Hodag hockey falls to Pines in playoff opener

EAGLE RIVER — A long season came to an end for the Rhinelander High School boys’ hockey team Thursday, Feb. 19 in Eagle River. 

Josh Graves scored four times and had an assist, and six other players scored, as Northland Pines defeated the Hodags 10-2 in the opening round of the WIAA Division 2 tournament at the Eagle River Sports Arena.

Rhinelander (1-23-0) came in as heavy underdogs against the top-seeded Eagles (19-6-0) and fell behind 4-0 early in the contest. The Hodags gave up four more goals in the second period and two more in the third.

Drake Nelson scored twice for the Hodags as he finished the season with a team-high eight goals. Rhinelander did have a bright moments. Coach M.J. Laggis said the team tried to put in a different system in the neutral zone in an effort to slow down the Eagles, but Pines simply overwhelmed Rhinelander from the jump.

“Obviously, we weren’t able to do that all night and do it consistently enough. But — if you understand the game of hockey at, all you understand that — setting that up a system like that is pretty cool and it’s unique,” Laggis said. “It’s something that teams do at the right time of the year to try to beat someone and our goal is to keep it as close as we could as long as we could and try to find a way, and Pines absolutely outskilled us.”

Graves scored his first goal just 4:39 into the contest as he went top shelf on a cross-ice pass from Michael Schmidt to put the Eagles on the board. The lead grew to 3-0 a short while later, despite the Hodags being on the power play. Schmidt fed Hunter Tameling in transition for a short-handed tally at the 9:06 mark and freshman Cash Powell won a race to a loose puck after the Eagles dumped the puck off the boards behind the Hodag goal. Powell scored another shorty to give the Eagles a 3-0 lead at the 10:03 mark. 

Nicholas Hahn put the Eagles up 4-0 on a shot from the right point at the 14:36 mark before Nelson put Rhinelander on the board, scoring off a turnover at the 15:26 mark. 

The second period belonged to Graves. He scored goals at the 5:59, 7:29 and 8:52 marks. The last of those tallies sent the game into running time after the Eagles went ahead by six goals. He then assisted on an Oliver DePuydt goal that made it 8-1 at the 12:01 mark.

Nelson again scored a late-period goal for Rhinelander, this time on the power play off an assist from senior teammate Dylan Shefveland, to make it 8-2 after 34 minutes. 

“It was nice to see him get on the board. Drake’s one of those guys, he’s loves scoring. He all smiles when he scores. He had a couple nice scoring opportunities and took advantage of them,” Laggis said.

Cooper Saari scored the Eagles’ third short-handed goal of the night off a turnover 7:45 into the third and Hudson Gall rounded out the scoring with a point-blank finish with 5:16 remaining.

The Eagles outshot the Hodags 43-16 in the contest. Connor McGee made 33 saves in defeat. Though the scoresheet shows that McGee stopped less than 77% of the shots he faced on Thursday, the freshman did make a number of tough saves to deny high-quality scoring chances for the Eagles.

“He gave up some short side stuff walking in the zone up top, and that’s certainly something that we’ve talked about, and (assistant coach) Randy (Ostrom)’s worked on with him big time. But he really battled hard,” Laggis said. “That’s such an adverse situation. You know, you’re the goalie. You’re never taking a break. You’re never getting a shift, and you’re out there. There is no backup goalie. So it’s just you, and you’re out there, and it’s 8-2 and you’re in run time. I tell you what, for you to keep your head up as a freshman and keep fighting is a hard thing to do. And so I just give them a ton of credit for that. He came into a very difficult situation, playing in a very difficult position. And I was just really proud of how hard he tried.”

The Eagles, favored to advance to the WIAA state tournament out of the Section 2 bracket, will host Lakeland tonight in Eagle River in the sectional semifinals. The fourth-seeded T-Birds knocked off fifth-seeded Shawano 3-2 in double overtime on Thursday. Mosinee will face Pacelli tonight in the other sectional semifinal.

For Rhinelander, it’s the team’s third straight first-round exit in the WIAA playoffs, and a tough end for a senior class that won only four games over its final two seasons. Laggis thanked Shefveland and Logan Leonard for sticking things out during the last couple of years and the team’s third senior, Ryan Carey, for being part of the team after transferring in from Chippewa Falls this season, though his playing time was limited by injury. 

“We just thanked the seniors for their time. I mean, last season and this season have been extremely difficult, win-wise, and there’s been a lot of things along the road that have been real struggles. So just thanked them for their time,” Laggis said. “When you’re a senior, and it’s not going great, and you see the end of the tunnel, it’d be really easy to just pack it in, and those guys didn’t do that at all.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].