Emma Stauber tried to keep memories of last year's painful loss in the Section 7AA finals from creeping into her thoughts between the first and second periods of Saturday's 7AA semifinal against Grand Rapids-Greenway.
With her Proctor-Hermantown-Marshall team trailing by a goal, the junior defenseman found the best way to avoid a repeat was to put the puck in the net. Twice.
Stauber's pair of goals 18 seconds apart early in the second period keyed the Mirage's 3-2 high school girls hockey section semifinal win at Heritage Center.
"We have a lot of older kids on the team, including myself, that just needed to play their game and lead us to the win," said Stauber, who has 23 goals this season. "That's what I tried to do."
Proctor-Hermantown-Marshall (19-6-2) advances to play top-seeded Elk River-Zimmerman (22-2-3), which blanked Duluth 2-0 in the other semifinal, in the title game at 7 p.m. Thursday at Heritage Center. The Mirage lost 4-2 to Cloquet-Esko-Carlton in the 2009 final to miss out on the schools' first state tournament appearance.
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"All of us older kids who went through that loss last year are trying to put it in the younger girls' heads that we're not going to let this happen again, and we need them to help us out," Stauber said.
The Lightning (11-14-2) took a 2-1 first-period lead when Morgan Illikainen and Dana Gallop countered Hannah Buchite's opening tally by scoring 46 seconds apart. Illikainen took a pass from her sister, Molly, high in the slot and beat Anja Morris with a wrist shot high to the goaltender's stick side. Gallop, a Ms. Hockey semifinalist and Minnesota Duluth signee, took advantage of a poor clearance by Morris to stuff in a rebound at 12:47.
Morris was unbeatable afterward, finishing with 27 saves.
"At first I was nervous, thinking that maybe we were going to shut down," Morris said. "But then everyone said, 'No, this is our year, this is our game.' Everyone did their job of keeping their head in the game."
PHM coach Glen Gilderman said none of his players panicked between periods.
"We were talking in the locker room that we were letting things happen instead of making things happen," he said.
That changed in the second period, beginning with Stauber's shot from the left point at 3:56. Seconds later, on the same shift, Stauber's shot from the top of the zone whizzed through traffic and past freshman goalie Sydney Helmbrecht for the game-winner. Helmbrecht totaled 22 saves.
"They did a good job of creating havoc in front of our net and getting the puck to the right [player]," Lightning coach Chris Granley said. "That's how the goals go sometimes in playoff hockey, you get a screen, the puck bounces around and that's what happened."
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The win avenged a 2-1 loss to the Lightning three weeks ago. The Mirage have won all five games since, putting the team in position again for a state berth.
"At the beginning of the year, quite honestly, I was worried because we lost a lot of scoring last year," Gilderman said. "About two weeks into the season, I said, 'If we work hard, we can be better than we were last year.' They worked hard and deserved a big win like this. We want the next game."
