Defeat Still Stings for Skippers

MINNETONKA, Minn - Two years ago, we watched the Edina Hornets buzz to an impressive regular season only to watch a stinging defeat at the hands of the Moorhead Spuds in the state quarterfinals. Last year, Brian Urick’s Minnetonka Skippers ran through the regular season until February 11 against Edina at Braemar Arena. The Skippers jumped out to a dominating 4-0 lead after the first period only to watch the Hornets mount a stinging comeback handing Minnetonka their first loss of the year 5-4.

“I think the kids started to feel pressure when they were still undefeated after 20 games. Once we lost to Edina in overtime I think a huge weight was lifted off their shoulders,” said Urick. “A lot of people think that at the end of the season we weren’t playing as well as we were in the beginning. I don’t believe that.”

The squad seemed to right itself rolling through the section and state quarterfinals outscoring their opponents 46-8 in seven games. The state semi-finals against Hill-Murray gave hockey fans a classic 4-overtime thriller. That physically and mentally exhausting contest finished less than 24 hours before the team would need to take the Xcel Energy Center ice to play for the championship.

“We were just playing some really good hockey teams. We had a lot of high end talent last year but we also had a lot of inexperienced sophomores on the team,” said Urick. “I think we struggled with teams like Edina, Wayzata and Hill Murray that had tons of depth and could roll three or four lines at us that had tremendous speed. I hope that with the success of our JV and Bantam team last year that we will have the depth to mimic these teams this year.”

So do the Skippers enter this season in the same position that Edina found themselves in this past year? Take into account a couple of statistics. In 2008-2009, Edina’s top line of Anders Lee, Conor Gaarder and Marshall Everson tallied 224 points two years ago. The rest of the team managed 173 points TOTAL. In contrast, last years Skipper top five scorers netted 273 points, the rest of the team 213 points. The Hornets returned only 131 points from the 2008-2009 team. The questions aren’t nearly as big with the returning Skippers. Players that tallied 238 points last season will return this winter for Minnetonka. Does that automatically equate to the same success as Edina? Absolutely not, but the foundation for a successful Skipper run can be argued.

“The team can go two ways. They can have the hunger to get back there again and work to have a better outcome or they can expect that the section championship will just be handed to them and they don’t need to work just because of the success they had last year. We will definitely bring this up in preseason meetings,” said Urick. “I will definitely stress that they will have to work even harder this year to return to the state tournament with the loss of 8 seniors who were such great hockey players and leaders. This will be their time to step up and be leaders.”

If you are looking for parallels between the two programs you need only to look back at the tears shed by an emotional Lee two years ago. Then listen to Urick four months after his team came so close to the ultimate goal.

“It has been difficult to let it go. It is so hard to get to the state championship game and so many things have to go your way to get there and to not come thru in the end is really disappointing. I have been lying in bed some summer nights still thinking about situations I could have handled differently.”

As a head coach guides their teams through the ups and downs of a season, they know more than any one else what they have. Once in a great while a group comes along that has the talent, the moxie and the drive to be the best.

If recent history has taught us anything it is that what might seem certain is certainly not.