GRAND RAPIDS — With less than 5 minutes remaining in overtime Tuesday in Grand Rapids, Hermantown turned the puck over and gave Thunderhawks a breakaway attempt.
Hawks junior defenseman George Peterson had no choice but to throw his stick out to try to stop the attack, but referees awarded Grand Rapids a penalty shot instead of sending Peterson to the penalty box — exactly what goaltender Dane Callaway wanted.
“It knew it was a penalty, but I’d rather take a penalty (shot) than a power play with 4 and a half minutes left in the overtime,” Callaway said. “I just tried to stay out and square to him and take away every angle.”
Less than four minutes later, Max Plante put a shot past Grand Rapids goalie Myles Gunderson to give Hermantown a 3-2 win in the regular season finale for both teams.
Hawks’ coach Pat Andrews said he was hoping officials would award Grand Rapids a penalty shot as well. He was confident in Callaway’s ability to stop it and thought it would give his team even more momentum in the overtime period.
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“They got the penalty shot and I was just like, ‘I know Dane will save this,” Andrews said. “I knew he was going to save it — he’s great on breakaways and we were going to get momentum off it and we did the rest of overtime.”
After the save, Grand Rapids’ Samuel Sterle was called for holding. The Thunderhawks killed off about half the penalty and had chipped the puck out of their zone when Ty Hanson found Plante moving up the ice.
“Ty looked up, saw me and he hit me with the pass,” Plante said. “I was trying to go wide and then I realized he wasn’t going to go hard on me. I just kept going and then I shot it — it took me like 2 or 3 seconds to register that it went in. It was awesome.”
While the game ended well for Hermantown, the team struggled in the first period to get going. After taking the first three shots, Grand Rapids outshot the Hawks 9-1 over the final 12 minutes of the period.
Ren Morque scored at the 10:22 mark for the Thunderhawks and Hayden DeMars scored early in the second to give Grand Rapids a 2-0 lead.
“I thought we had a good jump in the first period,” Grand Rapids coach Wade Chiodo said. “I thought we were winning battles, getting the pucks and making plays. When you do that good things happen.”
Hermantown’s Beau Janzig took a shot that bounced off two players and dribbled over the line to get the Hawks on the board with 10 seconds left to play in the second.
Andrews said the “hockey gods gave us one back” after officials waved off an earlier Hermantown goal because of an inadvertent whistle.
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“That was a big spark,” Andrews said. “We went in between periods and just said, ‘Hey, lay it out there, you gave yourself a chance to win, go for it. Lay it out there and go if it does come up short, you come up short — but if you come out on top, it’s going to feel amazing.’”
Janzig scored his second goal with 1:04 left in the third period to force overtime and set up Callaway and Plante’s heroics.
While Hermantown continued to play better throughout the game, Chiodo said he thought his team slowed down.
“The kids almost stopped moving their feet,” Chiodo said. “Obviously when you give a team like that opportunities with the puck, they’re going to find the back of the net. You’ve got to keep forcing plays.”
Hermantown (23-2) and Grand Rapids (18-6-1) will both have home games in the Section 7A and Section 7AA quarterfinals Tuesday, but have yet to find out who they will play.
Hermantown 0-1-1-1—3
Grand Rapids 1-1-0-0—2
First period — 1. GR, Ren Morque (Kyle Henke, Blayne Mortenson), 10:22.
Second period — 2. GR, Hayden DeMars (Henry Sterle, Mortenson), 1:39; 3. H, Beau Janzig (Dallas Vieau, Zam Plante), 16:50.
Third period — 4. H, Janzig (Max Plante, Wyatt Carlson), 15:56.
Overtime — 5. H, M. Plante (Ty Hanson), 7:12 (pp).
Saves — Dane Callaway, H, 26; Myles Gunderson, GR, 28.
