Eagan Grabs Third Place At State Tourney

Pride was on the line at Saturday’s Class AA state third place game. The Eagan boys hockey team, in its second state tournament appearance in school history, felt like winning its last game was important moving forward.

The Wildcats played like it, too.

Eagan’s Ryan Nelson scored 1:50 into the game, and the Wildcats never looked back in a 5-3 win over Edina at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. 

“It feels really special,” Nick Kuchera said. “To go out on a note like this, it’s a great way to end the season.”

The win gave Eagan its first state hockey trophy in school history.

Coming off a loss to Eden Prairie in the state semifinals—a game in which coach Mike Taylor questioned his team’s intensity—the Wildcats responded with a thorough, complete game.

“The kids just regrouped and said our season is not over,” Taylor said. “We can still play for some hardware and we get to play Edina. As coaches you can try to sell that but you have to have a group who is mentally tough enough and passionate enough about each other.”

Eagan (22-7-2) built a 3-0 lead thanks to goals by Eli May and Kuchera. After the Hornets scored to cut the lead to 3-1, Kuchera notched his second goal of the night 47 seconds later to retain the two-goal lead.

“It wasn’t very hard for us to get up for this game,” Kuchera said. “We had already lost to them in a pretty tough way earlier this season, so our whole team had the passion to come out and get revenge against these guys.”

Will Merchant netted an empty netter to secure the win, which helped the Wildcats draw even with Edina (19-9-2) for the season. The Hornets beat Eagan 7-6 on Dec. 4.

Edina coach Curt Giles said the Eagan came out strong from the start and never looked back.

“Eagan has a good hockey team,” Giles said. “They’re young, they come hard and they play hard. They got off to a good start, jumped us a little bit and it just took us a while to climb back up the hill.”

GAME SUMMARY

Eagan 2 2 1 — 5

Edina 0 2 1 — 3

Scoring — First period: 1:50 EAGAN Ryan Nelson (Cullen Willox, Connor McGovern), 14:55 EAGAN Eli May (Brady Loew, Sam Wolfe). Second period: 1:42 EAGAN Nick Kuchera (Derick Kuchera, John Carroll), 6:26 EDINA Jake Sampson (Steven Fogarty) PPG, 7:13 EAGAN N. Kuchera (D. Kuchera, C. McGovern), 15:30 EDINA Lou Nanne (Michael Sit, J. Sampson) SHG. Third period: 3:13 EDINA Joey Kopp (S. Fogarty, J. Sampson), 16:58 EAGAN Will Merchant (unassisted) ENG. Shots — EAGAN 31, EDINA 19. Power play — EAGAN 0-6, EDINA 1-3. Saves — EAGAN Tommy Bodeker 16, EDINA Connor Girard 26.