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On the Grind

By Legacy Hockey staff, 03/07/23, 1:45PM CST

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Hermantown's go, go, go approach wears opposing teams to the nub

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Inside Scoop

Play hard. Play fast. Take short shifts. Go, go, go.

“We keep the tempo hot and try to wear teams down,” Hermantown coach Pat Andrews said after an early-February win over Orono. “Lots of times teams can skate with us for a period, maybe even two, but at some point it usually breaks.”

Hermantown, long the state’s dominant small-school program, had another Hermantown-like season, going 25-2-1 and beating an array of top-ranked Class 2A and 1A teams.

But the defending Class 1A champion Hawks’ winning formula, usually reliant on a Mr. Hockey-caliber player or two, has been tweaked to account for the early departures of several upper-echelon standouts. Hermantown rolls three and sometimes four lines and plays at such a frenetic pace that, by the third period, opponents are left gasping for and grasping at air.

Still, the Hawks aren’t invincible. They had their 10-year, 103-game regular season unbeaten streak against small-school opponents snapped in a 3-1 loss to Warroad on Jan. 14.

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