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Apollo’s Brandon Bissett makes his shot count in OT win over Breck

St. Paul — One shot is all it takes and St. Cloud Apollo’s Brandon Bissett made the most of his in the Eagles’ Class 1A state tournament quarterfinal matchup against Breck.

The junior forward’s lone shot of the game came 5:07 into overtime breaking a scoreless tie and to give Apollo a 1-0 win over the Mustangs on Wednesday night at Xcel Energy Center.

Bissett, who said the goal was “a kid’s dream” gave Apollo its first state tournament win in school history after going winless in 1984 and 2013. The Eagles’ reward is a Friday afternoon date with top-seeded Hermantown, 8-0 winners over Spring Lake Park.

Bissett took teammate Gino Lucia’s cross-ice feed after the two entered the Breck zone and beat Mustang goalie Stephen Headrick with a wrist shot from the right circle.

“I think we kind of got caught in a change there,” Breck coach Les Larson said of the odd-man rush which led to the goal. “You know you get the long change in the overtime and that’s tough.”

The Mustangs were seeking to claim a fifth state title in their 11th trip to the tournament but Breck coach Les Larson said the Mustangs have no reason to hang their heads.

“You have to accept winning and, unfortunately, you have to accept losing,” Larson said. “They did everything they needed to do to win, it just didn’t happen.”

Just as important to the Apollo win was goalie Nick Althaus who shut out Breck with 25 saves for a hard-earned victory making key saves at what ultimately became critical moments. But it was nothing his teammates hadn’t seen before.

“In the first period there was, I think, two plays where he made really big saves that were right in tight that probably could have been in on just about any other goalie,” Lucia said. “But with Nick back there, we can really rely on him if we have a mistake or lapse in the D-zone.”

“If you don’t score a goal, you don’t deserve to win; we didn’t score a goal,” Larson said. “It doesn’t happen to us very often but it did tonight.”

The other key to the Eagles’ win was blocked shots. Apollo blocked a lot of them, 25 of them to be precise.

“That’s something we pride ourselves on,” Matanich said. “A lot of times people get frustrated when you start blocking shots and they start doing stuff out of character and that’s what we try to do to other teams.”

The downside for the Eagles is Bisset’s shot was just the 13th in 56:07 of game action, something Apollo will have to improve upon to have a chance against Hermantown. Eagles’ coach Pete Matanich said his team “came out kind of flat offensively” but picked things up as the game wore on.

“I think the guys were pretty nervous coming into the game,” Matanich said. “But for us, as the game wore on, in the third period we had a little more flow, a little better forecheck and in overtime we started to open up a little bit and started to play our hockey and create some turnovers.”

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Apollo wins battle of St. Cloud 4-2, earns trip to state

ST. CLOUD – The Section 6A final’s location was moved down I-94 on Saturday night after both St. Cloud Apollo Eagles and St. Cloud Cathedral won their respective semifinal games. Rather than play it in Alexandria, the two teams would battle in an intercity section championship game at St. Cloud’s Municipal Athletic Complex in front of a standing room only crowd of more than 2,100 fans.

The St. Cloud Apollo Eagles scored three first-period goals and put on a solid defensive effort the rest of the game to earn a 4-2 victory over the defending Section 6A champions St. Cloud Cathedral Crusaders.

After taking an early lead just two minutes into regulation, the Eagles saw their 1-0 lead slip away with a power play goal from Logan Neu to tie the game up at the 7:28 mark of the opening frame. 10 seconds later, Gino Lucia reclaimed Apollo’s lead after sneaking the puck past Cathedral goaltender Zach Fritz.

“You always look to answer right away if you can, obviously, and in hockey there’s opportunities” St. Cloud Apollo coach Pete Matanich said. “But for Gino [Lucia] to come out on a 2-on-1 and make a good shot on Zach [Fritz] and catch him off guard off a little bit, it was exactly what we needed.”

Apollo increased their lead to 3-1 with just 51 seconds remaining in the first period, as freshman Noah Bissett netted a power play goal. It was the eventual game-winning goal, a goal which was hard-earned after Noah Bissett received medical attention twice during the game; once during the second period after taking an elbow to the head and another during the third period when he suffered a brutal open-ice check in front of the penalty box.

“For us it was exciting just to see him take step up in a big role over the course of the last three weeks for us” Matanich said of Bissett. “Obviously he takes a little bit of abuse for it too, but when you’re 5’ 4”, you’re gonna get beat up.”

Leo Lommel capitalized with a power play goal at the 12:41 mark of the second period to cut the lead in half. Lommel’s goal was part of a second period surge for the Crusaders, who more than doubled their shots on goal total from the first period with 10 in the second period alone.

Cathedral’s Zach Fritz played well in the final two periods of his high school career, stopping the remaining 12 shots he faced for total of 16 saves on 19 shots.

An uneventful third period turned eventful as the Crusaders pulled Fritz for the extra attacker. A few late Cathedral opportunities with the 6-on-5 man advantage were thwarted by Eagles goaltender Nick Althaus, who stopped 19 of 21 Crusader shots.

Jason Omann added an empty net goal with 23 seconds left to seal the Eagles’ 4-2 victory and second Section 6A championship in the last three years.

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