David La Vaque, Jim Paulsen, Heather Rule and Jerry Zgoda will spend the rest of the week tracking down moments and memories at the boys hockey state championships at Xcel Energy Center. Come back often to see what they found.
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3:07 p.m.
Attendance for the morning session was announced at 5,488. Attendance will grow as the tournament moves along, with Thursday, Friday and Saturday night crowds drawing tens of thousands of fans. Total attendance for last year’s four-day tournament was 121,589, which includes the Class 1A and Class 2A championship bracket games, plus all consolation games.
2:47 p.m.
New Ulm hadn’t been to the state tournament since 2019, and the Eagles are still looking for the first state quarterfinal victory in their history after an 8-1 loss to second-seeded Warroad at the Xcel Energy Center on Wednesday. They’re now 0-13 overall in the tournament, and avoided being shut out in Wednesday’s game with defenseman Talan Helget’s third-period goal when his team trailed 7-0.
That was no occasion for exuberance, unlike the goal his cousin Jonny Kopacek scored for New Ulm in the 2015 state tournament.
That one was a diving, swiping, sharp-angled goal in a 6-3 quarterfinal loss to Mahtomedi that Kopacek celebrated by punching the air all the way over to the New Ulm student section and pounding the plexiglass.
It was good enough to make the No. 1 Play of the Day on ESPN’s SportsCenter that night long ago.
Has New Ulm made SportsCenter since then?
“Not that I can remember,” said Eagles coach Ryan Neuman, an assistant coach on that 2015 team. “I know this year our basketball team had an over-the-shoulder shot from the corner. I don’t know if it ever made it to SportsCenter, but it should have. That was a top-10 play.”
Superstitious ride
New Ulm took a school bus rather than a coach bus the 100 miles from home to St. Paul because the team wanted to keep the same bus driver it had all season.
Into pickles on the bench
Warroad reached the state quarterfinal by defeating East Grand Forks 4-3 in double overtime of the Section 8 championship. Senior forward Murray Marvin-Cordes was hurting by game’s end.
On Wednesday, he felt no pain, not after he scored a hat trick.
His secret for survival in two overtimes: pickles.
“That 15-minute sit between the third period and the first overtime, my legs sort of locked up,” Marvin-Cordes said. “The first shift in double overtime, I could tell something was going on. Some pickles on the bench got me through the game.”
JERRY ZGODA
2:27 p.m.
Warroad’s slow starts
Despite the eventual 8-1 score that led to running time for the entire third period, Warroad was only up 1-0 at the first intermission. The Warriors had some younger players who were nervous going into the game, and it took the first period for them to settle in, said senior defenseman Will Hardwick.
Fifteen seconds into the second period, the lead went to 2-0.
“That first goal within the first 15 seconds, that really helped get everyone going,” Hardwick said.
The early start, just after 11 a.m., had coach Jay Hardwick a little worried about his Warriors, who he said have been a slow-starting team throughout the season.
“It takes a little while to wake up,” Jay Hardwick said. “One of my concerns with the early game today was, these guys don’t like getting out of bed. I don’t like getting out of bed early. That’s kind of been our MO all year where we start slow and then we get doing. As the game goes, we usually get better.”
Five goals in the second period was proof of that formula Wednesday.
HEATHER RULE
Warroad top line gets it done
Warroad coach Hardwick said he wants to give his top players “the freedom to create and to score goals and make hockey plays.” Their top line of Taven James, Carson Pilgrim and Murray Marvin-Cordes certainly did that, combining for five of the team’s eight goals in the state quarterfinal.
Marvin-Cordes scored his second hat trick of the season, and 10 of his 27 goals this season have come in the past five games. Elite play from Marvin-Cordes, and the top line, in the postseason is nothing new for Hardwick.
“All three years he’s been like that,” Hardwick said. “I think our whole top line, ever since playoffs started, they’ve kind of raised the level, their level of play.
“You could tell once playoffs started that, ‘We mean business. We’re going to go and we’re going to play and we’re going to score. And we’re going to be a tough team to beat.’ “
That level of play shows up in practice, too, Hardwick said. Not just at game time.
“That’s what you need from your top line to kind of drive the ship for everybody else,” he said.
What makes Warroad’s top line so tough to play against?
“Well, I’m sure you’ve watched them. They’re pretty good,” New Ulm coach Ryan Neuman said. “They move the puck well. They got team speed. They know where each other are at all times. Again, it’s one of the top lines in the state. Just overall speed and puck movement is phenomenal, and obviously, they can finish.”
New Ulm goaltender Bryer Hoffmann said Warroad players have quick releases “and can place the puck where they wanted to place it.”
Though Neuman said he doesn’t “expect to get beat 8-1 at any point in time,” he credited his team for playing a solid first period, blocking a lot of shots and playing good team defense and Hoffmann for making a dozen saves.
“Second period, we got caught puck-watching,” Neuman said.
HEATHER RULE
Michigan goal is familiar sight
One of Warroad sophomore Dominic Anthony’s goals in Wednesday’s game was a Michigan goal that video review confirmed as a good goal in the second period. The sight was nothing new to his Warroad teammates. Senior Carson Pilgrim recalls seeing Anthony pull it off once or twice last year as a Bantam player.
“And he tried it at Hockey Day [Minnesota],” Pilgrim said. “Didn’t really work out. We knew that he was probably going to try it again. It’s fun to see him get rewarded for that kind of goal.”
Anthony “does it in practice all the time, too,” said defenseman Will Hardwick.
Wednesday, New Ulm goaltender Bryer Hoffmann tried to make the save with his blocker raised behind him, along with his neck. It’s the first time he’s attempted to make a save with his neck, Hoffmann confirmed. He added that he’s thought about the Michigan goal a few times before.
“But no goalie coach ever really tells a goalie, ‘This is how you’re supposed to stop it,’ ” Hoffmann said. “Just kind of throw the hands up and hope to stop it.”
HEATHER RULE
Warrior almost wipes out
Warroad junior forward Draydin Johnson, No. 23, nearly wiped out skating to the blue line during team introductions. He spun around to save himself from a fall to the ice.
Senior forward Murray Marvin-Cordes, No. 22, was right next to Johnson in case he needed a little help.
“I don’t know if I saved him,” Marvin-Cordes said. “He recovered on his own. It was just kind of funny that it happened. … When you’re doing the skate-ups, that’s one of the things you kind of think about when you’re going and the fact that it did happen is kind of hilarious.”
HEATHER RULE
1:32 p.m.
No bands for Game 1
Neither New Ulm nor Warroad brought a pep band to the X on Wednesday morning. The national anthem played before the 11 a.m. game was a prerecorded version over the arena’s sound system.
HEATHER RULE
Quick turnaround
The PWHL Minnesota team hosted Ottawa on Tuesday night at Xcel Energy Center. The game went to a shootout and ended at about 9:40 p.m., leaving a little more than 13 hours before puck drop of the boys state tournament. Crews got the advertising along the boards and ice turned over, including painting “The Tourney” logo along each blue line.
Public address announcer Dave Wright also had a quick turnaround. He was on the mic in the arena for the PWHL game and then back at it Wednesday morning for the afternoon session.
HEATHER RULE
12:33 p.m.
Warroad’s memorials
Much of Hockeytown USA — aka Warroad, Minn. — attended the Warriors Class 1A opener against New Ulm at the Xcel Energy Center on Wednesday morning. Many of them wore commemorative jerseys honoring the late, great Henry Boucha and assistant boys coach Michael Tveit.
Maybe the most dominant player Minnesota ever produced, Boucha died at age 72 in September. Tveit died in his sleep in July at age 38.
Tveit’s stepson, Carson Pilgrim, scored twice and recorded an assist in Warroad’s 8-1 victory over New Ulm.
Tveit and Boucha worked or collaborated on the jersey design before their deaths. It was made specifically for Hockey Day Minnesota, which came to Warroad in January for the first time and was featured in a “Dream State” documentary.
The jerseys sport a “No. 16″ patch, the number Boucha wore when he led his little school to the 1969 state championship against mighty Edina at the Met Center. The jersey also has a photo of a teenaged Boucha sewn inside the collar.
A full-blooded Ojibwa, Boucha worked with 11 tribal governments and state legislators to save the high school’s Warriors nickname and logos.
The varsity team wore the jerseys for other select games this season as well, but not Wednesday, because the shoulder patches for Henry and Michael are too big for Minnesota State High School League code. But Warroad sold 100 jerseys in the metro, with proceeds benefitting Native American education.
A big year
The Warroad girls hockey team won the Class 1A state title in February, the boys team is back in St. Paul and three other youth teams reached state tournaments.
In between, NHL star T.J. Oshie has popularized his hometown’s name with his Warroad brand of clothing apparel.
“It’s a big year for Warroad,” said fan Debbie Green, who attended school with Boucha and now lives in Edina.
The Warroad boys team is back for his 25th state tournament and seeking its fifth state title after losing in the championship game the past two seasons. They last won a title in 2005, when current Concordia Moorhead coach Kirk Olimb was a member of the Warriors. Olimb called the deaths of Tveit and Boucha “a real sad deal.”
“It’d be a great year to win one,” Olimb said.
JERRY ZGODA
10:40 a.m.
Call it a hockey holiday
Pick your favorite day of the year. Any of the holidays, the first day of a favorite season, a birthday. Or, for hockey fans in Minnesota, the start of the boys hockey state tournament.
Welcome to tourney time! We start with a day of Class 1A quarterfinals, and those start with Warroad, the team from Hockeytown USA.
The Warriors, seeded second, are undoubtedly hungry to win a state title, having lost in the championship game each of the past two years. Warroad’s 25 state tournament appearances started in 1948. Warroad won in 1994 and 1996 and then again in 2003 and 2005. That was T.J. Oshie’s 2005 squad that last won it all for the Warriors.
Their opponent, New Ulm, is the only program in the Class 1A field that wasn’t here last year. The Eagles make their first state trip to the X since 2019. New Ulm is on an 11-1 run since mid-January, with a 5-2 loss at Hopkins. The Eagles are overall 0-13 at the state tournament.
HEATHER RULE
Save the Mariucci chants
It’s not unheard of for some student sections of winning teams to fire up a “Mar-eee-ooo-cci” chant in the closing minutes of a quarterfinal victory at Xcel Energy Center. The implication, of course, is that the losing team will fall to the consolation bracket with games at 3M Arena at Mariucci on the University of Minnesota campus.
This year, however, all consolation games in Class 1A and 2A will be played at Aldrich Arena in Maplewood. Chant accordingly.
HEATHER RULE