Eagles fall in double OT

By JIM BASTIAN

Journal Sports Writer

ST. PETER - Alex Miller's wrist shot over Gary Wurtzberger's left shoulder with 6:15 remaining in the second overtime lifted top-ranked Rochester Lourdes to a 2-1 win over the New Ulm Eagles in the Section 1A championship hockey game.

Wurtzberger stopped 47 of 49 Lourdes Eagles shots.

Lourdes, now 25-1-1, will play the Section 6A champion in the state tournament.

The New Ulm Eagles end their season with a 20-4-0 record --their most wins in school history for hockey.

"The shot did not hit my shoulder, " Wurtzberger said. "It got tipped and I went down -- and it was just close enough to where I could not get my glove on it and close enough where I couldn't get my shoulder up high enough."

"This was a heck of a game," Eagle coach Tom Macho said. "The story of the game for us was the play of Wurtzberger -- and we knew that the winning goal was not going to come off of a shot. It would be off of something. It came off of (Miller's) stick when it was bouncing around."

Macho said that despite the loss to Lourdes, he was pleased with the team's play. Lourdes had beaten the Eagles 7-0 and 6-1 in the regular season.

"I have never seen our kids go so hard for (five) periods. They did everything but put the puck in the net."

After a scorless first period, Lourdes would crack the scoreboard when their leading scorer, Adam Gill, drilled a slap shot from just inside the blue line to give Rochester a 1-0 lead at the 3:51 mark.

But New Ulm came back and used a power play to knot the game at 1-1 with Scott Stueber beating Dam Smith low on the stick side with Corey Schnobrich and Josh Jacobs getting credit for assists.

"We knew that he (Smith) had stonewalled us in our last two meetings," Macho said. "We knew that now we have scored on them and they really got an (emotional) lift from that."

"We knew that we would give them a game," Wurtzberger said. "And a lot of that comes because of our fans. When we left New Ulm tonight, we saw about 10 guys on Broadway with signs and they were all there at the game for support. We had a goal to get to the state this year so we figured that we had to go all-out each minute of the game."

The 1-1 score held up for the third period and the first overtime despite New Ulm being outshot 15-3 in the third period and 6-3 in the first overtime.

"(Lourdes) just kept coming at us on a couple of rushes and we would clear or ice the puck to get it out," Wurtzberger said. "But my legs were just fatigued -- in that last overtime, my legs were just done but I knew that I had to tough it out. After the game, when I got my medal (Lourdes goalie) Dan (Smith) came over and said "heck of a job. When they came down to us and even though we got worked (6-1), there was still a lot of respect going in between the two teams."

'"They really put a lot of pressure on us in that third period and the two overtimes," Macho said. 'We could not get any offense going because they have four good defensemen. We tried to tie them up -- do the backchecking -- but they just keep coming at you. They don't give you that second shot -- they don't let you get in."

NEW ULM 0-1-0-0-0+1

ROCHESTER LOURDES 0-1-0-0-1=2