Moorhead and Stillwater advance to Class 2A boys hockey championship game

Moorhead faced its ultimate task. Edina is omnipresent, always lingering in the boys hockey state tournament bracket to remind an opponent of its bona fides. Regardless of its tournament seed, the Hornets are a green-and-white truth machine whose purpose is to weed out all who do not pack the gear to take a champion’s place.

No. 1 seed Moorhead stood up to that Friday, taking a 4-3 victory on a goal with 58.1 seconds left and advancing to the Class 2A championship game Saturday at Xcel Energy Center.

Moorhead (27-2-1) also owns a 4-1 win over Edina on Nov. 23 when they met at the Turkey Trot tournament.

Edina (21-7-2) had the early lead, thanks to junior forward Mason West. He scored three goals in the first period to put the Spuds in an early hole.

“He got off to a great start,” Edina coach Curt Giles said. “But it’s funny how it goes when teams start tightening up. The kids gave us 100% effort.”

The Hornets were looking to add to the Spuds' annual state tourney frustrations. Moorhead’s struggle to close the deal dates back to its first trip to state in 1992 and has happened eight times in title games.

But the Spuds rallied behind goals from Zac Zimmerman and Mason Kraft, a Mr. Hockey finalist and commit to Minnesota State Mankato, to reduce Edina’s lead to 3-2 at first intermission.

Then a goal from Brooks Cullen tied the game at 12:04 of the second period. A Michigan State commit, Cullen cleaned it up for his 22nd of the year.

Zimmerman’s second goal with 58.1 seconds remaining gave Moorhead its first lead of the game and forced Edina to call timeout. Zimmerman’s goal held up, and Moorhead advanced to face Stillwater at 7 p.m. Saturday.

“Edina is a team we are really familiar with,” Moorhead coach Jon Ammerman said. “But it’s been a while. Our team kind of dug in and played resilient. This is a different group of kids.”

Now seniors, Cullen and Kraft face their last chance for the state championship that eluded their fathers — former NHL players Matt Cullen and Ryan Kraft — when they were Spuds together some 30 years ago.

Should Brooks Cullen and Mason Kraft exorcise these demons of March, they would accomplish the ultimate in unfinished business.

But don’t expect undue pressure from the Moorhead fathers — or anyone else.

“I don’t buy into the idea of them carrying the weight of past teams. They have a great shot at writing their own story,” said Matt Cullen, who is part of the Spuds coaching staff.

Ryan Kraft, a coach in the Spuds' girls program, echoed Matt Cullen’s sentiment.

“If they were to fall short, I would not think any less of them,” he said.

Junior goalie Wyatt Spindler took the previous start for Edina, but junior goalie Chase Bjorgaard got Friday’s rematch.

“They don’t panic,” Giles said. “They’ve got quality players who are well-coached. They are a very resilient team.”

Stillwater head coach Greg Zanon said his team’s win over St. Thomas Academy in the early Class 2A semifinal wasn’t pretty by the Ponies’ standards.

No. 2 seed Stillwater was outshot 36-23 and weathered a hungry Cadets offense.

Still: 4-0. Even if it wasn’t pretty, for senior goaltender Cal Conway, it was clean.

Conway posted his second consecutive shutout of the Class 2A tournament and his fourth in seven games. It helped the Ponies book their first trip to a state championship game in their third trip to the Xcel Energy Center.

“We didn’t like our second period at all. Cal stood huge in there for us and gave us the opportunity,” Zanon said.

“He battles as hard as anybody has ever seen back there,” Stillwater senior forward Blake Vanek said. “I’ve never seen a player with more confidence than him.”

Conway had a lead to protect early. On a power play, Vanek dropped a pass back to junior defender Jonas Kohn, whose long-range shot put Stillwater on the board 4:03 into the first period.

The Ponies doubled their lead five minutes later when senior Trey Fredenberg carried the puck into the offensive zone and found sophomore Luca Jarvis in the left faceoff circle. Jarvis found the far upper corner of the net for his 22nd goal of the season.

After outshooting Stillwater in the second, the Cadets had two chances to force Stillwater to pony up its lead in the third. First, senior Jackson Rudh beat Conway on a give-and-go, but his shot went off the right pipe. Then, a poked-in goal by senior Cole Braunshausen was overturned for goaltender interference with 6:45 left.

Stillwater polished off the win with a cleanup goal from Fredenberg and a tight-angle empty-netter from Vanek with three minutes left.

“No question” the overturned goal changed the momentum, St. Thomas Academy head coach Mark Strobel said. “I thought once we got one, we could make them bend and break a little bit.”

Stillwater gets its first shot at a state title. St. Thomas Academy was seeking its sixth, though its first in Class 2A.

“We thought we’d be here from the start,” Kohn said after the win. Start of the tournament? “Start of the year,” he clarified.

He’s part of a shutdown Ponies defense that is tall and physical — Kohn is 6-4 — but can skate well, said Zanon, and do the rest: positioning, cutting passing lanes, holding the blue line.

“They’re all playing at a different level than they have all year, and as they should,” Zanon said. “They’ve been preparing their whole lives for this.”