Simply click HERE to begin your FREE digital subscription.  

Enjoy!

The post MHM February 2017 HDM Stillwater appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

All Images by Jeff Wegge and Jonny Watkins

[table id=6 /]

Click on image for full-size view

[See image gallery at minnesotahockeymag.com]  

The post Cup Runs Dry appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

[See image gallery at minnesotahockeymag.com]

The post NSCC Gallery: Beavers vs. Huskies appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

[See image gallery at minnesotahockeymag.com]

The post NSCC Gallery: Gophers vs. Mavericks appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

NSCC shifts to Saturday start

The third annual North Star College Cup will feature a semifinal matchup between the tournament’s first two champions but on Saturday rather than Friday. The University of Minnesota announced today that the NSCC is adopting a Saturday-Sunday format beginning in 2016 after two years of utilizing a Friday-Saturday arrangement.

That means defending champion Bemidji State will square off against inaugural champ Minnesota at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 30 following Minnesota State and St. Cloud State’s 1 p.m. semifinal contest at Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul.

The winners will battle for in-state bragging rights in Sunday’s 4 p.m. title game while the puck drops in the consolation game at 1 p.m.

The post North Star College Cup alters schedule appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Michael Bitzer stops 26 as BSU beats Minnesota State for North Star College Cup

SAINT PAUL – Is there a more appropriate place for a giant wooden trophy to reside than Minnesota’s north woods? If there is it doesn’t matter because that’s where the North Star College Cup is headed after the Bemidji State Beavers chopped down No. 1 Minnesota State 3-1 in Saturday night’s title tilt at Xcel Energy Center in an all-WCHA final.

BSU goalie Michael Bitzer made 26 saves behind a stingy and frustrating Bemidji State defense and the offense chipped in just enough to topple the top-ranked Mavericks in the Beaver’s first North Star College Cup appearance.

“I thought we put together six really good periods of hockey,” Bemidji State coach Tom Serratore said. “I thought we played well in every zone and the guys showed a lot of toughness throughout the weekend and I’m just very proud of them.”

“They were better than us,” Minnesota State coach Mike Hastings said. “They did a real good job of creating offense off our mistakes.”

Bemidji State was clinging to its 3-1 lead with less than eight minutes to play when BSU’s Markus Gerbrandt pulled down Mavericks forward Dylan Margonari with the official immediately signaling penalty shot.

But Bitzer calmly stood his ground on Margonari’s shot and preserved his team’s two goal lead.

“We work on (penalty shots) at the end of every practice every day so, to be honest, I’d almost take the penalty shot over the power play at that point,” Bitzer said.

To which Serratore responded immediately, “I don’t know if I would but ….”

“It’s always nerve wracking because, again, you score on that penalty shot, the whole complexion changes,” Serratore said. “That’s a team we didn’t want to give too much more momentum to because they know how to win.”

Bitzer stopped 54 of 55 shots overall in the tournament in holding the country’s No. 1 and No. 7 teams to one goal. Accordingly, he was named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player.

“He’s an unbelievable competitor and that’s the biggest thing you can say about Bitz,” Serratore said. “He’s a tremendous athlete and he’s a tremendous competitor, so you’re fortunate to have a guy like that.”

Hastings said the key to Bitzer’s play was, “he stopped the ones that he should have and a couple that he shouldn’t.”

“Usually when we play Bemidji, over the years, it’s a one-goal game,” Hastings said. “So if you’re guy can steal one or two, it might give you another life. I thought he did that, he was good tonight.”

The tournament wasn’t Bitzer’s first at Xcel Energy Center. He was an all-state player who went 22-8-0 with a 2.30 goals against average in leading his Moorhead High School team to a state tournament appearance in 2012. He played well, but the Spuds came up short of a title.

“Any opportunity to play here is unbelievable,” Bitzer said. “It’s a great experience and it feels good to finally bring some hardware home.”

Bemidji State used its standard mix of sound five-man defense and opportunistic transition offense to build a 3-0 lead late in the second period on goals by Charlie O’Connor, Gerry Fitzgerald and Kyle Bauman.

But 20 seconds after Bauman’s goal on a partial breakaway at 14:48, O’Connor was called for a rare major interference penalty and giving the Mavericks a hope-inspiring five-minute power play.

The Beavers, however, killed off 4:52 of that before Jon Jutzi’s seeing-eye shot through traffic beat Bitzer with 45 seconds remaining in the second. Despite the late goal, the Beavers felt they were in good shape heading into the intermission.

“With a team like that, with the octane they actually have on that power play, with the abundance of talent, I think even giving up one goal for us was a win,” Serratore said.

Jutzi said the Beavers made it difficult for the Mavericks to carry the puck into the BSU zone with any momentum.

“I think they just did a great job of making us dump pucks,” Jutzi said. “And when we did dump pucks they were first to get to it and they were able to get it out.”

The loss is the first for Minnesota State since Dec. 5 as the Mavericks saw their nine-game unbeaten streak snapped.

“We’ve gone through a long stretch here where we’ve been somewhat successful and sometimes you need to hit the reset button,” Hastings said.

Serratore, on the other hand, has no use for a reset button after the weekend his team had.

“You take a look at the field, three of the best teams in the country were in this field, and we were fortunate enough to come out of here winning this tournament,” Serratore said. “I think any time you win a tournament, any time you win a trophy, that’s a feather in your players’ caps and you hope you can build on it.”

The post Beavers top Mavs for Cup title appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

[See image gallery at minnesotahockeymag.com]

The post NSCC Gallery: Mavericks vs. Beavers appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Krause scores twice to lead Bulldogs over Gophers 2-1

SAINT PAUL – One shot was all it took. And that’s good because that’s all Minnesota-Duluth had registered against Minnesota through nearly 18 minutes of the third period in Saturday afternoon’s North Star College Cup consolation game at Xcel Energy Center.

UMD captain Adam Krause scored just his fourth goal of the season, but second of the game, on the Bulldogs’ first shot of the period with just 2:19 to play, lifting his team to a dramatic 2-1 win over the Gophers. Minnesota had outshot Minnesota-Duluth 11-0 to that point.

Krause’s linemates Alex Iafallo and Dominic Toninato assisted on each of his goals and Matt McNeely made 31 saves to backstop the victory. Minnesota’s Adam Wilcox took the loss with 23 saves.

“It’s funny how the game works,” Minnesota-Duluth coach Scott Sandelin said. “Sometimes you get 40 of them (shots) and don’t score and sometimes you get fewer and score more. But we’ll take it because it’s a good win for our team.”

“We thought that game was ours,” Gopher captain Kyle Rau said. “We like the way we played the whole game, (Wilcox) played unreal, so it was just one of those games where they capitalized on their chance and we had multiple chances to get ahead in the third and we couldn’t bury it.”

Nursing a 1-0 lead late in the second period, the Bulldogs’ Carson Soucey went off for charging at 19:53 giving the Gophers a power play on fresh ice to begin the third and it paid dividends.

Just 31 seconds in, Rau took a Justin Kloos feed from behind the net and buried his 12th of the year to knot the score 1-1.

Minnesota received a much-needed spark from the goal and reeled off the period’s first 11 shots while holding the Bulldogs without until the 17:41 mark.

“We knew they were going to have a push, it was a little bit later than we expected, but we stuck with it,” Krause said. “We’re two struggling teams right now and we knew they were going to be desperate.”

“We knew it was an important [penalty] kill and they got momentum from that and had us on our heels,” Sandelin said. “We kind of weathered that and got some saves and buried an opportunity.”

Only seconds prior to Krause’s game winner, Minnesota had a golden opportunity on a 2-on-1 but Travis Boyd’s pass to Sam Warning failed to connect.

“I like the way we did a lot of things tonight, we gave up 22 shots on Friday and 26 tonight,” Minnesota coach Don Lucia said. “But when we have a chance, we have to finish.”

The Bulldogs got on the board first on Krause’s third goal of the season at 14:04 of the opening period. Krause, honored this week with nominations for both the Senior CLASS and Hockey Humanitarian awards, had his backhanded wraparound attempt denied by Wilcox but the Hermantown native poked in his own rebound.

The game was a rematch of the inaugural North Star College Cup title game but the stakes weren’t quite the same this time around. One year after Minnesota defeated Minnesota-Duluth in a shootout to become the first to hoist the glossy wooden trophy, the two squared off in the second-year tournament’s consolation game.

The matchup was set the night before when unranked Bemidji State blanked the No. 7 Bulldogs 4-0 behind 28 Michael Bitzer saves and top ranked Minnesota State beat No. 17 Minnesota 4-2 to create an all-WCHA championship game.

In typical UMD/Minnesota fashion, the game was a physical contest with multiple crease area scrums, hard hits and jostling after the whistle. There was a sense these were two teams with some pent up frustration.

Sandelin agreed but said it was important for the Bulldogs to limit Minnesota’s power-play opportunities, recalling how critical that was to UMD sweeping the Gophers in mid November.

“The game’s got emotions and things are going to happen but I thought that was a real key, to not get into that,” Sandelin said. “But you could tell both teams were trying to get a win desperately.”

The post UMD makes its shot count appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

[See image gallery at minnesotahockeymag.com]

The post NSCC Gallery: Gophers vs. Bulldogs appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Mavericks outlast Gophers, 4-2, for trip to North Star College Cup Final

ST. PAUL — Stephon Williams has always found ways to wind up in the center of unusual hockey situations.

The Minnesota State goaltender has sat in the penalty box and he once made a glove save with his bare hand. Now, add another strange occurrence to Williams’ list.

Williams could’ve been the hero or the goat after he made a bizarre decision late in No. 1 MSU’s 4-2 win against No. 17 Minnesota in the North Star College Cup semifinal Friday night at the Xcel Energy Center.

Protecting a two-goal lead with 1:13 remaining in the third period against Minnesota, MSU defenseman Casey Nelson blocked a hard shot with his body and struggled to get off the ice.

With Nelson crawling in the left circle in severe pain, the Mavericks bench hollered for the referee to blow the play dead as the Gophers worked the puck around the zone on a power play.

“It’s one of those things you’re on the bench and you’re saying ‘hey, you gotta blow the whistle’ because there’s a guy down,” MSU coach Mike Hastings said. “But if I’m on the other bench, I’m saying ‘he’s not going to die.’ He’s injured but they’re on the power play so I can understand they can’t blow that down.”

Williams took action in the most unexpected way — he dropped his stick, turned around and flipped the goal off its moorings to draw a whistle. The move sparked Minnesota players to slam their sticks and the Gophers bench to stand up in protest.

“I saw Casey down and it was already a 6-on-4 penalty kill and with him down it’s a 6-on-3,” Williams said. “I was willing to take a delay of game to get Casey off the ice and get fresh guys on the ice.

“It was one of those things where we had a guy hurt and things were chaotic at the time. Our guys were exhausted. It was an impulse reaction and I’m not going to make a habit out of it.”

Williams knew a penalty was coming his way, but the Mavericks were glad he acted the way he did. As did the Mavericks fans who cheered once his two-minute delay-of-game minor penalty was announced in the arena.

“I thought it was the right play and the bench thought it was the right play,” MSU right wing Bryce Gervais said.

While Mavericks players helped Nelson to the bench, the officials allowed Minnesota the choice to take a two-minute minor or a penalty shot. Gophers coach Don Lucia chose the latter, sending senior Seth Ambroz out to take it.

“We had a power play/penalty shot option but with 1:13 left we kind of had to go with the penalty-shot option at that point in time.” Lucia said, adding that he had never seen a play like the one Williams made on the net.

“I guess I wasn’t really aware of the penalty shot rule,” Williams said. “It was just heat of the moment.”

Ambroz went to his backhand and tried to lift the puck over Williams’ right pad, but Williams turned it away and celebrated with a fist pump.

“It was nerve-racking but it was a great feeling,” Williams said. “I knew if I didn’t stop it, there would’ve been a little chewing-out going on.”

“Casey was laying there, I’m like ‘blow the whistle!’ but I guess that’s Willy,” Mankatoa forward Matt Leitner added. “He’s confident in his breakaway skills so he knocked the net off.”

As mentioned before, this isn’t the first unusual situation in which Williams has found himself. He served a 5-minute major penalty on Jan. 11, 2013 when he pulled the facemask of Wisconsin’s John Ramage, because, as Williams said after that game, Ramage was on top of him and he needed to stop the pain.

As a member of the Waterloo Black Hawks in 2012, Williams’ glove fell off and was forced to stop a puck with his bare hand (video footage of that play has seen 100,400 hits on YouTube).

So, Williams again found his way into the spotlight Friday night.

“It was more to get Casey off the ice and I thought it would benefit us in the long run,” Williams said.

Williams’ move nudged a stellar offensive performance by Bryce Gervais — two goals and assists on the night — to the backburner, in terms of postgame banter. But Gervais’ goals late in the first period and early in the first gave MSU a 2-1 lead after Minnesota opened the scoring with an Ambroz goal.

“On the bench, it was all positive because we were getting chances, so we knew one would go in,” said Gervais, who has 15 goals this season. “We knew we had to win the first one to win the tournament and that was embedded into our guys’ heads.”

The post Williams’ bold move steals spotlight appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.