UMD’s Elizabeth Giguere breaks in on MSU-Mankato goalie Chantal Burke in overtime. Photo by John Gilbert.

As the 2021-22 hockey season speeds toward its various climactic playoffs and championships, we can measure which ones live up to last weekend, when Elizabeth Giguere’s dazzling goal at 2:30 of sudden-death overtime gave the UMD women a 3-2 overtime triumph over a courageous Minnesota State Mankato team in the deciding third game of the best-of-seven WCHA quarterfinal playoffs at AMSOIL Arena.

Can this week match that?

Thursday is something special, because it is the annual day of the Section 7AA championship game at AMSOIL Arena.

When top-seeded Andover takes the ice against No. 2 Grand Rapids, it should be a game to celebrate the whole hockey season – just as Wednesday night’s 7A final between heavily-favored Hermantown and No, 2 seed Denfeld proved much more than an appetizer for Thursday’s main course.

The drama continues Friday and Saturday, when the UMD men’s hockey team takes over the same arena to face St. Cloud State in the final series of the regular NCHC season.

Two of the nation’s, and state’s, top rivals are exactly tied for fourth place in the NCHC at 9-9-4. If either team can gain an edge in these two games it will earn home ice for next week’s first round of the NCHC playoffs – against the other team, which will need to win to avoid fifth place and taking playoff hopes on the road.

Only that winner will advance to the following weekend’s Frozen Faceoff at Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul.

More evidence of how close these two are came when the two met in a pair of Tuesday games in St. Cloud to make up for an earlier pandemic postponement. Both of those games resulted in ties, the Huskies winning the first in a shootout, and the Bulldogs winning the second, also in a shootout.

Veering away from hockey, both UMD basketball teams followed up their Northern Sun North Division championships by winning their way to Tuesday’s league playoff finals, with the men beating an Upper Iowa team, which had inflicted UMD’s first loss of a banner season, in a 76-73 victory, behind 29 points from Drew Blair, after his offensive co-star, Austin Andrews, was knocked out of commission with a knee injury.

That put the men into the final against MSU-Moorhead, which ambushed favored Augustana to get there.

The UMD women had a tough semifinal against MSU-Mankato – as well as themselves – before escaping with a 59-66 victory.

UMD threw away a season-high 24 turnovers, and the Mavericks stymied Brooke Olson, who scored only 13 points, same as Ann Simonet, while Sarah Grow had 14 to lead an offense that was balanced if not prolific and spotted Mankato a 7-0 head start. UMD needed to make all six free throws in the final minute to hang on and reach the third straight UMD league final against St. Cloud State Tuesday.

The question this weekend is whether the drama of the UMD men’s hockey team can reach the levels of last weekend’s women’s WCHA playoff series, when UMD escaped Mankato’s dedicated team effort to turn Game 1 into a nail-biter before the Bulldogs won 5-4.

In Game 2, the Mavericks shocked the Bulldogs 3-1, hanging on while being outshot 16-2 in a scoreless third period.

On Sunday afternoon, before a crowd that would have been outnumbered by the band had the band been present, UMD struck for a 1-0 lead and made it 2-0 in the second period. The Mavs came back for a goal, then tied the game 2-2 while outplaying and frustrating the UMD offense.
In overtime, at 2:30 of the 20-minute session, Giguere got a pass from Clara Van Wieren and broke for the net from out near the right point.

The Mavericks, who had blocked an amazing 16 shots through three periods in that game, tried for one more when freshman defenseman Jayden Seifert made a feet-first broadslide in Giguere’s path. But Giguere pulled the puck to the inside with a deft toe-drag, eluded Seifert’s far-reaching stick, and was in alone on goaltender Chantal Burke.

When Burke split her pads wide, it left an inviting 5-hole for Giguere, the fifth-year transfer from Clarkson, where she won the Patty Kazmaier Award as the nation’s best women’s player. But Giguere often does the unexpected, and she cut right, tucking the puck into the net between Burke’s skate and the right post to win it 3-2.

The victory brought as much relief as joy to the Bulldogs, because a loss might have dropped them dangerously close to exclusion from the NCAA’s upcoming 10-team selection.

Instead, they get to go to Ridder Arena in Minneapolis this weekend for a 1 pm Saturday WCHA tournament semifinal against top seed and No. 1 ranked Minnesota. It also leaves UMD’s first line in position for tournament spotlights: Giguere’s goal was her 20th, to go with 35 assists for 55 points, the same as center Gabbie Hughes (19-36-55), while left wing Anna Klein has 19-27-46. Third-line winger Naomi Rogge has 18 goals (18-14-32), meaning that those four scorers have 76 of UMD’s 126 total goals for the season.

It also means the intriguing goaltending situation, where star senior netminder Emma Soderberg came back from Sweden’s Olympic effort but was pulled in Game 1 after giving up three goals on five shots in the first period against the Mavericks.

Sophomore Jojo Chobak came in and stopped the Mavericks, and got the starts in both Games 2 and 3. The Gophers have won nine consecutive games in rising to the WCHA title and national No. 1 rank, but the Bulldogs played some of their best hockey to split both series against Minnesota this season, and might be playing for an NCAA tournament berth Saturday.

As for bookends to the hockey season, we must also look at a year ago at this time, when, if you asked knowledgeable hockey observers statewide to name the best high school hockey coach in the state, there might be a number of nominations. But the winner might come down to  Mike Randolph at Duluth East and Lee Smith at Eden Prairie.

This season was preceded by the Duluth East administration and Duluth school board denying Randolph from a new contract. He was, in a word, terminated before he resigned the next day, and winding up as associate head coach at St. Thomas Academy.

Last weekend, Eden Prairie lost 4-2 on an empty-net goal to Prior Lake in the Section 2 AA semifinals officially ending the 29-year tenure of Lee Smith as coach.

He and Mike Randolph are close friends in the ranks of elite coaches, and like Randolph, he taught in elementary school while coaching the Eagles to 547 victories, 12 state tournaments, with six finals, including championships in 2009, 2011 and 2021 – last year at this time.

Right after Eden Prairie came to Duluth and lost a game to Hermantown, the Eagles rode the bus back home. On the following Monday, three players were accused of committing a non-physical prank on the equipment of a sophomore player who wasn’t present. An assistant notified Smith, who immediately got to the bottom of it and turned in the involved players, who were suspended for two weeks.

A couple of parents reportedly complained to a new administration, which followed up by telling Smith he could resign or be fired, immediately or at the end of the season.

Smith, who is 56, chose to complete the season. The team – rebuilding after losing 16 seniors from last years state champs – won Smith’s 11th Lake Conference title and earned the No. 1 seed for the section.

Under the circumstances, it might have been one of his best and most challenging seasons.
That means the 2021-22 season will be engraved forever in the proud history of Minnesota state high school hockey as the year when two of the best coaches in high school hockey were eliminated by an administration, which, Twin Cities media sources tell me, can hide behind that “data privacy” shield rather than explain its action.

The inmates have taken over the asylum.