end he’ll turn them loose on the attack when need be. This current season tested the limits of his ingenuity, with the radical adoption of a 2-3 forecheck after the defense was repeatedly shredded early in the season—only to abandon it at times in the section final against Elk River, when necessity demanded that they throw players forward. They hold back until they know they have the other team doubting themselves a little bit, smell blood, then strike.

Randolph will ride his top players at times, but everyone on the team has a role, knows it, and it’s no surprise to see some of them coming up big in the clutch. The second and third lines each scored twice in this year’s section final against Elk River, and in each of the past two seasons, players who I would have benched, being my impatient self, have made key contributions. It’s a complete cast of characters, from lunch-pail senior Nick Funk scoring the tying goal to freshman phenom Garrett Worth popping in the game-winner. He’s even played goalie psychology perfectly, benching both Dylan Parker and Gunnar Howg after struggles in their senior seasons, only to give them back the starting job with something to prove down the stretch. Both have taken the Hounds to the Promised Land, with Howg’s heroics in the semifinal against Grand Rapids the latest testament to that success.

The Hounds head to the State Tournament greater underdogs than they’ve ever been, and with an otherwise loaded field taking shape, it would be easy to shrug and say that this is enough of an accomplishment this year. And yet Randolph will surely demand that his team “deny losing” once again, and nothing is assured as they head into a first-round matchup with one of the state’s three elite teams. And even if the favorites advance, no matter what happens, a legacy is intact. It is one of brilliance, and we East fans are spoiled to enjoy it once again.

‘Of Miracles and Men’

ESPN’s 30-for-30 series of documentaries rarely delivers a dud, but it outdid itself this past Sunday, with the debut of “Of Miracles and Men,” the story of the supposedly invincible Soviet hockey team that fell to the United States in the 1980 Olympics. The Soviet squad, usually painted as a heartless machine in comparison to Herb Brooks’ plucky college kids, suddenly become humans: stolid but vulnerable men, brusque or wistful as they recollect what went wrong in Lake Placid.

After introducing its main characters, who wander back among Soviet apartment blocks to remember the street corner rinks where they learned the game, “Miracles” travels back in time to the birth of Russian hockey. This means the story of Anatoli Tarasov, a man who knew little of hockey before taking the reins of the national team, and swiftly determined that it was no good trying to beat the Canadians at their own game. And so he reinvented it, and changed hockey forever. He studied ballet and sought to bring its seamless coordination on to the ice, building fluid teams that moved at a pace no opponent could match. Russia and its satellites won every Olympic tournament between the U.S.’s less-remembered shocking run in Squaw Valley in 1960 and Sweden’s emergence in 1994, the first Games in which the former Soviet “Republics” fielded their own teams. All save one, that is.

Of course, Tarasov never got a chance to prove his worth in the 1980 games. He’d been fired some years earlier for failing to follow the party line, and the Soviets rashly chose to abandon the man who’d made them relevant. Tarasov was the architect of the Soviets’ stunning arrival on the hockey scene, the 1972 Summit Series, which matched the Red Army team against an absurd collection of Canadian all-stars and showed the world that Canada had nothing on the USSR. His legacy lived on into the 80s, most prominently in the form of his star goalie disciple, Vladislav Tretiak.

The documentary didn’t go here, but it’s important to remember that Tarasov’s style was an important part of the Soviets’ undoing in 1980. Herb Brooks had many sources for his more open style of play, but Tarasov was certainly one of them, with much of that knowledge coming via Lou Vairo, an advance scout for the U.S. squad who labored in obscurity for many years to study Tarasov and bring his methods to the U.S. Brooks abandoned the North American obsession with lanes and turned hockey into a free-flowing ice dance, coupling violence and grace to create the form of hockey that remains its pinnacle.

It’s probably a mistake to lionize Tarasov too much; he did work his players to absurd limits, and had the full power of the Soviet state backing him. He loved his players, but his control was so absolute that there was no alternative. The narrative pitched by the documentary, in which he represents the purity of the revolutionary ideal before it went sour, is also too simple a reading of Soviet history; Stalin’s depravity was simply the most extreme flare-up of a ruthless totalitarian state, and the very revolution that started it all etched its evil into its DNA. But it fits a certain romantic tale quite nicely, and one can certainly see how Tarasov might have seen himself this way. Just as the revolutionary idealism faded in the face or reality, Soviet hockey’s cynical turn post-Tarasov was all too real.

Still, it’s wrong to make his successor, Viktor Tikhonov, nothing but a villain. He was most clearly a tyrant, but “Miracles” never really stopped to admire just how dominant his teams were. He might not have been all that pleasant, but he sure knew what he was doing, and though he was a strict disciplinarian, he did still allow his teams to play Tarasov’s free-flowing style on the ice. He had plenty of moments of triumph, and his legacy in the USSR goes far beyond the Lake Placid loss. But like so many tyrants, his downfall was his obsessive control. His decision to bench Tretiak after the first period likely cost the Soviets the game against the U.S., and helped to end the goalie’s career at age 32, far too early for the man who many have been the greatest tender of all time.

As the Soviet Union crumbled, Tikhonov’s fist grew ever tighter, as he tried to keep his players from jumping ship to the NHL. Several veterans were axed from the team, and the greatest skater they had, Slava Fetisov, was strung out for years with vague promises of eventual freedom. Fetisov’s story became something out of a spy movie, as he met secretly with New Jersey Devils General Manager Lou Lamoriello in a hotel room, communicating via writing so as to hide from the government bugs, and eventually had a terrifying audience before a livid Dmitry Yazov, the Soviet Minister of Defense. But Yazov did let him go. Finally, in 1989, he brought down hockey’s Iron Curtain and made the leap to the NHL, becoming the first Soviet citizen to ever hold a foreign work visa.

It is perhaps a bit ironic that Fetisov went to the Devils, seeing as Lamoriello’s teams often became, stylistically, the anti-Tarasov. Adam Gopnik called many of the players he acquired en route to three Stanley Cups “Lou-Bots” because they were just plugged into a machine-like system—and a boring one at that, given its reliance on the trap. There was little room for free-flowing, Tarasov-style hockey in Lamoriello’s NHL, though times are changing, as analytics takes hold and the rediscovery of puck possession brings some old ideas back to the fore. Somehow, Fetisov probably didn’t care: he was far more free in a Devils’ trapping machine than he was in the USSR, and after he moved to the Red Wings, he became the first man to bring the Stanley Cup back to Red Square.

Fetisov travels back to Lake Placid for the first time in “Miracles,” wandering the streets with his daughter, making his way back into the locker room, and revisiting the old dormitory—now a prison, a facility so miserable that it offended Soviet sensibilities. He steps back out on to the ice at the Olympic Center—now, the Herb Brooks Arena—and one can still sense those lingering chants of “USA! USA!” in that hallowed sporting ground. Many of the Soviets now try to pooh-pooh the loss; understandably so, given their greatness for such a long time. But they still all know they were on the wrong side of that Miracle, and there are few words to describe that emptiness of stunned defeat. This is the stuff of legend, and Fetisov is left only with a wry smile, this man who stood up to the Soviet Union cast as a villain in the story of American hockey glory. Such are the vagaries of sports. The legacy, however, endures, uniting winners and losers, their stories forever intertwined in a tale that reminds us the impossible can happen.

East Side Ingenuity

The final week of the high school hockey regular season begins next week. For Duluth East fans, this season is lurching oddly toward the finish line, filled with more uncertainty than any time in recent memory. There have been signs of progress along the way, as they’ve held two of the of the state’s best offenses under two goals, and had a few more offensive outbursts lately, but on the whole they are still a .500 team, headed for their first serious section quarterfinal game in over 15 years.

The most encouraging outing came on Saturday night in Elk River, when the Hounds played the Elks dead-even on the road en route to a 1-1 tie. After a slow start, a crushing hit by Alex Spencer jolted East to life, and the Hounds took it to the Elks for a majority of the rest of the game, bottling them up superbly and generating their own share of chances. A shot in the final minute of overtime might just have slipped in under the crossbar—no one will ever really know—but the statement mattered more than the final score: when they play well, East is on par with the section’s best.

The game showcased Mike Randolph’s spurt of ingenuity this season: a 2-3 forecheck, with the center manning the point along the blue line between the two defensemen. It’s something I haven’t seen out of a prominent high school program before, but it makes intuitive sense: with a struggling defense and a lack of talent to maintain the dominant forecheck of years past, the Hounds have resorted to doing everything they can to bottle up the opposition in its own zone. This approach comes at the obvious expense of bodies down low—with only two forwards deep in the zone, the offense runs the risk of becoming a very predictable series of passes around the perimeter—but it can make it difficult for even good teams to break out with any rhythm, and protects the defensemen from overexposure. The presence of the center on the blue line also frees the defensemen to pinch more freely than they might otherwise, keeping some semblance of the classic East cycle alive. To give an idea of its effectiveness, Elk River hadn’t been held under 3 goals all season long, but needed a late power play just to tie this game at one.

That cycle was on display again on Monday. East continued to work the 2-3 in Cloquet, a decision that may have sacrificed a chance at a win in the short term in the interest of preparing the system for the playoffs. They kept Cloquet bottled up for long stretches of the game, to the point that the Jacks’ offense degenerated into a string of icings, but the go-ahead goal never came, as East never generated quite enough in front of the net of sophomore Eric Newman. This is the weakness of the system: it gives East a shot against most anyone, but it also lets less skilled opponents hang around, and that is an especially important concern given the likely first round match-up against Andover, a team built around a great goalie and the occasional offensive surge forward.

The lack of offensive zone presence wasn’t an issue on Thursday against Blaine’s porous defense, but the sloppy defense reared its ugly head again, especially in the opening twelve minutes of the game, when East spotted the Bengals a 3-0 lead. While they showed their mettle as they battled back to twice tie the game, the game was already being played on Blaine’s terms, and that did not bode well for a team built around defense first. It was a second straight toss-up game with a top-ten team, but these track meet games are too volatile, and reminiscent of their most recent losses in sections, a 6-5 loss to Cloquet in 2008 and a 5-4 loss to Grand Rapids the year before, when East lost control for long stretches before coming back and ultimately failing to close the deal. Blaine is a top-ten team and deeper offensively than anyone in 7AA, but Grand Rapids and Elk River certainly have the firepower to get East into that sort of game (as Rapids did in January) and render all of this pining for systems useless.

The East defense remains the most profound concern. There are too many blown assignments and bad decisions leading to odd-man rushes, and occasional long stretches stuck in the defensive zone quickly deflate momentum. Stupid penalties have also been rally-killers at times. Gunnar Howg has won the goalie job back for good and has proven a savior at times, though he can’t do it all himself. I’ll avoid naming names, but a couple of players are frequent culprits, and must avoid the lapses that may end up costing this team its season.

The offense is showing more potential after a slow start. The longtime top line combo of Nick Altmann and Brian Bunten creates the most chances, many of which come agonizingly close but don’t quite make their way into the net. The all-junior second line, after leading the way early on and going a bit cold midway through the season, erupted in the Blaine game, giving some hope there. Luke Dow is certainly the most dynamic of the centers, and can run things from the point when East sets up the 2-3 in the offensive zone. The third line, usually featuring freshmen Ian Mageau and Garrett Worth with Matt Lyttle playing the high center role (with occasional Nick Funk and Ryder Donovan sightings) is now scoring with some regularity as the young snipers come into their own. The three freshmen on the roster have all come along nicely as this season goes on.

And so the Hounds head for their reckoning. They have two games in the final week, both against higher-ranked but beatable teams, Lakeville South and Minnetonka. Between those two games is the 7AA seeding meeting, which should be put on pay-per-view, but is most likely to hand the Hounds a 3-seed and a first round date with Andover. (There’s an outside shot St. Michael-Albertville could poach the 3 and leave East playing Cloquet in the quarterfinals, but I’ll be surprised if their schedule gets much respect at the meeting.) It doesn’t matter a whole lot, since the section is such a mess. Elk River has its best player in Jake Jaremko, but the depth, especially on defense, is not phenomenal, and Amsoil Arena has not been kind to them. Grand Rapids is bipolar, looking like world-beaters one moment and sickly the next; who knows if they can string together three straight wins. STMA is reasonably deep and hungry to prove themselves, but venturing into uncharted territory; Dave Esse has hard-working Cloquet rising to the occasion down the stretch. Andover has a goalie and a handful of skaters who can be difference-makers, and are plenty capable of stealing a game or two. Even Forest Lake, despite a poor year, has a history of doing well against Rapids, whom they are almost certain to play in the first round. And then we have these Hounds, trying to find that right balance and get back that East side energy and confidence that have kept them atop this section for the past six years. We’ll see if this group has it in them.

My 2015 Mr. Hockey Finalists

The high school hockey award season is around the corner, so it’s time for every amateur prognosticator to toss out some picks. These are the ten Mr. Hockey finalists I’d pick, not necessarily the ten I think will be picked. Here they are:

Jake Jaremko, Elk River

-Jaremko’s dominant Elite League performance has carried over into the regular season, and this MSU-Mankato recruit has thereby pulled into the top spot. In addition to being one of the state’s top AA scorers with a high ceiling, he has the added bonus of being his team’s clear-cut MVP; while some of the other top players have to share the spotlight some, there is no doubt that Elk River is Jaremko’s team, and it’s on his shoulders to carry a proud program back to State for the first time in ten years. I’ll reserve final judgment until after this Saturday, when I hope to get another look at him against Duluth East, but he’s probably the slight favorite now.

Dylan Malmquist, Edina

-My preseason pick is still right there in the running, though draft status and an inability to distinguish himself from junior teammate Garrett Wait may hurt his chances. I think this is unfortunate, and Malmquist has many strengths that don’t show up on the scoresheet, with his two-way play and unmatched prowess on the penalty kill. If Edina continues to dominate the Lake, he might yet get my nonexistent vote. The only way one of these top two doesn’t win is if draft status counts for a lot more than we think it does, and Jack Sadek pulls it out; I don’t see that happening.

Jack Poehling, Lakeville North

Jack McNeely, Lakeville North

-There’s a debate raging around which two of the four great seniors on undefeated North deserve the nod, and there are good arguments on all sides. The Poehling brothers’ line is dominant, but it’s hard to separate them out for individual recognition; the defensemen, meanwhile, are more likely to be drafted, and Jack Sadek is the highest listed Minnesota high schooler on the NHL Central Scouting midterm report. (Did someone mandate that all Lakeville boys born 18 years ago be named Jack?) Personally, I’d argue for splitting the difference, and taking one of each: the explosive top line and the dominant defense have been equally important for North’s great run this season. The numbers for each are practically identical, so I’ve gone with the two I think have been the slightly better high school players of each pair. Still, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it be Sadek and McNeely, and while I might buy an argument for picking more than two if a bunch of them were certain high draft picks, they’re not. They’re all fine players, but there’s a lot of talent in this state beyond Lakeville.

Christiano Versich, St. Thomas Academy

-As with the North kids, there’s no doubt STA will put one or maybe even two players on the list; the question is who. Versich’s lower point total may hurt, but as with Malmquist, I think he does more to make the players around him better, and has been asked to play a more complete role, holding down the second line. Seamus Donohue, a high-scoring defender, is one of the toughest players to leave off this list, and leading scorers Peter Tufto and Alec Broetzman have had fine years worthy of consideration as well.

Dixon Bowen, East Grand Forks

-Bowen is the leading scorer on a team with plenty of offensive talent. I’ll admit to not having seen much of the Green Wave this season, but the North Dakota recruit came into the season as my top senior in Class A, and it doesn’t look like his performance to date has done anything to cause much doubt on that front.

Jacob Olson, Hill-Murray

-The rock-solid Harvard commit has everything you look for in a Mr. Hockey Finalist: D-I commitment, is on the midterm list, and leads a great defense, which is the heart and soul of this Hill team. He’s certainly one of the frontrunners for the Reed Larson Award for the state’s top defenseman, though perhaps that will be thrown the way of one of the North players as a consolation prize.

Will Borgen, Moorhead

-Like Olson, Borgen is a D-I recruit, made the midterm rankings, and an essential piece of a team with a fairly thin offense. He doesn’t quite have the name recognition of some of the others on this list, but he has to be in the conversation.

Jack Ahcan, Burnsville

-Not blessed with the size of the above defensemen, but Ahcan is every bit as dominant in the high school game, and probably deserves a nod here.

Ryan Kero, Hermantown

-Lots of options for the final spot, but there’s a dearth of Class A players on my list, so I’ll give it to the top player on the top team there. He’s got great speed and finishes with style. He and Nate Pionk have been explosive in leading the Hawks’ top line; if they’re viewed as too interchangeable, give this spot to Donohue, whose chances may suffer due to the 4-5 other defensemen in the field.

Honorable mention: in addition to the North and St. Thomas players I’ve already jilted, there are a few others who deserve shoutouts. The unheralded Tommy Giller is having a big year at White Bear Lake, and with their Hill-Murray game looming, he has a chance to make his case on the biggest regular season stage available. Rosemount’s Lukas Gillett has no such stage, but has helped carry a weaker team that may yet make some noise down the stretch. Luke Jaycox and Kobe Roth at Warroad are both good enough, but have been slowed by injury issues. I think it’s wrong to nominate players who’ve missed significant time, but that hasn’t stopped them in the past. Benilde and Blaine have a couple of good players, but no one senior has really had a breakout season that screams “nominate me.”

With the disclaimer that I’m not much of a goalie scout, I’ll also take a stab at the Brimsek Award: Moorhead’s Jacob Dittmer was my favorite coming in, and his performance to date seems to back that up. That said, Hopkins’ Josh Kuehmichel has performed well, and if his numbers hold up down the stretch of a brutal Lake Conference schedule, he’ll have a very good argument. Burnsville’s Dylan Lubbesmeyer rounds out my finalist list, and I think the top three are actually pretty clear-cut here.

I believe nominees will be announced next week, and voting takes place before the State Tournament, though the awards are announced at a banquet immediately after it.

Learning How to Win

It’s been an unfamiliar sort of season for the Duluth East boys’ hockey team. With a new core and the burden of history, they’re off to a slow start, and there’s been a bit of declinist hysteria (all from outside the program, from what I’ve seen) surrounding a team that would, in a vacuum, simply be finding its way through a difficult schedule. But this is the burden of putting on the jersey of a six-time defending section champion with a target on its back. That burden can also be a source of inspiration, as was the case last season, when 7AA’s confident bluebloods stole a section title away from rising Elk River. Which story will be that of the 2014-2015 Hounds? My visit to Duluth this past week coincided with three of their biggest home games of the year, a stretch that included a decent win, an ugly loss, and a quality effort in a losing cause. As we enter the second half of the regular season, here’s my report on the state of the Hounds—a team that, in the words of its coach, is still “learning how to win.”

The week began in front of a packed Heritage Center for the yearly renewal of the crosstown rivalry with Duluth Denfeld. Long cannon fodder for the Hounds, the Hunters surged to relevance two years ago when they beat East and made the 7A section final, and this year’s team looks to be on par with that one. The Hunters came out fired up and led 2-1 after a strong first period, but East regrouped in the locker room and went on to play solid system hockey the rest of the way. The only real issue from then on was special teams; Denfeld briefly tied the game on a late second period goal, and East squandered numerous power plays in the 3rd before giving the Hunters a breath of life with two late penalties of their own. Even so, they limited chances effectively, and held on for a 4-3 win.

The stakes grew higher on Thursday, when Grand Rapids came to town in a crucial 7AA battle. The Hounds embarrassed the Thunderhawks in Grand Rapids last season, and Rapids was only too pleased to return the favor this year. Once again, a poor first period was East’s undoing, as they were completely worked over by the Rapids forwards and down 2-0 at the intermission. Once again they did a reasonably good job of getting to their systems in the later periods, but another defensive breakdown made it 3-0. The Hounds got one back in the third and the momentum seemed to swing, with history creeping back into everyone’s minds, but an ill-timed penalty allowed Rapids to score the back-breaker, and they added an empty-netter when Mike Randolph pulled his goalie with 3 minutes to go. The power play goal and the empty-netter were Rapids’ only two shots on goal in the third period, showing that the Hounds could stifle Rapids when they did get to their game, but they took far too long in getting there, and it doesn’t take much for the Thunderhawks’ top forwards to leave their mark. The 5-1 final is more reversible than East’s 5-0 win in Rapids last season was, but it’s a mountain to climb.

Things only got more difficult on Saturday, when sixth-ranked Eden Prairie pulled into Duluth. Not only are the Eagles among the state’s elite, they bear a number of similarities to 7AA frontrunner Elk River with their dominant top line; to retain the section crown, East will have to beat a similar team. Finally, East had itself a good first period, grabbing an early goal and playing the Eagles even, and they kept that energy going through most of the rest of the game, ending with the most complete performance I’ve seen out of them this season. They were beaten on two moments of individual brilliance by Casey Mittelstadt, the state’s top sophomore, and despite plenty of chances, the tying goal just wouldn’t come. Mittelstadt finished his hat trick with an empty-netter, giving the Eagles their first ever win over East that did not require three overtimes.

East now sits at 6-7-1, and is at some risk of its first losing season since 1953. The nasty schedule continues on Tuesday, when the team visits undefeated, top-ranked Lakeville North. Things ease up somewhat after that, with five straight opponents outside the top 20, but this team can’t take any of them for granted, and every one will likely be a battle.

In trying to figure out the Hounds’ lurching start, the biggest difference is almost certainly the absence of Phil Beaulieu on the blue line. As Mittelstadt’s performance Saturday showed, a certain D-I player can make all the difference in a tight high school game. It’s also not coincidental that many of Mike Randolph’s greatest overachievers—1991, 1998, 2013, 2014—have been built around a fantastic defenseman or two who could run games from the back. Most fundamentally, the East system requires that defensemen be able to hold up one-on-one against other teams’ top forwards with relative frequency, for those moments when opposing teams do pierce through the clogged neutral zone. The East defense, young and unsettled, is taking baby steps in that direction, but when it has lapses, they are profound, and undo a team that is not built to overcome big deficits.

East’s meager 2.43 goals per game average might suggest offense is their biggest problem, but the numbers can lie. Randolph teams build from the back, and though they have decent forward depth, they don’t quite have the skill to win a shootout against Grand Rapids or Elk River. The Hounds don’t need brilliance from this fairly deep group of defensemen; they just need steadiness and intelligence, with no ill-advised pinches and basic competence in holding the zone. If they can move the puck effectively out of their own zone and limit the odd-man rushes, the chances will come; that’s when East can start worrying about cashing in on those chances, and improving the uncharacteristically poor power play. It’s a very achievable goal, but not a guarantee.

The other big part of the equation is the Hounds’ youth. With three freshmen and an eighth grader seeing ice time, there are going to be some rookie moments, as was the case on Middelstadt’s first two goals in the Eden Prairie game; the first came with an all-bantam-age third line on the ice, while he walked around defenseman Luke LaMaster on the second. The promise is obvious, though, as the young line had a very respectable showing in the offensive zone on Saturday, and LaMaster has shown some flashes as well. East has had some success over the years with the young guns when they grow up quickly enough (1994, 2000, 2005, 2010), though the last two seasons when they were not a top-3 seed—1993 and 1999, neither of which saw deep playoff runs—were also teams that had a couple of freshmen seeing regular ice time.

East has also had some unexpected goaltending intrigue, as incumbent Gunnar Howg’s rocky Elite League carried over into a pedestrian start. Ever decisive, Randolph benched the senior Howg in favor of sophomore Kirk Meierhoff, who has been reasonably good, if not quite a game-changer, ever since. It now seems to be Meierhoff’s job to lose, and we’ll see how he holds up against the Lakeville North assault on Tuesday. As with the young skaters, it is sink or swim for Meierhoff, and he will have to grow up in a hurry.

For all the travails, 7AA is winnable. Elk River is the obvious favorite with the record and ranking to match, but there are questions about its defense and goaltending, and Grand Rapids gave them a one-goal game. Rapids has the firepower, but appears an emotionally volatile squad capable of great peaks and valleys, depending on their psyche. Dave Esse has Cloquet improving, but they need a few more big wins to prove they’re for real; St. Michael-Albertville has a strong record against poor competition. Even Forest Lake and Andover appear modest upset threats.

Under Randolph, the regular season is a 25-game warm-up for three playoff games. It means learning a system, a process exemplified by the performance of Luke Dow, the junior center who had 34 points at Duluth Marshall last season. He has 12 at East so far, to lead the team; of course a tougher schedule makes things difficult—no 4-point games against Eveleth this year—but he’s also being asked to track back far more than before, and be a more complete player. The Hounds have also spread their scoring some, with the top two forwards, Dow and Nick Altmann, on separate lines to generate the depth necessary to keep pace with the top teams in the state. Player point totals do not tell this team’s story.

The goal is to have a balanced machine going by playoff time. It doesn’t work out every year, but as history shows, it does more often than not. The players simply need to keep the faith and keep at it through tough results, building on things like the Eden Prairie game, despite the loss. The margin for error may be smaller than ever, but they have the formula, and have had some sustained moments where they get there. If they continue to build on that and quickly get back to consistent execution when things do go wrong, they can play with nearly anyone, and if the clock is winding down late in a close game at Amsoil Arena, it’s hard not to like the Hounds.

In Defense of Subjectivity

“The idea of rating ballplayers is an arrogant bit of nonsense, incurring inherent intellectual costs which can lead, if unchecked, to intellectual bankruptcy.”

—Bill James, 1984 Baseball Abstract, in an essay prior to his player rankings

If this is true about baseball players, it is no less true about high school hockey teams. As someone who does this on a weekly basis, it’s something I remind myself of, every single week.

High school hockey rankings are a dime a dozen; everyone has their opinions, and it’s not too hard to broadcast them these days. The most notable is the coaches’ poll organized by Let’s Play Hockey, which, at some point in the mists of history remembered only by Lou Nanne and that State Tourney studio guy who looks like a character from Guess Who?, got “official” recognition in the media. To its credit, the LPH poll’s conservatism keeps it from having the wild swings one sees in other places, and I’d say it’s improved drastically even in the past five years.

Even so, LPH’s method is unexplained and seemingly arbitrary at times, leaving readers trying to figure out the logic behind their methods. In response, a whole bunch of people have created math-based computerized rating systems that perform much the same function. I grew up checking those of my fellow forum admins, Lee and Mitch; MyHockeyRankings uses similar principles for hockey nationwide. Some sports use QRF’s system for section seeding (though I find that one flawed beyond use in hockey), and this year, Doug over at FollowThePuck, who had previously done his own subjective rankings, has introduced an algorithm to do his work. I have a lot of respect for these dispassionate rankings, and check my preferred ones regularly. They’re a welcome antidote to the self-proclaimed hockey “experts” who spew out opinions left and right and invent rankings through narrow logic or facile knowledge of the teams.

At the same time, though, I’ve carved out a little niche for myself over on the forum over the past seven years, where I subject myself to weekly flagellation from the masses while trying to carefully explain my subjective rankings. In doing so, I have at times found myself in the unexpected position of being the great defender of subjectivity over the computer rankings. I’m not saying I’m better than the computers, but I do think I can offer things that they cannot.

For starters, let’s stop trying to pretend the computers are “objective.” They’re not. Sure, they don’t play favorites, care nothing for tradition or coaching, or for some of the excuses one often hears out of a losing team. They can see everything, which no human can do. But somewhere behind it all, a human has to decide how much weight to give to each of the results, and at what point we stop caring whether a team wins by 6 or 8 or 10 goals, and how much to value recent games versus old games, and so on. This replaces one form of subjectivity for another, and while people can study and adjust the formulas to give them even more predictive power, it is all backward-looking, and achieves success by narrowing the scope of study, and ignoring large parts of what goes on in a hockey game to fixate on goal difference and strength of schedule.

To illustrate this point, Doug and I had an amiable Twitter tit-for-tat earlier this week on the merits of weighting A vs. AA teams differently in his mathematical rankings. Over the course of the discussion, we found that Hermantown, who most people would consider the top Class A team, was 20 places apart between Mitch’s system and his when ranked against the AA field. Two “objective” systems spat out ridiculously different numbers. I say this not to slight either one, but to point out the poverty of the belief that these methods, which simplify our understanding by reducing everything that goes into a hockey game into a rating, can definitively answer these questions.

James again:

“My work has been described in a lot of ways, and I don’t like most of them, but one that I particularly don’t like is being called a baseball expert. I am not an expert; I am a student…I am not trying to lecture you—I am not trying to lecture anyone—about who is good and who is bad. I have my ideas on the subject, that’s all. I offer those ideas because people expect me to do that, and want me to do it…The ratings provide for an organization and framework for comments, and I do have things I want to say about the players.”

He goes on to explain how good scientific analysis tries to contribute to debates, not settle them (an insight that people would be wise to remember in discussions of topics far more weighty than hockey). This is what I try to do, and why I actually enjoy the give-and-take on the forum. Just this past week, I heard from someone who was upset his team didn’t get a mention—and he had a very good point, at least until his team suffered an unexpected loss on Tuesday night. The rankings are part of an ongoing dialogue as we try to make sense of the statewide hockey scene. The process does need one person to take control and shepherd it along, but because I’m just one person, I can’t possibly see everything. But with some help from a few friends, I can see enough of the complexity that goes into winning hockey games (ignored by the algorithms) to say something valuable that they cannot, even though I’m just some lowly, flawed, biased, Hound-loving human being.

That frees me to say something like this: “Hermantown lost to Hopkins and barely beat Roseville, and plays an offensive style that frees them to run up big scores on middling opponents, so they’re probably not quite a top-5 team. However, they have dominated everyone else in Class A, played powerful Wayzata tight, and the top Class A teams would usually crack a two-class top-ten, so they’re probably noticeably better than #25, too. After their annihilation of Grand Rapids on Tuesday, I’d have them around #7 or so—behind Wayzata, since they lost to them and haven’t beaten anybody better, but they have a few quality wins, and that one mediocre loss isn’t too big of a drag when we have teams like White Bear Lake (who lost to East Ridge) in the top ten.”

That may be right, and it may be wrong; I’d listen to arguments in either direction—preferably on the forum, since it’s hard to make coherent arguments in 140 Twitter characters. I’ve made mistakes, and doubtless I’ll make more, but I find the result far more enlightening than an unexplained list of twenty teams that appears in the paper every week. If you want a ranking to give you a definitive answer, you’ve missed the point.

Halfway Home: High School Hockey 2014-2015

The midway point of the high school hockey season finds me in Duluth, home for a week that conveniently lines up with three crucial home games in Duluth East’s schedule. I’ll write more about these new-look Hounds and their search for an identity—and, oh yes, a seventh straight State Tournament berth—at the end of the week. In the meantime, here’s a tour of the state scene at the moment.

Among the AA schools, two undefeated teams remain. One is no surprise: Lakeville North’s team of destiny has dismissed all challengers. The three Poehling brothers remain a well-oiled machine, while the stellar defense in front of goalie Ryan Edquist holds the keys to the lock that any other title contender will need to crack. The Panthers have allowed just fourteen goals in their eleven games since a season-opening hiccup against Farmington, and with only one top-ten team—and a borderline one at that—left on the schedule, it’s time to unleash the hype machine. This group has a chance at a perfect season, and might be the best team since the Bloomington Jefferson dynasty of the early 90s. The pressure will mount, though, and they’re already starting to see uncommon efforts from the opposition, as limping Eagan gave them a run this past Saturday. The past fifteen years have produced a full graveyard of these so-called great teams that couldn’t close the deal, and we’ll soon learn what these Panthers are made of.

Right on North’s heels are the Cadets of St. Thomas Academy, senior-loaded in their second year in AA and also undefeated—albeit against a somewhat easier schedule. (The Schwan Cup Gold, usually the toughest holiday tournament out there, broke fortuitously for the Cadets, as Edina, Hill-Murray, and Eden Prairie all stumbled before they had a chance to meet the eventual champions.) They’re a well-balanced group, and while they may not have quite the star power of North or the depth of Edina, they have enough of both to beat the top teams if they can soldier through.

Edina, meanwhile, lurks there rounding out the top three, with Curt Giles’ scowl threatening to once more cast its pall over the State scene come March. Yet again, he has a Hornets team in his image: feisty, in-your-face, and there not just to beat the opposition, but to wear it down and bury it in a relentless assault. Their lone loss was a close-fought game with North, though they do also have a couple of ties against two of their bigger Lake Conference rivals. They continue to dodge bullets with penalties, and the defense lacks the game-controlling stars of the past few seasons, but they have the depth, they have the firepower, and they have those Hornets on the front of their jerseys. All three of the big guns are heavy favorites in their sections, and the top three seeds at State are theirs for the taking.

Section 6AA is its usual powerful self, with six of its seven teams in the top 25 in the state. What it lacks this year, however, is a certain state title threat. Wayzata is almost there, but doesn’t seem to have quite the identity of a clear frontrunner yet, and one of the many other contenders could easily derail them. The Trojans are slogging their way through what might be the toughest schedule the state has ever seen, and are good in many departments but not quite great anywhere yet. Eden Prairie is explosive but erratic, while Benilde-St. Margaret’s is deep but hasn’t lived up to the hype quite yet; Holy Family is thin but has some real talent, while Hopkins has a goaltender who can steal a big game. Minnetonka also came to crash the party over the Holidays, tying Edina and beating Eden Prairie to announce its return to relevance after a year-long detour. 5AA, while not nearly as strong as 6AA, is in a similar boat, with Blaine, Centennial, Maple Grove, and Anoka all looking like realistic contenders.

The other three AA sections all have tentative favorites. In 4AA, last year’s darlings, Stillwater, will need a similar miracle run to disrupt a return to the classic Hill-Murray vs. White Bear Lake final. A veteran Bears team, which has rallied together after the defection of Jake Wahlin and the death of senior captain Michael Johnson’s father just before the start of the season, looks to have a serious shot at relatively young Hill, 4AA’s perennial favorite. (In one of those moments that happen only in fairytales and high school sports, Johnson—who is not a prolific scorer—buried a goal on the Bears’ first shift of the season.) I like these Pioneers and their four top-flight defensemen as a serious dark horse at State—perhaps in the mold of 2008, when they went in as the 4-seed and crushed favored Roseau and Edina with a series of relentless hits—but they need to get there first. The most consistently entertaining AA rivalry looks to be headed for a delicious renewal on January 31, when the Bears and Pioneers hold their annual regular season brawl.

With Duluth East and Grand Rapids off to faltering starts, Elk River stands alone at the top of the heap in 7AA, though there is a fairly long list of respectable teams here that could cause the Elks trouble. The Hounds and Thunderhawks collide this week in a clash that will be a pivotal not only for section seeding but also for the psyches of the six-time defending champ Hounds and their longtime whipping boys to the west. If not the Elks, one of these two will likely represent 7AA, and someone needs to take the initiative if the crown is to remain in the north. 8AA also may see a changing of the guard, with surging Bemidji already boasting wins over Roseau and Moorhead, who have owned this section over the past two decades. A State Tourney berth for the Jacks would be their first in 29 years, and should add some fun northern energy to the Xcel Center. They’ve been close before, though, and have a ways to go before they finish the deal.

Class A’s usual suspects are up at the top, with Hermantown sitting pretty after solid wins over the next two highest-ranked teams, East Grand Forks and Duluth Marshall, in a Duluth holiday tournament. Perhaps this could finally be the year the Hawks figure out how to close things out, if their five-year runner-up streak isn’t in their heads. As usual, Breck is in the picture also, and explosive Mahtomedi is the clear favorite in Section 4A. 6A is very competitive and relatively good, with undefeated Alexandria leading the way; down south in 1A, New Prague still looks to be the class of the section despite serious losses to graduation. Luverne is also thinner than last year’s undefeated regular season squad, but the front-end talent there is undeniable, and Hutchinson is probably the only team that can upend them. 5A remains a black hole of section with little hype, but Spring Lake Park is positioning itself for a Tourney debut there.

The scripts are set now: we have our favorites and our underdogs, and know which games will set the stage for the playoffs. Six weeks, and then we’re there.

A Storm Gathers Strength

The team in its road blues pops in another goal. A groan goes down the line. One of the assistant coaches calls out the numbers of the five boys on the ice, and tells the girl with the scoresheet to circle one particular culprit. “We need to realize that just because someone does well in a drill, it doesn’t mean they’ll do well in a game,” muses another. Someone asks a much younger kid, the son of former Wild winger Antti Laaksonen, if he brought any gear and might be available to suit up. It’s all in good fun; part of the long and slow process of building up a hockey program into relevance.

Most of my hockey-watching involves matchups between the very top high school teams in Minnesota. I usually only see those outside the top 20 or so when they play Duluth East, and even then, I tend to be more intent on what the Greyhounds are doing. On Thursday night, I enjoyed a welcome change of pace and, on the invitation of a member of the forum I moderate, immersed myself in a program I hadn’t seen before.

Chanhassen High School broke off from Chaska just five years ago, and its fledgling hockey program under coach Chris Wilson has had just one winning season to date. They still share a youth program with Chaska, and have the added difficulty of being in AA; while Chaska became small enough to play in Class A after the split, the Storm are left battling the likes of Edina and Burnsville in the first round of the 2AA playoffs. This season also brings the Storm some new challenges, as the old Missota Conference dissolved, leading to the formation of the Metro West. Chanhassen now has perennial title contender Benilde-St. Margaret’s on its schedule, plus another longtime state power in Bloomington Jefferson. They entered this game at 2-2-1; one of those wins was over a decent Hopkins squad, but they were coming off a humbling 7-1 loss to rising 2AA power Prior Lake earlier in the week.

Their opponent on Thursday was Class A heavyweight Breck, and while the game wasn’t quite as lopsided as the 6-0 scoreline made it look, the Storm were certainly on their heels for most of the contest. They held their own for substantial chunks of the first period, but were bottled up whenever the Mustangs’ top line hit the ice, and Breck—not an overwhelmingly deep team themselves—exposed the lack of depth on both goals in the period. Things began to unravel in the second, with all three goals coming in painful ways: off a juicy rebound, on a shorthanded rush, and a very soft shot just before the end of the period. A victory was probably out of the question, but a rematch might bring out a better fight.

With the game out of reach, Wilson and his staff shook things up in the third. They loaded up their top line, pairing together their two more skilled junior forwards in search of a little more offense. Running up against the age-old high school hockey conundrum of age and experience versus youth and promise, they put in a freshman goalie, who performed ably. (Their best skater on the ice was also a young gun, a sophomore defenseman.) The Storm had some of their best chances in the game’s dying minutes, finally applying some serious pressure as the clock ticked down to zero.

This was some consolation to the group I joined in a perch behind glass at one end of the rink. While Chanhassen’s stats and video operation can’t match Benilde’s small army of backroom staff, a group of student managers kept meticulous stats and shots, and the assistant coaches at their side kept a running commentary, delighting in improvements from some players and sighing in defeat when others repeated old mistakes. They rushed down to the locker room between periods to relay things they’d seen from their perspective, doing all they could to correct errors and dissect trends in Breck’s approach. (This was all new to someone used to the Duluth East method for collecting details on games, which mostly involves Mike Randolph’s memory.)

After the game, the Storm staff huddled in the small coaches’ office next to the locker room, looking to regroup after a second straight game ended in running time. I diagnosed a work in progress; the players are hearing the right messages, but have yet to have them drilled into their minds. The learning curve is long, and after a pair of lopsided losses, the coaches have to play that delicate game of ego management. They want the top players to be confident and creative, but one can only tolerate so many attempts to dangle through traffic when there are open teammates, or blind backhanders that gift-wrap the puck to the opposition. The coaches want to play appealing and aggressive hockey, but how much does the opponent dictate what a team does, at what point do they content themselves with a neutral zone trap—or even simple damage control? They want to put pressure on the bubble players so they know their jobs are on the line, but at what point does juggling mess with their minds? There’s no easy formula for any of those questions, and Wilson’s staff has to experiment on the fly. Their approach for Friday night? A pasta dinner for the team.

Most of the conversation themes were familiar to anyone who’s been around youth hockey, but I was left with an appreciation for how much thinner the margin for error is with a team like Chanhassen. Where an elite team might be able to withstand a slight lack of hustle on the forecheck, a defenseman out of place, or an attempt to dangle straight through the heart of a defense, such lax play does in the Storm. So much of the game still comes down to fundamentals: if the breakout isn’t swift enough, it’s only a matter of time before someone is caught running around, and even when they do clear the blue line, there’s the whole matter of gaining the other team’s zone. The challenge comes in turning hesitation into instinct, and in getting a group of boys to buy into a complete team concept that might get them somewhere by February.

What path might this Storm take? Realistically, they can use their two games with Bloomington Jefferson and one with Holy Angels to earn a 4- or 5-seed in 2AA. There’s a very capable core of players here, and if they come together, they have some chance of winning a playoff game for the first time in school history. Beyond that, they simply have to keep strengthening the foundation, building a young program shift by shift.