SAINT PAUL—The 2013/14 regular season was one in which the boys’ Class AA rankings featured a carousel of teams in the top spot with no one seemingly willing or able to carry the baton and run with it. The state tournament, however, was a much different story as top-seeded Edina not only grabbed the baton, they ran away with it.

The Hornets dominated the tournament from the opening puck drop in Thursday’s quarterfinal to the final horn in Saturday’s 8-2 win over No. 2 seed Lakeville North at Xcel Energy Center. Neither Stillwater, Eagan nor the Panthers could slow the speedy Hornets over the weekend as they cruised to their second straight state championship.

“It’s a difficult tournament to win; it’s a difficult journey to get here,” Giles said. “To do it back-to-back is just a credit to our kids.”

Lakeville North entered the game coming off two emotional overtime wins, the second one going to two extra sessions and finishing just seconds short of two full games. Panthers’ coach Trent Eigner said he knew his team had its work cut out for it against the Hornets after back-to-back mentally and physically taxing battles.

“The emotional part of that is sometimes a tougher nut to crack,” he said. “If you’re not mentally prepared for a team like that, it can be a challenge all night long.”

Tyler Nanne opened the tournament with four goals and capped it with four assists while Kieffer Bellows and Miquel Fiddler each scored twice and added assists to their three-point efforts. Max Johnson scored both Lakeville North goals

“It’s unfortunate because I don’t think we played very well,” Eigner said. “That’s a great hockey team that beat us tonight but we kind of got out of sorts early on in the game and they have a tendency to do that to teams.

“Some people say that green and gold jersey is worth a goal.”

Nanne said the title run began in November when Giles and his staff chose the team adding they “didn’t miss one bit” in their roster selections.

“Everyone they picked deserved to be on the team and contributed,” Nanne said. “It was just 20 brothers pitching in to win a state championship and that’s what they did.”

The Hornets made habit of scoring early throughout the tournament with goals at the 54 second and 1:52 marks in wins over Stillwater and Eagan. The championship game was no exception as Edina seized a 1-0 lead just 2:09 after the opening faceoff.

Garrett Wait received a Tyler Nanne pass and drove toward the Lakeville net from the left side, selling Lakeville North goaltender Jake Oettinger on a five-hole shot. The Panther’s freshman goaltender bought it before Wait slid the puck to the net-crashing Casey Dombach who tapped it into a wide open net.

Giles said the early-game success is about nothing more than his team getting its ‘game’ on the ice as quickly as possible.

“What we really want to do is make sure they’re prepared for the start,” Giles said. “We try to give them an opportunity and a thought process to get off to a good start and be successful, but you’ve got to have good players to do that.”

Lakeville North was held without a shot for the game’s first 9:01 but the Panthers’ first puck on goal weakened the seal on the Edina net and they got on the board two shots and 34 seconds later when Johnson pounced on a rebound near the left post to tie the game at 1-1.

The rest of the period was a case of every action having an equal and opposite reaction as Edina answered just 33 seconds later on a Ben Foley goal. When the Hornets’ Miquel Fidler scored his first of the tournament at 13:16, the Panthers roared back 1:20 later courtesy of Johnson’s second goal and Edina led 3-2 after one.

Edina restored its two-goal lead at 5:36 of the second when Malmquist carried the puck behind the Lakeville North net before stopping, spinning and whipping a pass against the grain to Fidler who caught Oettinger cheating off the left post for his second of the game.

The Hornets scored twice in a 1:50 span early in the period’s second half beginning when Parker Mismash was struck in the back with Jack McNeely’s breakout pass. Mismash turned around, located the puck and blew a wrist shot past Oettinger. Shortly thereafter Kieffer Bellows deflected an Alec Oesterreich pass bar-down on a rush and Edina had a commanding 6-2 cushion.

The Panthers received an opportunity to play themselves back into the game when Edina’s Tyler Nanne was charged with a major penalty for boarding at 16:12 of the second. But Lakeville North was unable to capitalize on the five-minute man advantage and only mustered four shots in the final period when Bellows and Cullen Munson rounded out the scoring.

In winning three of the past five state championships, the Hornets now have 12 titles in 30 appearances to their credit when Edina East’s three wins in five tries are factored in. In comparison, the Panthers were seeking their first title in eight trips to St. Paul, including three attempts prior to the formation of Lakeville South.

Eigner pointed out the obvious, however, that each of those Edina teams consisted of a different mix of players, but added the Hornets are clearly extremely comfortable in the state tournament environment.

“Guys who come up are playing with guys who’ve played (in the tournament) two times and had success, and that breeds more success,” Eigner said. “Ultimately, you’re going to have to play a heck of a hockey game to beat them in our first kick at the can.”

Giles said it’s not winning state championships that he enjoys the most, it’s working with the players which brings him the most satisfaction.

“There’s a rap against Edina kids; they’re spoiled, they’re handed everything, they’re not tough,” Giles said. “It’s not true. They’re just great kids. It’s a blast.”

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SAINT PAUL—The ticket to the Class AA Minnesota State Girls’ Hockey Tournament for Hill-Murray and Benilde-St. Margaret’s was the right combination of dynamic offense and suffocating defense. The Pioneers (95) and the Red Knights (93) arrived in St.  Paul sporting the highest goals scored/goals against differentials among the tournament’s eight participants, putting them on a collision course for the title game.

The matchup between the two private school powers, one from east of the Mississippi and the other from the west, did not disappoint. But Hill-Murray, on the strength of balanced scoring and great goaltending, defeated the Red Knights 5-3 on Saturday night at Xcel Energy Center to earn its first-ever girls’ state hockey championship.

“I was really, really pleased with the way we played,” Hill-Murray coach Bill Schafhauser said. “Benilde’s an awesome team, obviously, and we knew we had to be our best tonight and I think we were.

“We saved the best for last this weekend which I think was awesome.”

Goaltender Leah Patrick was outstanding for Hill-Murray in a 23-save effort, stopping several Benilde grade-A scoring opportunities in the process. The Pioneers, the 2013 state tournament runner-up, went three lines deep on the scoresheet and got a pair of goals from Jess Bonfe along with two points from Sarah Bobrowski (1-1–2).

“If we had an unsung or breakthrough type of player this year, it would be Leah,” Schafhauser said. “It’s a neat process to witness a s a coach to have a goaltender win over a team and get their confidence and she did great.”

Benilde senior Kelly Pannek scored all three of the Red Knights’ goals and finished with seven goals and four assists for the tournament. The 11 points give the University of Minnesota commit 99 for the season (41-58-99). Abigail Miller turned aside 17 of 22 Hill-Murray shots for Benilde-St. Margaret’s.

“I’m glad I could play well, but I would have traded that for a win here today,” a disappointed Pannek said after the game.

Hill-Murray jumped out to a two-goal lead as Bonfe scored twice before the game was 10 minutes old, the first one coming at just the 1:17 mark, and the Pioneers led the rest of the way.

“We just got off to a bad start,” Benilde-St. Margaret’s coach David Herbst said. “We kept battling but when you dig yourself a hole like that it’s tough to get out, especially in the state tournament.”

It took the Red Knights less than two minutes to bounce back from Bonfe’s second goal and trimmed the deficit to one when Brittany Wheeler’s shot from the left circle handcuffed Patrick and, for the second time in as many nights, Pannek pounced on a loose puck in the crease to get Benilde on the board.

The Pioneers maintained that 2-1 lead entering a second period which saw them pull away as Hill-Murray extended its lead on Jac Kaasa’s goal a mere 29 seconds into the middle stanza. Bobrowski’s shot from in close was denied by Miller but, Pannek’s crease-clearing attempt bounced off Kaasa’s leg for two-goal Hill-Murray cushion.

The gap was nearly widened to three just past the game’s midway point but Miller stopped McKenzie Steffen’s shorthanded breakaway attempt as well as Bobrowski’s follow-up shot. But Lindsey Featherstone scored her fifth of the season with just 2:17 left in the second to make it 4-1 and Patrick preserved the lead heading into the break with a terrific right-pad save on Caitlin Reilly’s back-door redirect with 25 seconds to go.

“That first goal kind of sucked the wind right out of us and we just couldn’t get back on track,” Herbst said. “I thought the third period we came out and we battled and we really played pretty good hockey.”

The Red Knights indeed came out strong in the final period, receiving a much-needed lift when Pannek’s shot from the left point beat Patrick clean to make it 4-2 only 18 seconds into the third and five seconds into a BSM power play. From that point the Red Knights began to apply consistent pressure in the Hill-Murray end.

It was Patrick who stole the show at that point, stoning Kippin Keller’s breakaway attempt at 10:16 and thwarting Reilly’s one-timer off a Pannek feed a minute later. “It was pretty intense,” Patrick said of the sequence. “I just tried to keep my focus because I knew if I lost it, it would be a lot harder to take the breakaway.”

“They have great [defensemen] and play great team defense,” Pannek said of Hill-Murray. “It’s hard to be down three goals and try to battle back one at a time because they’re so talented defensively and [Patrick] played a great game.”

Bobrowski then put the game away at 14:03 with a shot that caught a piece of BSM defenseman Kassandra Petersen’s stick on its way past Miller. Pannek added a late goal to complete her hat trick but it was too little, too late for the Red Knights.

“We had a number of opportunities and if we would have capitalized on those opportunities it would have been a different game,” Herbs said. “Their goalie played good, she came up with some big saves, and that’s what happens in a tight game like that.”

“It’s hard, it’s a hard three days for the kids mentally and physically,” Schafhauser said. “So to have your best game in the championship game, in my opinion, is a testament to their conditioning and mental strength.”

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