Scrimmage-deprived Hounds bounce back
Duluth East hockey coach Mike Randolph has established some enormous beachheads through his long and successful career. Among them is to take his Greyhounds off on frequent preseason excursions to the Twin Cities to scrimmage some of the best and most challenging opponents he can find.
But not this year. “Nope, we didn’t scrimmage once,” said Randolph, after his team was surprised and then committed a surprise on opening weekend. “We’ve found that in a lot of our scrimmages in recent years we’d have 15 or 20 minutes of good competition and then things would get rough and we wouldn’t get anything more out of it.
“We can get more out of a good practice.”
East opened against a good White Bear Lake team that had played a couple, and the Bears battled and scrapped throughout their game at Heritage Center. About 6 minutes into the game, Max Jennrich skated in deep on the right side and one-timed a perfect pass across the slot from Chase Hamsted, giving White Bear Lake a 1-0 lead against sophomore goaltender Lukan Hanson.
Then the teams went back to battling each other to a defense-minded standoff, and the Bears held on to give Bob Parenteau a 1-0 shutout victory last Friday night.
I couldn’t resist wise-cracking to Randolph, “Nothing wrong with East that a dozen scrimmages wouldn’t cure.” He got the proper laugh out of it, but was sure of his strategy.
Sure enough, the next day the Greyhounds journeyed to the Twin Cities to take on defending state champion Wayzata. Randolph, who had decided to give sophomore Hanson and senior returning regular Kirk Meierhoff each a start in goal on opening weekend, inserted Meierhoff and the Hounds skated to an impressive 2-1 victory over Wayzata.
Sophomore Jack FitzGerald gave the Hounds a 1-0 lead, and junior defenseman Luke LaMaster made it 2-0 before Wayzata countered with a goal.
East could have held an alumni game at Heritage, because the crowd included former defensemen Bob Hill and Dick Fisher, both of whom starred on East’s 1960 state championship team, and both of whom later went on to play for UMD’s first Division I team. Hill, in fact, was UMD’s first All-American. The two were not just watching their alma mater open the season, however. East’s current defense includes senior captain Reid Hill, and junior defenseman Will Fisher, and their two third-generation stalwarts made their grandpas proud.
East returns to Heritage to face Bemidji Thursday night, then goes to Andover Saturday. The Greyhounds may not be scrimmaging any more, but they still play a carefully selected schedule that is the toughest in the state.
UMD teams hit road
UMD’s two hockey teams continue to impress the voters at U.S. College Hockey Online. The UMD men remained No. 1 in the nation, and in the Pairwise strength of schedule ratings, despite not playing the past two weekends. The Bulldogs have to be ready to return to action this weekend, however, as they journey to Denver to face the No. 2 ranked Denver Pioneers.
The UMD women had played two tough games at Minnesota, and split with Wisconsin, dealing the Badgers their first defeat of the season, but in the process, they slipped from third to fourth in the ratings. The reason was that despite splitting with Wisconsin, UMD was replaced by St. Lawrence, which was undefeated.
Last weekend, UMD swept a WCHA series at St. Cloud 3-0 and 3-2, while St. Lawrence had to rally to tie Clarkson 3-3, then lost 3-1 to Carleton, a Canadian college. International games don’t generally affect the ratings, but in this case, the voters decided that UMD’s 12-3-3 record was enough to reclaim No. 3 behind Wisconsin and Minnesota, while St. Lawrence slipped to fourth.
Minnesota beat Wisconsin 2-0, but then was hammered 8-2 by the Badgers for a split in Madison.
UMD takes its No. 3 rating to Minnesota State-Mankato this weekend.
