Blake boys heading back to state hockey tournament
By Nick Clark
Sun Newspapers
February 29, 2008
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Three weeks ago, it was the girls from the Blake and Breck hockey teams vying for a spot in the Class A state tournament at Parade Ice Gardens.
Thursday night at the Minneapolis rink, the boys from both private schools took the same sheet of ice with the same aspiration in the Section 2A championship game.
And, with the help of a fortunate bounce and some timely goal scoring, Blake got a bit of revenge, beating Breck 5-2 for a spot in next week's Class A boys state hockey tournament at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.
Last month, it was the Breck girls that took the section title in a win that helped carry the Mustangs all the way into the Class A title game.
Blake would like a chance to do the same, but after spending each of the past two seasons making their way to the state tournament only to fall to Duluth Marshall in the quarterfinal game, the Bears would prefer to just find a way to stay in St. Paul for more than a day.
"That would be nice, but we'll just take it one day at a time," said Blake head coach John Hamre. "Lets just try to get back to the rink on our bus in the snowstorm."
Hamre's Bears weathered the winter elements to make its way to Parade Thursday night, then did the same to an early onslaught of Breck shots in the first period.
Breck fired 15 shots on Blake netminder Peter Johnson over the course of the game first 17 minutes, but the senior turned each of them away as the two teams skated to a scoreless draw through one.
Then, early in the second, Blake got a bounce, and some momentum.
Breck defensemen Chase Nystedt circled his own net and sent a breakout pass towards the right wing boards, but Blake's Kasey Boyd stepped in front of it and the puck ricocheted off his knee and went directly under the pads of Mustang goaltender John Russell.
That goal put the Bears up 1-0 just 2 minutes, 36 seconds into the period. Forty-five seconds later, Blake made it 2-0 in a more conventional manner after Donald Chute buried Jack Barnes perfect feed from across the crease.
"If you are around sports enough, bounces happen and you have to rebound from them," said Breck head coach John Frazier. "But they went up 2-rip after that, they got some momentum, but then I thought we took it to them again the rest of the period."
Breck was finally rewarded for its efforts late in the second with a power play goal off the stick of Mike Morin that cut Blake's lead in half.
The Mustangs had a chance to tie the game early in the third when Johnson was called for a delay of game penalty after knocking his own net off just 21 seconds into the third.
But, with the power play winding down, Blake's Sean McMahon picked the top-left corner on Russell for a shorthanded goal that ended up as the game-winner.
"It was an important goal in the flow of the game, and our guys were really excited," Hamre said.
It wasn't the backbreaker though. Morin scored again with 11:29 to play to cut the lead to 3-2, but Blake answered with a goal from Jordan Seivold less than two minutes later, and then got an empty netter from Josh Birkholz in the final minute to finish off the scoring and officially get the Bears back to St. Paul.
Blake's opponent there will be determined Saturday, when the Class A tournament seeds are announced.
The coaches will vote to seed the top-four teams, with the other four teams being placed into the quarterfinals on a blind draw.
Reprinted with permission Sun Newspapers
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