This is the seventh in a series of posts on the history of Duluth East High School hockey. For the complete series (in reverse order), click here.

With an on-ice record of 308-82-10, eight state tournament berths, and two championships in 15 seasons, Duluth East’s Mike Randolph almost certainly had the strongest record of any active Minnesota high school coach. But after the 2003 season, the East administration chose not to renew his contract, effectively firing Randolph. The unexpected announcement shook up not only East hockey, but high school sports across the state. The incident was front-page news in Duluth for the next month, as players, parents, and alumni rallied behind the ousted coach. Hockey fans endlessly debated the possible reasons, which were not made public due to the Data Practices Act, and even school board members struggled to make sense of it all; former Member Harry Welty’s account of the whole saga is preserved here. Randolph critics were, at first, few and far between.

Still, in time, the charges against Randolph started to trickle out, and while there was no obvious smoking gun, there was an array of complaints. One of the biggest issues involved financial irregularities surrounding the program’s annual wreath fundraiser, in which both the district and the coaching staff accused each other of poor communication.¹ Many complaints revolved around players being cut and playing time; while some of these arguments appeared naïve about how a hockey team with a large feeder program naturally must operate or were simply sour grapes, others went a bit further and questioned his methods for cutting players.² Claims of recruiting, long rumored but never substantiated, also reappeared.³ Arguably the most damning critiques claimed that Randolph’s coaching style and commitment to his team’s success had made the program “too big” for its own good, and that he put too much pressure on a group of teenage boys who might not be emotionally mature enough to handle high expectations and “mind games.”⁴ (I plan to explore the charge about the program size in a post after I finish this series on East hockey history.)

Randolph waived his right to privacy so as to assess the charges against him, and his supporters staged a vigorous defense of their coach.⁵ They cast doubt upon the anonymous letters in the coach’s file, and several ex-players gave impassioned defenses of the lessons Randolph had taught them at a circus-like school board meeting. They questioned the motives of several Randolph critics, including a principal whose son had once been cut and a school board member whose name was on the side of a rival team’s arena.⁶ It was all to no avail: when the issue was put to a vote, the school board chose to respect the administration’s decision. East hockey had to move on without Mike Randolph.

The man who stepped into the void was Todd Wentworth, a longtime coach within the East program. Wentworth inherited a veteran team with 14 seniors, and while they were not the most explosive team on earth, they were deep at every position. East’s 15-8-1 record was the sort of solid mark expected of the program, though they were blown out by some of the state’s better teams, and also lost to Superior for the first time since 1991. The Hounds benefitted from a very thin 7AA, and though Goligoski’s Grand Rapids squad once again put up a decent fight in the section final, the deeper Hounds dispatched of them with three third period goals.

East was fortunate to draw a weak Lakeville team in the first round of the 2004 Tournament, and though Lakeville goalie B.J. O’Brien did everything in his power to give his team a chance, the Hounds prevailed, 2-0. The campaign against all odds came to a close the next night, however, as Moorhead blitzed the Hounds with a four-goal second period and jumped out to a 5-0 lead en route to a 6-3 win. East took down Wayzata the next afternoon to bring home the third place trophy, which was a real achievement given the turmoil surrounding Wentworth’s first season on the job.

It would also be Wentworth’s only season. Randolph, claiming his application for the East job had not been fairly considered, filed a grievance against the district, which went to an independent arbitrator for consideration.⁷ The school board, however, pre-empted the arbitrator’s ruling and chose to reinstate Randolph. The board, purged of several anti-Randolph votes in the previous fall’s election, cited numerous procedural errors in Randolph’s dismissal, explaining that Randolph had not been properly alerted to concerns about his management of the program.⁸ Randolph’s supporters rejoiced, claiming the board had corrected an injustice; the administration complained it had been undermined; Wentworth was left in limbo; and the players struggled to make sense of the whole situation.^{9 10}

Given the turmoil surrounding the program, it was little surprise that Randolph’s first year back was anything but smooth sailing. First, two billet players from out of state, Josh “Podge” Turnbull and Colin Trachsel (nephew of assistant coach Larry Trachsel), showed up in Duluth. The activities department erroneously assumed they were eligible to play immediately, which they were not. East was forced to forfeit its first seven games of the year (in which the team had gone 4-3), and Turnbull and Trachsel had to sit out the next thirteen games.¹¹ In a December game at Grand Rapids, a player claimed to have been kicked by Randolph, leading to an investigation from the Grand Rapids Police Department. Though the investigation determined that nothing worse than a foot-tap had taken place, the investigator cryptically concluded that “I certainly do not agree with the way in which Mr. Randolph conducted himself and believe there are issues to be addressed by his employer.”¹² Randolph was suspended for one game for violation of the Data Practices Act after he discussed the investigation with reporters, but that was the end of it.¹³ On top of it all, three seniors left the team during the course of the regular season.

In the midst of the off-ice controversies, the team put together another solid season. The Hounds knocked off title contenders such as White Bear Lake, Apple Valley, and Roseville, though they (rather understandably) struggled with consistency at times, and two regular season losses to Cloquet left the Hounds as the second seed in 7AA. Rob W. Johnson carried the load for an otherwise inexperienced offense, and sophomore wunderkind Cade Fairchild dazzled with his puck-moving skills on defense. But the player who carried East back to the promised land was Chris Sall, a little-hyped senior goaltender who simply caught fire in the playoffs.

The section final was a thrilling affair with top-seeded archrival Cloquet, as Sall held back a talented Jacks squad led by Mr. Hockey Finalist Mitch Ryan. Johnson scored in the third period to tie the game at two, and as the game moved into overtime, the deeper Hounds finally started to generate some offensive momentum. The winning goal, however, came from the least likely source: senior defenseman Kyle Michela, whose double-overtime game winner was the only goal of his high school career.

The State Tournament quarterfinal against White Bear Lake followed a similar script. The Hounds were outgunned and outshot 29-13, but Sall held firm and kept him team close. Two quick third period strikes were enough to stun the Bears and earn a return trip to the semifinals. Against a Moorhead team that featured six D-I seniors, not even a record-setting performance could save East; despite a 22-save 2^nd period from Sall that stood as a State Tournament record for eight years, the Hounds fell, 4-1. They rebounded the next day to secure a second straight third place trophy with a 5-3 win over Tartan. After all of the tumult, Randolph’s first year back produced a very positive on-ice result.

The next three seasons bore some surprising symmetries. The Hounds had similar records (20-6-1, 18-7-2, and 18-8-1, respectively). Each year, they lost a player to other hockey opportunities (Cade Fairchild, Josh Turnbull, and Keegan Flaherty, respectively). And each year, they suffered an agonizing loss in the section semifinals to a lower-seeded team.

To be sure, the 2006 and 2007 losses were hardly upsets. 7AA was at its deepest, and all of the teams were tightly packed in the rankings. Cloquet had its most talented teams since the days of Jamie Langenbrunner, Grand Rapids won the section and finished second at State both years, and Elk River, re-added to the section, was a top ten team in 2006. The 06 East team was quite young and rather thin in back, but after a mediocre December they went on a run, winning 14 straight to close out the regular season, including an overtime win over Cloquet to secure the top seed. They clashed with the Jacks again in the section semifinals, but this time, Cloquet goaltender Reid Ellingson stole the show in a 1-0 shutout. Cloquet outshot the Hounds, slipped one fluky goal past East’s Ben Leis, and put an end to the run of three straight section titles.

2007 followed a similar script, as East muddled through December before racking up the wins in the second half. A February game against Cloquet featured another thrilling duel between Ellingson and Leis, with the goaltenders combining for 92 saves in a 1-1 tie. Another East-Cloquet playoff clash seemed like destiny, but a powerful Grand Rapids team had other ideas. After coasting to a 2-1 lead in the opening period of the section semifinal, East went on to have one of the worst periods in program history. Rapids outshot East 18-2 in the second period (though one of those two was, miraculously, a goal), and eventually the teams went to overtime, where Rapids star Patrick White beat Leis to secure a 5-4 victory.

Rapids and Cloquet suffered serious losses to graduation after 2007, and though the MSHSL cycled a decent Anoka squad into 7AA for 2008, the section seemed ripe for East’s taking. The offense was not deep, but they had a strong top line in Max Tardy, Rob A. Johnson, and Jake Boese, and the defensive corps was perhaps their best since the late 90s. The Hounds again started slowly but streaked down the stretch, with their only loss in the last 13 games coming to an elite Edina team; they beat Cloquet to earn the top seed in the section and renewed their rivalry with the Lumberjacks in the semifinals. The game was an exhilarating back-and-forth affair that saw East take a 5-4 lead after an early 4-2 deficit, but the hero of the hour was Cloquet defenseman David Brown, who scored four goals, including the game-winner with 12 seconds to go.

The 6-5 loss seemed a fitting capstone to a frustrating run for a program saddled with such high expectations. The 2006-2008 teams were all reasonably good, but were never great, and there was no peak of talent that might have carried East deep into the State Tournament. Not far away, Duluth Marshall was enjoying its finest run of MSHSL hockey success, while other hockey opportunities drained away top East players. Meanwhile, the East program was under an intense scrutiny brought on by past success, its unique powerhouse status in northeastern Minnesota, and the drama surrounding an intense, embattled coach.

It is not hard to see how the pressure weighed down the Hounds once they had become a high-profile program. The years in which the team was supposed to peak and be a frontrunner for the title—1996, 1997, 2009, 2012, perhaps 2002—all ended in frustration. The years immediately pre- or post-peak, however, almost always turned out well: the 1995 team won the title a year ahead of schedule, and the 1998 squad won it when East was supposed to be dropping off some. Excellent runs in 2011 and 2013 bookend the 2012 failure. Very young squads such as the 1994, 2000, and 2010 teams were quite potent by the playoffs, though there was more grumbling around the program in those years due to the reliance on underclassmen. East hockey was under a microscope, and the burden of expectation was a heavy one to saddle upon a group of high school kids. After three straight section semifinal losses, it would have been easy to claim the program was on the decline, overwhelmed by the changing high school hockey scene. But through it all, the Hounds’ pride remained intact, and even Mike Randolph’s staunchest critics would admit he is never one to back down. In 2009, a new talent bubble was ready to take East back to St. Paul.

Next week: East’s run of five straight tournament berths from 2009-2013.

¹ Nowacki, Jon. “Fundraiser at Issue: Duluth East Administrators Asked Coach Mike Randolph for an Explanation of Wreath Sales Profits in December.” Duluth News-Tribune. 29 April 2003. Web. 15 July 2013.

² Augustoviz, Roman. “Coach Questions Process: Mike Randolph Still Wants to Know Why His Contract Was Not Renewed After 15 Seasons and Much Success as Duluth East Head Boys’ Hockey Coach.” Star Tribune. 6 May 2003. Web. 15 July 2013.

³ Kersten, Craig. “Sound Off: Principal Did Well.” Duluth News-Tribune. 2 May 2003. Web. 15 July 2013.

⁴ Meryhew, Richard. “The Ice Man Goeth: Duluth Coach’s Exit Spotlights Polarized Views of Program .” Star Tribune. 6 July 2003. Web. 15 July 2013.

⁵ Nowacki, Jon. “Randolph Asks District to Open His Personnel File.” Duluth News-Tribune. 2 May 2013. Web. 15 July 2013.

⁶ Meryhew, op. cit.

⁷ Nowacki, Jon. “Randolph Files Grievance: Former Duluth East Coach Says District Is Unfairly Disregarding His Application.” Duluth News-Tribune. 8 July 2013. Web. 15 July 2013.

⁸ Michals, Lisa. “Board Reinstates Randolph: The Former East High School Hockey Coach Will Get His Job Back.” Duluth News-Tribune. 21 April 2004. Web. 15 July 2013.

⁹ Michals, Lisa. “School Board: Hockey Coach’s Reinstatement Prompted Accusations, Left Administrators Feeling Undermined.” Duluth News-Tribune. 22 April 2004. Web. 15 July 2013.

¹⁰ Nowacki, Jon. “Hockey Players: Many Students Happy to See Randolph Return, but Sad that it’s at the Expense of their Coach this Season.” Duluth News-Tribune. 22 April 2004. Web. 15 July 2013.

¹¹ Nowacki, Jon. “Duluth East Gets Penalized: A Transfer Rules Violation Means East will have to Forfeit Wins in Boys and Girls Hockey.” Duluth News-Tribune. 19 December 2004. Web. 15 July 2013.

¹² Stodghill, Mark. “Randolph won’t Be Charged.” Duluth News-Tribune. 29 December 2004. Web. 15 July 2013.

¹³ Weegman, Rick. “Randolph Gets One-Week Coaching Suspension.” Duluth News-Tribune. 21 January 2005. Web. 15 July 2013.

This post is the fifth in a series on the history of Duluth East hockey. For the complete series (in reverse order), click here.

Cloquet High School had ruled the northeastern Minnesota hockey roost in 1992 and 1993, but their chance to build a dynasty took a hit when star forward Jamie Langenbrunner left for Canada before the 1994 season. With Langenbrunner out of the way and dangerous Virginia sent to Class A under the revised, enrollment-based two-class system, the Section 7AA field was open for Duluth East. Mr. Hockey finalist Clint Johnson joined sophomores Dave Spehar and Chris Locker on the top line, and with a deep, young supporting cast, East lost only four regular season games. Two losses to state power Elk River were understandable; more troubling were the two losses to a somewhat depleted Cloquet team. At the second game in Cloquet, Johnson’s pre-period ritual of tapping the opposing team’s goal with his stick sparked a fight for the ages, with fans in the stands throwing punches over the low glass at East players. The Hounds’ otherwise dominant regular season earned them the top seed, but they had yet to exorcise their demons with Cloquet, whom they inevitably met in the section final.

The week before the game, Randolph got some unpleasant news: Locker had been deemed academically ineligible, and would be forced to miss the rest of the season. Rather than shake up all of his lines, Randolph pressed freshman Matt Mathias into duty on the top line with Spehar and Johnson. The reworked top line scored both East goals in the game as the Hounds ended a long stretch of frustration against Cloquet with a 2-0 victory. East’s opponent in the State quarterfinals was Minnetonka, another young but talented team that boasted six future Division One players. But the Hounds took care of business in a methodical manner, outshooting the Skippers 29-14 in the 3-1 win.

In the semifinal, East faced an entirely different animal: the Bloomington Jefferson Jaguars, the two-time defending state champions who were busy putting together the greatest dynasty in modern Minnesota high school hockey. The ’94 Jags featured nine D-I players, including future NHLers Mike Crowley, Mark Parrish, Ben Clymer, and Toby Petersen. East played Jefferson as closely as any team that season, jumping out to an early lead on a goal by Matt Frigaard and hanging in until the bitter end, losing by a 2-1 final score. The Hounds turned around and locked up third place hardware with a 5-3 win over South St. Paul the next day.

The Hounds bolstered their lineup with a handful of transfers before the 1995 season. Senior forward Dan Zabukover came in from Duluth Central to add his services to the checking line, and speed merchant Ted Suihkonen, a junior who had played an instrumental role for Virginia in the 1993 playoff victory over East, came south from the Iron Range. With Suihkonen came a pair of eighth grade defensemen who would get some varsity ice time, though they were not on the playoff roster: Ted’s younger brother, Steve, and Patrick Finnegan, who was perhaps the crown jewel of northeastern Minnesota hockey prospects at the time. The city of Virginia never would forgive East for their “theft,” but the transfers revealed the changing contours of high-stakes high school sports.

The 1995 Greyhounds were loaded for a state tournament run. Spehar obliterated the school scoring record with a 101-point season, and Locker wasn’t far behind, with 88 of his own—even though Randolph never really settled on a third member of the top line. Suihkonen combined with Mathias to lead a potent secondary scoring line, a young but talented defense improved as the year went along, and three-year starter Cade Ledingham led the way in goal. The Hounds split two games with Elk River and beat Edina and Grand Rapids; their only other losses were to Hill-Murray and a head-scratcher against Duluth Denfeld, whom they’d beaten 13-0 in the teams’ first meeting of the year.

While East had an easy road to the 7AA final, their opponent in that game, Grand Rapids, was a legitimate threat that had been ranked in the top 5 at times that season. Randolph also made a gamble in goal, starting sophomore Kyle Kolquist over the struggling Ledingham. The Hounds generally carried the play, but Rapids hung tough and tied the game at two in the second on a goal by 1997 Mr. Hockey Aaron Miskovich. The difference-maker, to no one’s surprise, was junior forward Dave Spehar, who scored the game-winner midway through the third.

As luck would have it, the Hounds were saddled with a first-round meeting with Bloomington Jefferson. The Jaguars were seeking a fourth straight title, and had only lost twice in the previous three seasons. But Mike Randolph had a game plan, and he had the perfect player to execute it. A minute and a half in, Locker found a floating Spehar on a breakaway. 1-0. Five minutes later, Spehar collected a loose puck and went the length of the ice. 2-0. Before ten minutes were up, Cullen Flaherty found a streaking Spehar again for the natural hat trick. A fourth goal late in the first made the rest of the game academic. On the other end of the ice, Ledingham had his finest game in a Hounds jersey, snuffing out several early Jaguar chances en route to the shutout, and a third period goal added some icing to the cake. The next day, East fans arrived at the Civic Center wearing shirts that summed up the mood: “East 5, Jefferson 0. Any Questions?”

Spehar, however, was only getting started. East started their semifinal against Edina the next night with a bang, as Ryan Engle scored just fifteen seconds in. Edina hung around for a little while, but the East assault was relentless, with two goals in each period, one of each by Spehar. In the title game the Hounds faced a formidable opponent in Moorhead, who was in its third final in four years. The Spuds, led by future NHLer Matt Cullen, proved far more capable of containing the East attack than their first two opponents. The Spuds took a 3-2 lead early in the third, but Ted Suihkonen had an immediate answer, and a few minutes later, Spehar broke free again. This time, the Spuds’ defense hauled him down, and Spehar earned himself a State Tournament dream: a penalty shot with the game on the line. Naturally, he didn’t miss. Four minutes later, he iced the state title when he completed his third consecutive hat trick. After 35 years, the championship trophy was headed back Duluth, and it was going in style.

Following their memorable run through the 1995 playoffs, the expectations for 1996 were sky-high. East returned two full lines, their top four defensemen, and filled in the few holes with their astonishing depth. The 1996 playoff roster featured eleven players who went on to play some Division One hockey—two more than the undefeated 1993 Jefferson Jaguars, who are generally considered the greatest high school team of all time—and that total didn’t include Locker or freshman defenseman Patrick Finnegan, who would go on to play Canadian Major Junior hockey.

The Hounds were never held to under three goals in 1996, and ran up some gaudy scores against Lake Superior Conference competition. They did prove mortal around Christmas, when they dropped a pair of one-goal games to Hill-Murray, and an injury to Locker kept both he and Spehar from exceeding their absurd point totals from the year before. One of the few teams to give them a close game was Grand Rapids, but the Indians were knocked off by Greenway in the section semifinals, and the Hounds coasted through the 7AA playoffs, winning their three games by a combined 27-3 score.

It was more of the same in the first round at State, as East demolished Blaine, 7-1. Spehar continued his Tourney prowess with a 4-goal performance, including a goal seventeen seconds in that left the Civic Center in awe. Hill-Murray had gone down in sections, and that left only one team in the field that might be considered a serious threat to beat East: Apple Valley. The Hounds and the Eagles met on in the semifinals, and the result was one of the greatest high school games ever played.

After feeling each other out in the first period, the teams began to trade goals. East never led in the game, but had an answer immediately after each Apple Valley tally. In the third period, each team’s stars took over: first Locker tied the game at two, then Erik Westrum scored his second of the night for Apple Valley; Spehar struck back a few minutes later, but Westrum finished his hat trick to give the Eagles the lead with just over six minutes to go. The gameplay was thrilling even in regulation, and the Hounds pressed forward in desperate search of a game-tying goal. Their backs to the wall, East turned to their heroes to get the job done again. With 39 seconds to go, Locker electrified the Civic Center when he pumped in a pass from Spehar to tie the game.

Often, games that go on for multiple overtimes tend to drag as the teams tire. In this game, there was none of that, and not a hint of cagy play. Both teams flew up and down the ice, flashing their skill in search of the game-winner, and the goalies saved shot after shot—49 for East’s Kolquist and an astonishing 65 for the Eagles’ Karl Goehring. Apple Valley, incredibly, rolled just two lines, one replacing the other when the first needed a break. Randolph used a deeper rotation in an effort to wear down the Eagles, and for a moment, it seemed as if it worked in the second overtime, when replays suggest Matt LaTour tipped in a Dylan Mills shot. The referees, however, disagreed, and the teams played on. And on. And on. In the fifth overtime, in the game’s 93^rd minute, Apple Valley’s Aaron Dwyer ended the longest Tournament game ever played with a laser from the point.

Exhausted and crushed, the Hounds faced the unenviable task of taking on South St. Paul in the third place game the next day. They responded in style, winning 9-2, and Spehar rounded out his Mr. Hockey-winning résumé with his fifth career Tourney hat trick. It was a bittersweet end to a storied career, though there was no shame in the way East’s run came to an end. The futures of Locker and Spehar only underlined how fleeting those glory days were: after winning WCHA Rookie of the Year honors as a freshman at the University of Minnesota, Spehar plateaued and did not play hockey past college; Locker went to play Canadian juniors instead of playing for Wisconsin, and his hockey career never did quite land on its skates afterward.

Despite graduating Spehar, Locker, and several key members of the supporting cast, the 1997 Hounds showed no signs of dropping off. The East Class of 1997 was the school’s deepest ever, with seven future D-I players. Even though Steve Suihkonen transferred to Hibbing, they were particularly strong in back: goaltender Kyle Kolquist won the Brimsek Award for the state’s top goalie, Dylan Mills was named the Associated Press Player of the Year, Ryan Coole was a Mr. Hockey Honorable Mention, and junior Nick Angell would be a Mr. Hockey finalist in 1998. Patrick Finnegan, a defenseman the previous year, moved to the top line alongside Matt Mathias and Andy Wheeler to help fill the void left by Spehar and Locker.

The ’97 team put together East’s only undefeated regular season. Only three of their 21 wins came by less than three goals, and the lone blemish on their record was a late-season tie at Hibbing. Naturally, East had to play the Bluejackets in the section final at Hibbing Memorial Arena. The historic arena was packed to the gills and oozing with old-time Minnesota hockey atmosphere, and two quick strikes by Hibbing late in the second tied the game and made for a thrilling final frame. But in the end, Mathias silenced the home crowd and buried the game-winner to send East to its fourth straight State Tournament.

In the first round, the Hounds faced a spirited fight from one-loss Rochester Mayo, arguably the best team to come out of Section 1AA in the two-class era. With five future D-I players the Spartans were no southern Minnesota pushover, but East used its stifling defense to keep Mayo without a shot in the third period and won the game, 3-2. They faced second-ranked Moorhead in the semifinals, and once again the defense carried the day as East rolled to a 3-0 shutout.

East’s opponent in the title game was an Edina team also in the midst of a strong run, having finished third and second the previous two years. While East was the deeper squad, Edina stars such as Dan Carlson brought a burst of speed the Hounds couldn’t match, and a first period Carlson goal gave Edina a lead they would never relinquish. Without a finisher of Spehar’s caliber, East could not solve Hornets goaltender Jeff Hall, and the undefeated season came to an end in a 1-0 final.

After the title game loss, a drained Coach Randolph gave serious thought to retirement. It had been an exhausting season, and after so much success, the scrutiny of the East program had never been higher. Hibbing fans took exception to his salute to the East fans after the 7AA Final, and his four children—then between the ages of 3 and 13—overheard some unsavory remarks about their father at the State Tournament.¹ Randolph was deluged by over 100 calls and letters, “only three” of them negative, and decided to stay.²

The 1998 squad, while perhaps unable to match the incredible depth of the previous two years, was still loaded for another Tournament run. Finnegan and Angell, the twin pillars on the blue line, were the undisputed stars of the team, while goalie Adam Coole gave East a second straight Brimsek Award winner. Up front, the lunch pail line of Kevin Oswald, Dan Roman, and Gabe Taggart led the way, while brothers Ross and Rheese Carlson hooked up with Chad Roberg to give East two interchangeable top lines.

The Hounds opened the season with five straight shutout victories, including 3-0 wins over state powers Elk River and Hill-Murray, though they were later forced to forfeit two of those wins due to a mix-up over Rheese Carlson’s eligibility. The senior forward had started the year at North Iowa of the United States Hockey League, and there was some question as to his status due to state residency rules. The MSHSL initially suspended Carlson, but a county court issued a restraining order against the League, and its Board of Directors later voted to declare Carlson eligible, though the wins were not reinstated.³

The 1998 squad’s sole on-ice loss came at the hands of Grand Rapids in the sixth game of the season, 7-5. The Hounds had only a handful of close games after that, including narrow wins over Moorhead and Greenway, and a 3-2 victory in a rematch against Rapids. They closed out the regular season with a 6-5 win over state title contender Anoka, and shut out Rapids in the 7AA semifinals before moving on to face Elk River, newly added to the section, in the final. The inclusion of an elite Metro-area program in 7AA rankled many supporters of northeastern Minnesota hockey, and the Elks were not particularly enthused over being forced to play a section final in Duluth, either. The 7th-ranked Elks were missing an injured young defenseman named Paul Martin for the section final, but even he would have struggled to turn the tide. The Hounds powered to a 7-1 victory to clinch a fifth straight trip to State.

The road back to the final was not an easy one, as East faced second-ranked Hastings in the first round. The Raiders were not a deep team, but with stars Jeff Taffe and Dan Welch leading the way up front, they could score in bunches. The teams traded punches for two periods; the Hounds built a 5-2 lead, and while Hastings drew within one late in the second, East held the Raiders down in the third for a 5-4 win. The semifinal pitted East against Bloomington Jefferson, a State Tournament rubber match between the top two programs of the 1990s. The top two remaining teams in the state, though sloppy at times, eventually delivered the goods: East took a 2-1 lead on an Angell goal in the third, but Jefferson battled back to force overtime. Randolph gambled by putting his big defensemen together, and it paid off; Kevin Oswald won the game for the Hounds at 3:43 of the overtime. In the championship game East faced fourth-ranked Anoka in the final hockey game at the old St. Paul Civic Center, but this time, there was no need for late heroics. The title game was a clinical 3-1 victory that showed off East’s dominant defense and Coole’s superb goaltending.

The win closed out a dominant era for the Hounds. They had finished in the top three in five consecutive seasons, a stretch in which they posted a 126-13-1 on-ice record. They won two titles, and their three playoff losses were all by one goal to the eventual state champion. 19 skaters who appeared on those teams went on to Division One hockey, while another 12 played after high school at some level. They brought an end to the great Jefferson dynasty, spent nearly all of 1996-1998 ranked #1 in the state, and the 98 title run, in which they beat the other three teams ranked in the top four, crowned the Hounds as the state’s premier hockey program. It was a superb time to be an East hockey fan, though it couldn’t last forever.

Next week: East hockey from 1999-2003, including an account of changes in high school hockey, life in a program expected to win, and the bombshell at the end of the 2003 season.

¹ Pates, Kevin. “Randolph Ponders His Future: East Hockey Coach Considers Stepping Down.” Duluth News-Tribune. 11 March 1997. Web. 1 July 2013.

² Pates, Kevin. “Randolph to Return; Support Overwhelming.” Duluth News-Tribune. 22 March 1997. Web. 1 July 2013.

³ Pates, Kevin. “Carlson Ruled Eligible: MSHSL Restores East Player’s Status.” Duluth News-Tribune. 13 January 1998. Web. 2 July 2013.

This is the fourth in a series of posts on Duluth East hockey history. For the first three parts (in reverse order), click here.

By 1985, the future of Duluth East hockey looked rather murky. There was plenty of talent coming through the program, but it had been ten years since the team made a State Tournament, and six since they’d made a region final. As the northern Metro suburbs grew and the old hockey powerhouses on the Iron Range dwindled, the benefits of the 1975 move to Region 2 grew less and less. The city of Duluth was also under demographic stress, as the collapse of Iron Range mining and Duluth-based manufacturing sapped the local economy. The trends for future hockey success in Duluth were not good. One program, however, showed decline was not inevitable: likely aided somewhat by the closure of Morgan Park High, Duluth Denfeld began its greatest run of hockey success. Behind goaltender Robb Stauber and an offensive scheme drawn up by an assistant coach named Mike Randolph, the Hunters made their first State Tournament in 1986, and went again in 88 and 89.

Over on the east side, the common perception at the time was that the Hounds were failing to live up to their potential. It was no surprise, then, that they began to cycle through coaches in search of someone who could stick. After Don Bourdeau’s retirement after 1984, the Hounds got two years each out of Bob Hill and Art Amundson, both former East players who had sons on the team around that time period. Though each got the Hounds to a section final, neither one stuck around. The 1985 Hounds lost a tight final to Anoka, while the 1987 squad was shellacked by Roseville, 9-1. The 1988 second-round playoff loss was especially glaring; even with Mr. Hockey finalist and future 15-year NHLer Sean Hill on the squad, East still lost to Denfeld in overtime. The refrain was all too familiar: high expectations, solid regular seasons, playoff failure. Neither Hill nor Amundson could break the pattern, and were both swiftly off the job.

And so the puck was passed to Mike Randolph, a 1970 graduate of Duluth Cathedral who’d gone on to be the last man cut from the 1976 Olympic squad before serving as an assistant coach at Denfeld and Minnesota-Duluth and a one year stint as the head coach at Cathedral. A disciple of former Cathedral coach Del Genereau, Randolph came to the program with a simple message: “I’ll give you the recipe.” If the team followed it, he insisted, they would be in the State Tournament within five years. Following in the footsteps of two of the state’s greatest coaches—Edina’s Willard Ikola and Bloomington Jefferson’s Tom Saterdalen—Randolph consolidated control over the youth hockey program on the east side of Duluth, ensuring young players would have knowledge of his systems before they arrived in high school. His offseason training programs also helped strengthen the pipeline and set the foundations for a top-flight community-based hockey program. He was a demanding coach, but the consensus around the program was that it needed someone to whip it into shape, and Randolph certainly seemed like the sort of man who could do just that.

Still, Randolph’s first season seemed more like a continuation of the previous few years than a break from the past. Once again, East put together a solid regular season, splitting their games with section frontrunners Denfeld and Cloquet and losing just two other games, albeit against a schedule that only included one Metro-area team. But it was only enough to earn the third seed in the Duluth bracket of Section 2, the Hounds lost to Derek Plante’s Cloquet squad 6-1 in the first round of the playoffs.

The 1990 Hounds looked to improve on the previous year’s showing, and with three excellent senior forwards and a very deep junior class, they had the makings of East’s best team in years. Randolph strengthened the schedule by adding state powers Edina, Anoka, and Bloomington Kennedy, against whom they went 2-1. They again struggled with Cloquet, losing both regular season meetings, and also tumbled against Silver Bay, Hibbing, and State Tourney runner-up Grand Rapids. But by playoff time they were the top seed in the Duluth bracket, and they marched through the first two rounds before colliding with Anoka in the semifinals. In a competitive game between two high-quality teams, Anoka prevailed, 4-3. East’s breakthrough would have to wait another year, and the expectations rose ever higher.

The defining features of the 1991 Hounds were their size and physicality. The defense, led by senior North Dakota recruit Kevin Rappana and junior Pat Ryan, was rugged and stout in front of junior goaltender Wade Salzman, who went on to play at Notre Dame. They did have one truly elite offensive player in Rusty Fitzgerald, a senior transfer from Silver Bay who was among the state’s top NHL draft prospects. However, injuries forced Fitzgerald to play defense for a chunk of the season and held him to a fairly sedate 25 points, and though there was some offensive talent around him in the likes of Derek Locker, Jeremy Jeanette, and sophomore Nik Patronas, the Hounds’ offense did not put up very big point totals. Five of their six losses were by one goal, and almost all of them of the low-scoring variety; try as they might, two wins in three games against Cloquet were the closest thing East had to signature victories. They went into the Region 2 playoffs as lukewarm favorites, and though they had a one-goal adventure against St. Cloud Tech in the quarterfinals, they rolled past Blaine to meet Cloquet once again in the section championship game. Over 1,000 fans had to be turned away from the sold-out DECC, and the game lived up to its billing and went to overtime, where Fitzgerald showed his mettle and scored the goal that sent East to St. Paul for the first time since 1975.

East’s opening-round opponent was one of the tournament favorites, a two-loss Richfield team led by future NHLer and 1991 Mr. Hockey Darby Hendrickson. The Hounds didn’t have the skill of the Spartans’ top unit, but they did have a punishing, physical game plan designed to batter their opponents into submission. Randolph later cracked that “they let us hit anything that moved,” but their clean, hard-hitting style won the Hounds plenty of support at the Civic Center. After playing to a 1-1 tie through two periods, East broke down the Spartans in the third, exploding for four goals en route to a 5-1 win. The Hounds had come into the Tournament as relative unknowns, but Randolph was happy to play the underdog role. “I wanna know if you guys know who Duluth East is right now,” he teased a postgame reporter.

East’s semifinal opponent, Burnsville, had also pulled a first-round upset when they took down defending state champion Roseau. The feisty, senior-laden Braves gave East a strong fight, and both goaltenders were on top of their game. It went to overtime, where Fitzgerald once again played the hero, and swatting home the game-winner to send East to the championship game.

The final pitted East against Hill-Murray. Though the Pioneers hadn’t had a dominant regular season, they too had caught fire at the right time, and had rolled through the first two rounds by a combined score of 18-4. The game was a classic match-up of speed against brute force, but it was the Pioneers who dictated the flow of play. For a time, it looked as if the Hounds could run with Hill, as they leapt out to early 2-0 and 3-1 leads. But the open style was not to East’s favor, and in time, Pioneer forwards such as Mike and Mark Strobel began to gash the tiring East defense. Hill took a 4-3 lead by the middle of the third period and closed out their 5-3 win with an empty-netter in the game’s final minute.

East’s loss to Hill-Murray was also the end of an era, as it was the final game of single-class hockey in Minnesota. In 1992, the MSHSL debuted an ill-fated two-year experiment in a tiered system, which separated the top 64 teams into Tier I at the start of the postseason, and left the rest in Tier II. Unsurprisingly, the Tier II competition to decide the 65^th-best team in the state didn’t generate much interest. The MSHSL’s response kept the two divisions, but chose instead to divide the schools by enrollment, with Class A for the small schools and Class AA for the large schools, plus any small schools that voluntarily “opted up.”

As a result of the changes, East made its way back north to re-join its old Duluth-area and Iron Range rivals, first in Tier I of Section 7, and later in Section 7AA. The section boundaries continued to shift, however; by the middle of the decade, both Duluth Denfeld and Central, still shrinking along with the city of Duluth, dropped to Class A. Several of the old Iron Range powers also switched classes, and 7AA slowly began to extend southward, once again adding exurban Twin Cities communities.

During the two-tier experiment, Section 7’s Tier 1 belonged not to East or one of the Iron Range schools, but to Cloquet. The Jacks fielded such future D-I players as Jesse Bertogliat, Aaron Novak, Sergei Petrov, and future NHLer Rick Mrozik, along one of the greatest players to ever come out of Minnesota, Jamie Langenbrunner. While the 1992 Hounds finished the regular season with 11 straight wins and had some key holdovers from the previous year such as Salzman, Patronas, Ryan, and Fran Bussey, they were no match for the loaded Lumberjacks, who beat them 4-1 in the section semifinals.

In 1993, Randolph sought to reshape his Hounds with a youth movement. Patronas’s wings on the top line were a pair of freshmen, Dave Spehar and Chris Locker, while eighth grader Dylan Mills was one of the team’s top defensemen. The young Hounds showed no signs of inexperience, exploding out of the gate with nine straight wins. Of their five regular season losses, three were to Cloquet (by a total of four goals). But with a season split with Denfeld and a loss to Virginia on the season’s final day, the Hounds were saddled with the fifth seed in a deep Section 7, and had to travel to play Virginia in the first round. Spehar scored twice in the third period to give the Hounds a chance, but Virginia pulled away for a 5-3 win. East has not lost in the first round since. And while the youth movement didn’t produce immediate playoff success, the foundations of a powerhouse program were finally in place, and Spehar, Locker, and Mills would carry the Hounds into their greatest run of hockey glory.

Quotations come from recordings of State Tournament broadcasts on KMSP.

Next week: The Golden Age of East hockey.