Inver Grove Heights Youth Hockey Team Sweeps Final Tourney to Go 30-0-0

The Inver Grove Heights Youth Hockey Association's Squirt B team wrapped up a perfect 30-0-0 season with a sweep of the district tournament March 18-20. The team won a total of four tournaments this season, and won most games decisively, often by five goals or more. Inver Grove Heights Patch sat down with head coach Keith Carlson to find out how it happened.

Inver Grove Heights Patch: How did your team do over the weekend?

Coach Keith Carlson: Well, we saw all facets of our game, but fortunately we did win all three games. We had the good, the bad and the ugly.

Patch: Explain the tournament details.

Carlson: For squirt level, it’s still considered development by Minnesota hockey. We don’t have a state tournament for the squirt level, so each of the nine districts has a district tournament. And teams can opt to play in it or not play in it. Of all the teams that want to play in it, they take the best six or eight and put them in a bracket. They’ll be two winners in each district. It’s good for the kids because at squirt level you don’t want to drive them out of the game, you want to expose them to success.

Patch: How old are these guys?

Carlson: These guys are all fourth and fifth graders. We were fortunate that 12 of our 14 kids were fifth graders. We were maybe a little bit older than some of the teams we faced.

Patch: How did they do in the final tournament?

Carlson: We played a team from Eastview and I think we won that one 3-1 on Friday night. And then we faced Eagan on Saturday. We spotted them a 2-zip lead after one. And we were fortunate that we corrected course and won 6-2. But they had us on the ropes. We hadn’t been in that position but once all year. The kids were in a place I hadn’t seen them before. I was hopeful we’d be able to motivate them to not cash in. They won 6-2 so that was a good one. On Sunday we played South St. Paul. We had played them on Super Bowl Sunday.  We knew we were probably the two best teams in the district and if everything worked out we would get to play each other. And that was a 3-1 game with an open net goal on our behalf, so it was a very tight game. It was probably not our best game, but like I told the parents it doesn’t matter. A win is a win, right?

Patch: Over the course of the season, how did you manage to go a perfect 30-0-0?

Carlson: We tried to do everything we could do to make sure they were in the best position to win…It’s settled in more with the parents than the kids. The kids think, hey, it’s cool, we’re undefeated. But the parents are thinking, we kind of told these guys a few times you’ll probably never see this ever see this again in any other sport you ever play the rest of your life. It doesn’t happen very often. It takes a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck It was fortunate that things worked out.

Patch: What were the things that these guys did well?

Carlson: They bought into passing early on in the season and moved the puck around a lot and spread it out. Passing would be one. Two, we had great goaltending. Very good goaltender, probably the best goaltender. And just, they’re hungry. These group of kids, they’re tenacious. They’re hungry. There’s a couple kids, when they smelled blood from the other team they just go for the net. Some of those thing you can’t coach into kids, they’re some kids, they’re just tenacious.

Patch: Had this group of players had a lot of success before this season?

Carlson: No, I coached this team last year and we were probably a .600 club. And six of players and the goaltender. Of the 14 kids six and the goalie were on that B team last year, so that means we had seven new skaters join us this year. So we weren’t an experience team that had been together for two years…There was a lot of unselfish play. And there was zero focus on individual stats, we never shared them with anybody. Nobody wore a captain’s patch or an assistant’s patch. It was all 14 of us. The kids listened good and showed good learning in practice. And we had had a great group of parents. They supported the kids. They kept it positive.