In a back-and-forth battle for the title, the Crusaders managed to capture their sixth championship in school history with a 2-1 win over the Cardinals, giving them a state tournament birth.

“It’s tough, last games of careers for many players,” Alexandria head coach Ian Resch said. “Hopefully after reflecting a little bit they’ll (seniors) realize it was a special night tonight.”

A well-balanced first period kicked off with seven minutes of uninterrupted fast, hard hitting, defensive hockey by both the Cardinals and the Crusaders.

“It was a great hockey game, and there’s got to be a winner and a loser,” Resch said. “The kids dream of this game their whole life.”

The scoreless first eight minutes included a few timely saves by Alexandria’s Sam Goetsch, including a toe save on Cathedral’s reigning all-time point leader William Hammer.

The Cardinals fed off the play by their keeper and found some offense midway through the first, hitting two posts in one shift on an essentially untested Zach Fritz.

Despite a few turnovers Alexandria played sound in the defensive zone, chipping pucks off the glass, keeping shots to the perimeter, and limiting the dominant top line of the Crusaders.

A huge glove save by Goetsch on a Crusader defenseman from the slot, helped the Cardinals escape the scoreless first period, after a flurry of offense produced by Cathedral.

Goetsch closed out the first stanza with nine saves on six quality-scoring chances and with the help of a pipe, Fritz kicked back six.

“Goetsch was fantastic for them,” “If you told me there were two better goalies than the ones that were on the ice tonight, I’d be hard-pressed.”

An almost identical start to the period as the one before, led to more hitting, end-to-end action, and much more scoring.

Back-to-back great shifts by Alexandria’s sophomore Jack Steffl and senior forward Brandy Bast seemed to spark some offense for the Cardinals.

Junior defensemen Parker Revering rang one off the blocker side post shortly after, followed up by a grade-a opportunity for Bast in the slot, that was gloved down by Fritz.

Goetsch was busy in the other blue paint as well, as the end-to-end action ensued, allowing few second chances and controlling his rebounds well.

The solid goaltending and defense by the Cardinals seemed to amp up their offense, with Steffl cracking the egg on a high tip in the slot off the face-off to put the Cardinals up 1-0.

There was no time to feel good about the goal though, with the Crusaders scoring just 1:34 later on an odd man rush.

Logan Neu managed to slip one by Goetsch, coming off of a slow developing three-on-two chance and tying the game at one-a-piece.

Assists were credited to Matt Fritz and William Hammer on the play.

The fight wasn’t out of the Cardinals, creating a two-on-one opportunity off the next faceoff with Chris Leary and Steffl rocking one off the crossbar for the team’s third post of the night.

An Alexandria power-play at the 13:54 mark, led to a shorthanded, and eventual game-winning goal for Fritz and the Crusaders.

Fritz received a stretch pass from Phil Ruegemer on the far side of the rink, catching the Cardinals on a change. After entering the zone, Fritz let a wicked wrister loose from the left face faceoff dot on a one-on-two, and beat Goetsch high-glove.

“I didn’t know it was going to go in, but it did, and I was fine with that,” Fritz commented on his goal.

The remainder of the entertaining battle went scoreless with Goetsch recording a two-period total of 21 saves and Fritz kicking back 17.

The third and final period kicked off with a monstrous blocker save by Goetsch, after Hammer dished a perfect pass to the far side on a three-on-two.

A tripping penalty on Alexandria’s Christian Canavati, led to the first Cathedral power-play of the contest, but a well defended penalty kill allowed just one shot and few chances.

Fritz came up with continuous timely saves, holding the Crusaders in the game.

Another tripping penalty on Alexandria at the 13:24 mark created the do-or-die atmosphere for both teams, which resulted in another scoreless Cathedral power-play.

In desperation mindset, Alexandria put on a beret of offense in the remaining three minutes of the game, but Fritz was up to the challenge.

“He’s better when he’s busy… Zach’s a very focused kid and has a fantastic demeanor for a goalie,” Johnson said. “He’s got the flat-lined mentality you need to be a successful goalie.”

In the final efforts, the Cardinal’s pulled Goetsch with just under :50 seconds remaining, the man-advantage wasn’t enough as the boys in blue and gold held on for the one-goal win.

Fritz recorded 28 saves in the contest, and Goetsch returned 27, in the great goaltending duel.

With the victory, St. Cloud Cathedral Crusaders earned themselves the their sixth section championship in school history, all under the current coaching staff, headed by coach Johnson.

“We’ve been so close, so many times,” Johnson said. “The last few years we’ve been close and got beat by a very good Hermantown team.”

“We have good players, they come and work their butts off… and that makes our jobs easy as coaches.”

The Crusaders will be back in action March 5, in the MSHSL state tournament, held at the Xcel Energy Center.

“I can’t even put this feeling into words,” Fritz said. “It’s so surreal.”

The post Crusaders Squeak by Cardinals appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Featured Image:
Alexandria’s rink rookies huddle for a quick chat. The association’s intro-to-hockey offerings have generated unprecedented local interest. (Photo by Joe Korkowski)

There was a time when coaching involved searches for good sloughs with clean ice. Some folks in Alexandria can still remember those days, when west-central Minnesota housed only a handful of hockey players. Today, thanks to a passionate commitment to its youth hockey, and two sheets of cattail-free indoor ice, Alexandria has become something of a hockey hotbed.

Andrew Shriver has lived 15 years of that evolution, having launched Alexandria’s girls hockey program in the late 1990s. Today he serves as director of hockey operations for the Alexandria Area Hockey Association, and also as coach-in-chief for Minnesota Hockey’s District 15.

“In the early 2000s, our overall numbers had plateaued, so we started doing beginner clinics for girls as a way to drum up interest,” said Shriver. “As those evolved, we started seeing more and more young players. Then our high school girls won the state championship in 2007-08, and that, coming on the heels of women’s hockey in the Winter Olympics, did a great job of increasing the numbers.”

Next on the agenda was building better practices, while at the same time accommodating the influx of additional players, both girls and boys. USA Hockey’s American Development Model was taking flight at the same time, providing a blueprint for Shriver and his cohorts.

“There were so many great things that had been going on for years in Alexandria – we were doing a lot of ADM-type things already – but it was somewhat hit-and-miss,” said Shriver. “As we dove in deeper, we found out how easy it was to set up station-based practices just by going to the USA Hockey website and printing out plans. Our coaches did a phenomenal job.”

One of the challenges they faced was the mental hurdle of combining age-appropriate fun, skill development and competitiveness.

“We were doing a great job channeling our inner Sponge Bob instead of our inner Herb Brooks with six-year olds, but we worried about whether it was ‘hockey’ enough, rigorous enough to teach kids what they need, so that when they flip the switch to competitive hockey, it was time well spent,” said Shriver. “And that’s another thing the ADM does really well, is help us weave the technical pieces in so that we’re not missing that component just because the kids are smiling. We’re not boring them with five-minute dissertations on the merits of an inside edge, but they’re still being taught inside edges, and they’re working inside edges and they’re able to implement them into their game mostly because of how engaged they are and how much fun they’re having in practice.”

Soon a full-blown overhaul of the mite program was underway. Among the priorities was providing an inclusive program that didn’t force parents to drive hundreds of miles in search of skill development.

“If the only people we’re catering to are the people who are interested in and can afford that travel hockey experience from beginning to end, then we’re shrinking the talent pool even more, especially in a community like this one with a population of about 12,000,” said Shriver. “So, working with USA Hockey, we reinstated our mite in-house league and dressed up our cross-ice games to make them such fun events that parents don’t feel like all we do is practice. We focused hard on making our cross-ice game nights something exciting, without abandoning the core ADM principles.”

Shriver calls it counterintuitive to some, but in Alexandria they discovered that by focusing on in-house mite and squirt hockey, the peewee and bantam traveling teams became even stronger.

“More kids are interested, more kids are staying in hockey and more parents are receptive to hockey,” he said. “As a result, in the big picture, our travel teams improve because they have that in-house culture of all those kids playing together because they loved meeting at our rink.”

But a dynamic in-house program needs players to succeed, so Alexandria expanded its beginner clinics with a boys offering last month.

“We realized we were missing an opportunity by only offering it to girls,” said Shriver, who hoped to draw more of the area’s best athletes. The response was fantastic. Sixty new boys enrolled for the six-session program, the last of which included a cross-ice game, and the total cost to each player was $25, a fee that included equipment costs. Afterward, Alexandria’s mite enrollment swelled.

“The kids loved it and the parents were blown away (by the ADM practices),” said Shriver. “It was amazing to see how the stations worked perfectly, even with kids who’ve never played before. By the third session, 60 kids that had never played hockey before were moving smoothly through a station-based practice.”

Mites to bantams, Alexandria’s hockey enrollment now exceeds 300 players for only the third time in history. Retention rates have also spiked, with potential for an unprecedented four squirt teams and three peewee teams on the horizon.

“The depth that we have is great, and it’s depth not just in numbers, but also in talent, so that’s an indication (of the ADM impact),” said Shriver. “When people see how the ADM is playing out at our mite, squirt and peewee level, there’s buy-in because they can see the benefits. The more people learn, the more they embrace what the ADM offers.”

[youtube id=”_iQyZaxgo94″ width=”620″ height=”360″]

—
For more on this story, check out Joe Korkowski’s coverage at the Voice of Alexandria.

The post Alexandria coaches ‘channeling inner Sponge Bob’ appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.