South St. Paul, which fell 5-3 at home on Saturday in Doug Woog Arena, hosted the Mirage (6-5-1) for a pizza party after the game. That’s 10 months removed from when the Packers won 3-2 in overtime last season at the Xcel Energy Center.

South St. Paul (6-5-0) hosting a northern Minnesota team for pizza after regular-season games has been the norm for years, except for during the COVID-19 pandemic. Packers head coach Dave Palmquist, who has been coaching for 30 years since high school girls hockey’s beginnings in Minnesota, said he appreciates northern squads such as the Mirage coming down to compete.

“Yeah, we’re going to feed them upstairs and send them home with their stomachs full and try to be as first class as we can be as a program and do it for them,” Palmquist said. ”I know they would do the same for us.”

Packers sophomore forward Sidney Thompson said the hospitality works out. Thompson played for the Packers as a freshman last season.

The Mirage never trailed in Saturday’s game against South St. Paul. (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

“Everyone’s pretty nice after the game, and it usually goes well,” Thompson said.

Proctor/Hermantown head coach Emma Stauber, who faced Palmquist’s squads many times as a player and coach, can appreciate the hospitality amid one of six trips to the metro area this season. The Mirage have another four to go, and possibly a fifth, if the team gets back to Xcel Energy Center in February.

“He’s a very thoughtful coach, very well-disciplined teams,” Stauber said about Palmquist and the Packers. “They’re always good. They always work hard. So, regardless of who he’s got talent-wise, he’s always going to give us a game, so that’s why it’s so fun to play him and his program.”

Proctor/Hermantown junior forward Jane Eckstrom said her team got on the bus at 7 a.m. Saturday morning to get to South St. Paul for the 1 p.m. game. Eckstrom earned the team’s hard-hat award after the game when the Mirage already had an eight-hour day with a trip home ahead. Eckstrom scored and assisted on a goal.

“I think as a team, we love the team trips and the bus ride,” Eckstrom said. “It’s always a great time to get to know everyone better. We enjoy every moment we can get together. All the trips this season really mean a lot to us, and we make the best of it that we can.”

Mirage maintained the lead
Junior forward Ella Rothe most of it for the Mirage early with a first period goal on assists from Hailey Jussila and Morgan LaValley. South St. Paul responded in less than a minute when junior forward Alida Ahern tied the game 1-1 on an assist from junior defenseman Lily Pachl.

The Mirage then built a two-goal, 3-1 lead in the second period on goals from Eckstrom and senior Izy Fairchild as Anika Burke assisted on both scores. Eckstrom and Fairchild notably assisted on each other’s goals.

South St. Paul’s Lily Pachl scored a pair of goals on Saturday. (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

South St. Paul closed the gap to 3-2 early in the third period when Pachl scored unassisted, but the Mirage made 4-2 less than three minutes later. Pachl gave her team another chance in the final two minutes when she scored for a 4-3 deficit on Eva Beck’s assist as the Packers left an empty net.

The Packers couldn’t tie it up after the ensuing faceoff as Burke put the Mirage up 5-3 with an empty-net goal in the final second of regulation. The Mirage finished with a 34-20 shots-on-goal advantage.

Mirage goalie Suri Langley stopped 17 shots for a .850 save percentage. Packers goalie Molly Jeffrey had 29 saves and an .879 save percentage.

Proctor/Hermantown won a third-straight contest after a 3-5-1 start to the season. For South St. Paul, the loss ended its three-game winning streak.

Gallery: Proctor/Hermantown vs. South St. Paul, Dec. 16, 2023.

The post Packers Host Mirage appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Back with the Whitecaps this season when she turns 44 years old on Feb. 18, it begs the obvious question: How long will she keep playing professional hockey?

“Oh, that’s always the question,” Winny said. “I don’t know yet. I could be Tom Brady… day-to-day.”

In some ways, it could be tough to imagine a world where Winny isn’t playing hockey. Or more precisely, it could be tough to imagine what the girls’ hockey world looks like without the influence of Winny. She’s created so many opportunities to help grow the girls’ and womens’ games.

Another Minnesota hockey standout, Krissy Wendell, might have put it best when describing what Winny means to the growth of girls’ hockey.

“I’m scared to think about, if there was no Winny Brodt, what the state of girls’ hockey would be in the state of Minnesota, to be honest with you,” Wendell said. “I think, single-handedly, she’s continued to push boundaries in a way that’s successful.”

Winny’s accomplishments are quite extensive. Here’s a sampling:

• Inaugural Ms. Hockey winner, scored 62 goals and 61 assists in 30 games for the undefeated Roseville High School girls’ team that won a state title (1995-96)
• Senior Women’s A National Champion (1996-97)
• National champion with University of New Hampshire (1997-98)
• Team USA World Championship team (1999-2000, 2001-02, 2002-03)
• National champion with University of Minnesota Gophers (1999-2000)
• WCHA Defensive Player of the Year and top 10 finalist for Patty Kazmaier Award (2000)
• Founded OS Training and Minnesota Whitecaps (2004-05)
• Established Junior Whitecaps (2006-07)
• Western Women’s Hockey League Defensive Player of the Year (2006-07)
• Established Upper Midwest Elite League (2007-08)
• Analyst for KSTC-TV Channel 45 state girls’ hockey tournament (2006-present)
• Herb Brooks Foundation board member (2008-present)
• Minnesota Whitecaps player for 18 seasons (2004-present)
• Isobel Cup Champion (2018-19), runner-up (2020-21), finalist (2019-20)
• University of Minnesota M Club Hall of Fame Class of 2021
• Roseville Raider Hall of Fame Class of 2021

Ronda Curtin Engelhardt (L) and Laura Slominski behind the Minnesota Whitecaps bench during a Sept. 22, 2019 exhibition game vs. their alma mater, the University of Minnesota, at Ridder Arena. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

Former Minnesota Whitecaps player and assistant coach, Laura Slominski, said the fact that Winny is involved with so many different aspects of the game is even more impressive than the fact that she’s still lacing up her skates in the Premier Hockey Federation (formerly the National Women’s Hockey League prior to the 2021-22 season).

“She has changed girls’ hockey in the state of Minnesota for not just being a pioneer and playing the game, but with everything she does in terms of her job and her camps and clinics,” said Slominski, who was an assistant Whitecaps coach through the 2021 season.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it was an easy task. As was common for players her age, Winny played on boys’ teams growing up, which also meant facing some discrimination and adversity during a time when there was a mindset that girls simply didn’t play hockey.

Winny remembers an exchange with a coach during her first spring-league game, a pick-up league without formal teams, when she was 10 or 11 years old. She went up to the coach to tell him she’d miss the next game. He didn’t know who she was and even asked if she was a girl.

“And I said ‘yeah,’ and he said, ‘well, I just thought you were a high-pitched hippie, long-haired hippie,” Winny said. “It was just such a time where you didn’t expect to see a girl playing hockey. At all.”

She continued to play with the boys until her senior year of high school. Without a girls’ team in place, her dad, Jack Brodt, met with the school board and Roseville athletic director to make it happen. She could have played for the Minnesota Thoroughbreds, a U19 team, but she wanted to play high school hockey, Jack Brodt said. She was a clear leader on the Roseville squad, with her 62 goals and 61 assists on the way to an undefeated season and a state title.

Dave Palmquist, the South St. Paul girls’ hockey coach from the very beginning of girls’ high school hockey, watched Winny play from the opposing benches. He remembers Roseville being a powerhouse the first couple of years in girls’ hockey. And when thinking of girls’ hockey in Minnesota, one of the first names that comes to his mind is Winny.

“Winny was the first girl that popped on the scene as far as really the amazing hockey skills that she had right from the get-go,” Palmquist said.

Slominski, who played for Burnsville, also had a front-row seat in seeing what Winny could do to the competition in high school. She heard the buzz about the Roseville team with Winny and the Curtin sisters, Ronda and Renee, knowing “it was like the whole neighborhood was on the team,” Slominski said.

When Burnsville and Roseville faced each other in the 1996 state tournament championship game, Slominski said she didn’t know what to expect, other than the opponent would be really, really good.

That played out as Roseville defeated Burnsville 5-2 for the state title.

“I just remember being out there against Winny, and she was just on a different level than anything we had seen before,” Slominski said.

The post Rink Rat appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Palmquist, South St. Paul mirror girls’ prep hockey success

This is the 21^st year girls’ hockey has been a State High School League sanctioned activity. For all 21 years, the South St. Paul Packers have had the same head coach – Dave Palmquist. Palmquist, who started his coaching career in the boys’ game, won career game No. 500 last season. His successful career has in many ways mirrored the continued growth of the girls’ game.

Palmquist grew up in Hibbing, but after his family moved south, played as a youth in the Columbia Heights system before playing his high school hockey for Bruce Hendrickson at Minnehaha Academy.

A center most of his career, Palmquist graduated from Minnehaha and played for Craig Dahl at Bethel before returning to his al ma mater. Hendrickson knew his former player wanted to get into coaching so Palmquist was hired as an assistant. He served as an assistant coach for one year and just two years out of college was named Minnehaha Academy’s head coach.

“Doors just kept opening up,” Palmquist said. “At age twenty three I was a head coach and from there it has just been in my blood – something I have a strong passion for. I love the game. I love watching hockey at all levels. I love the teaching part of it. [Coaching hockey] was a natural fit. Never once have I ever felt I was in the wrong profession. It has been a real blessing.”

After down seasons in years two and three, the new head coach built the program into a conference champion. Despite the success and a program moving in the right direction, Palmquist felt it was time for him to make a change.

“It was a tough decision. I loved everything that Minnehaha Academy stood for with Christian faith and the religious background, but I wanted to take on a new challenge.”

Birth of a Program

The boys’ position opened up at South St. Paul and the young coach applied. What happened next was not what Palmquist expected.

“I interviewed and I knew it went pretty well, but they offered the job to someone else. That was the first year they were starting girls’ hockey in Minnesota. [They said] you didn’t get the boys’ job, but we would love you to start our women’s hockey program.”

With the girls’ game just getting off the ground Palmquist wasn’t sure how moving to the girls’ game would sit with his colleagues.

“It was a tough decision, because girls’ hockey was really new,” Palmquist admitted. “I didn’t know what I was getting into. I think a lot of my colleagues in coaching were wondering what I was doing going to the girls’ side. Twenty one years later we can see how many males have gone over to the female side.”

For the game to get off the ground, the Packers’ program needed the same type of support as any of the early programs – passionate parents and hockey fans. South St. Paul had a long hockey tradition so it was an area suited to start a girls’ program.

“South St. Paul is known as a hockey community – always has been,” the former Redhawks’ hockey star said. “Back in those early days we had fathers who were hockey players and hockey stars during their days at South St. Paul. Now they had daughters and they were passionate about making it an awesome experience for their kids. A lot of those dads helped coach in those early years. We were able to get off and running because of those fathers who stepped up and understood the game. We have always had great youth coaches developing kids in those prime years. It makes a huge difference.”

Another advantage South St. Paul had was they had a successful ringette program in the school. There were a number of girls who were going into it as good skaters.

“I didn’t know anything about ringette,” Palmquist admitted, “except that they did skate and they used basically an upside down hockey stick with a ring. They were really good at it. Those girls were really excited to make the change to hockey.”

They could skate, but they needed to learn how to translate what they could do into hockey skills. Palmquist spent a lot of time on the fundamentals. The more the girls’ game changes, the more it stays the same.

“I really had to focus on the skills of hockey – which I am still doing twenty years later – but those first few years teaching them hockey was the focus. I spent a lot of time teaching them what this great game was all about.”

With the checking rules in the girls’ game, if a team can skate, Palmquist and other girls’ hockey coaches have said that good skating teams – even more than the boys, can dominate the puck. In the early days it often just took one or two great players to dominate a game; because of the growth of the sport that has changed.

“I think a lot of coaches would say we have been able to develop more depth on our teams,” the coaching pioneer said. “We have more well rounded teams from the standpoint of not having just one or two superstars.”

The Streak

Most high school hockey fans know about the 86 game winning streak the Packers had from 2001 to 2004. Palmquist’s teams in those days had depth and talent.

“The thing I am most proud of is over twenty years a lot of kids have come and gone, but we have maintained and been a factor for twenty years,” the Bethel Royals graduate reminisced. “That is something I am really proud of. During that run you can’t have a run of 86 games without a loss and four state championships without great players. I was blessed to have group of young players that were special. They were kids with winning attitudes that refused to lose. They were not going to be denied. They had the skill, but they were willing to put the work in to be the best. Something we are proud of is the best teams don’t always win. We may have had the best teams, but they did find a way to win. The girls stepped up to the challenge every time.”

The success of the Packers during those times did a lot to help the growth of the girls’ game, but also might have hurt it.

“It drew hockey to the forefront,” Palmquist said. “The coverage we had from 2000-2005 – our Packer team was on the front page of the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press when we were winning and when we finally lost too. It brought girls’ hockey to the forefront.”

A stickler for fundamentals, South St. Paul girls’ hockey coach Dave Palmquist demonstrates some techniques to his team during a 2001 practice at Wakota Arena. (Pioneer Press file photo)

With a team that dominant, other schools had to build programs under the Packers’ shadow. Still growing programs had to take their lumps against the four-championships-in-five-years Packers. Getting kids to try something new knowing they would have to play a team so far above their skill level couldn’t have made a coach’s job easy when trying to build a program.

“We were a team that a lot of people loved to hate,” Palmquist said.

When they finally lost in the state quarterfinals in 2004 it was like a pressure release valve, at least to the girls playing high school hockey at that time.

“Legend has it that some of the other teams who played later in the evening were at a movie theater and word got out that we lost to end our streak,” Palmquist recalled. “Basically the theatre erupted because they heard we lost.”

Consistent Success

Despite the loss, South St. Paul came back and won the title the next season, showing its resiliency in posting a 30-1 record according to Palmquist. The Packers have been remarkably consistent since.

“The number one thing is that you have to have great players,” Palmquist said. “We also had the same coaches for 18 of these 21 years. You see that in all sports. When you have that consistency in a program – the girls knew what the program was about. That was a big factor in our success having that consistent coaching staff.”

The consistency of the coaching staff allowed the program to adjust, but it took Palmquist some time to realize it was better for him to adjust to the players than make the players adjust to him.

“One of the things I learned early on is knowing what kind of players you have will dictate what kind of system you set up,” the only head coach in Packers’ girls’ hockey history said. “We were scrimmaging in Stillwater in 2002 – the year we won our first state title – we were 2-2 and we were trying a crazy type of forechecking system. We had a lot of talent and I remember turning to Coach [assistant coach Pete] Edlund and saying we are restricting these kids too much. They have too much ability. When we unleashed them and let them just use their ability we proceeded to win 86 in a row. The lesson being you have to read your team. Over the years we have been able to adjust our systems to what fits for that team.”

Palmquist does stick to some basic principles in his coaching, but as a player didn’t always practice what he now preaches.

“In high school and college I didn’t like to come back in my own end a lot,” the former forward said. “We still tell stories about that. Now as a coach it is so different. It is so uncharacteristic of me now because I always preach defense and coming back hard. [As a player] scoring was something that was more on my mind than playing defense that is for sure.”

Always on his mind as a coach has been holding everyone in the program up to a high standard – on and off the ice.

“You have to develop a program that has high expectations and high accountability. I don’t think you can be successful without both. We have built such a tradition at South St. Paul that I feel as a coach I see it as my responsibility to continue demanding accountability and discipline within our program. Play to win, but most importantly I want to develop a place where kids want to come to each day – to the rink and a place where kids are cared about and appreciated.”

“My style is demanding, but I care about my players,” Palmquist continued. “I feel like if I am not demanding and don’t expect the best out of them they won’t reach their potential. I feel like these kids today can do so much more than they think they can. It is my job as a coach to try to bring that out.”

Focus on Family

The coach is also focused on delivering a positive message off the ice.

“We are about developing kids for life. We’ve brought a consistency to the community where they know what we stand for. My faith and my family are important so I stress that to the kids. They know those things are way more important than winning. Their faith and their family are the things that are going to get you through.”

Even on the ice, family is front and center with Palmquist.

“This year I have been so fortunate – my son is coaching with me. We are having a blast this year. My daughter played for me and graduated last year and now I get to coach with my son.”

Josh Palmquist replaced long-time assistant coach Edlund who retired a few seasons ago. Corey McGinn, who is also a South St. Paul graduate, is also part of the staff. Both the younger Palmquist and McGinn work mostly with the forwards while the head man switched his focus from the forwards to the defense.

This season the Packers have not gotten off to the start their fans are used to, but Palmquist believes the pressure to succeed every season helps his program.

“When we lose it is a big deal and that is a good thing. I expect this team to be there at the end even though we started 7-5-1. We have a great goaltender and I believe we will be competitive down the stretch,” Palmquist said. “Four year starter Sidney Connelly is between the pipes. She’s given up something like fourteen goals in eleven games. She works so hard. Anna Barlow has been one of only two girls in my 21 years who has been an impact player since seventh grade. She is a straight A student and a great leader. Taylor Cashman brings a lot of leadership to the team and scoring.”

No one can expect the Packers’ program to reach the absurd levels they reached in the early 2000’s. In order to get this team and future teams to compete at the highest level again is not much different than what the sport has to do to continue growing.

“We still need to work our youth and continually work to make hockey affordable and something that these kids can do and help grow our numbers.”

According to the State High School League, nearly 3,800 young women competed in girls’ hockey last season in Minnesota. The only reason the sport has been able to grow and thrive for twenty one years and counting is because of countless hours of dedication by athletes, parents and coaches like Palmquist.

The post Packers a reflection of their coach appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.