When the team that’s seeded third in the boys state hockey
tournament looks at the bracket, the path seems pretty clear: Beat an unseeded opponent
in the quarterfinals, get past the No. 2 seed in the semifinals and knock off
the top seed for the championship.
That was Mahtomedi’s plan in this week’s Class A tournament at
Xcel Energy Center and they executed it to perfection. The Zephyrs beat
Alexandria 6-3 on Wednesday, Hermantown 2-1 on Friday and topped things off
with a 6-5, double-overtime win over previously unbeaten Warroad on Saturday.
Mahtomedi (23-8) also won the title
in 2020. Warroad, the state runner-up for the second year in a row, last won
the championship in 2005. The Warriors had defeated Mahtomedi 7-4 in early
December.
“Our team personally, we like being
the underdogs,” said Mahtomedi’s Charlie Drage, who had a hat trick Saturday
and finished the season with 35 goals. “We knew that everyone picked Warroad
and Hermantown and they thought that was going to be the game. We came into it remembering
last year and remembering that feeling and just wanting to beat both these
teams and knock both of them out.”
Warroad held a 3-1 lead in the
second period and was in front 5-3 four minutes into the third period.
Mahtomedi surged at that point, with Peyton Sunderland scoring his second goal
of the season at 7:08 and Drage scoring at 11:00 and 15:40 to send it into
overtime at 6-6.
After a scoreless eight-minute extra
session, the ice was resurfaced and play resumed. The outcome was settled when
Jonathan Grove scored at 4:56 of the second overtime.
Carson Pilgrim had a hat trick for
Warroad, giving him 52 goals on the season.
Drage – who chipped his front teeth
during the postgame celebration but never stopped smiling -- said his tying goal seemed to put a charge
into the Zephyrs.
“When we scored, I felt like the
game was ours,” he said. “We had all the momentum and we were all like, ‘Let's
do it. We're going to win this.’ ”
Twenty-five-year Mahtomedi coach Jeff
Poeschl said the depth of Class A hockey has grown stronger in the last several
years, which was evident during the tournament.
“The top five, six, seven Class A teams in the state are all very, very good hockey teams,” he said. “And you need a lot of things to go right to win a championship. Part of that is grit and skill but you need things to go right and there are a lot of teams that have all those components. We're just real thankful that we were able to pull all those components together this year.”
--MSHSL media specialist John Millea has been the leading voice of
Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Twitter @MSHSLjohn
and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts.
Contact John at jmillea@mshsl.org
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