Seems there's a softer side to hard-playing Phillippi

About the only thing Hill-Murray senior goalie Joe Phillippi let get past him at the state hockey tournament was a piece of personal information that he was afraid would lead to immeasurable teasing.

Well, sorry Joe. You dominated the Class 2A tournament, allowing just two goals in three games (including a 31-save shutout of mighty Edina in Saturday's title game). You were the Star-Tribune's first-team All-Metro goalie. You won the Frank Brimsek Award as the top senior goalie in the state. And you were the Class 2A recipient of the Herb Brooks Award. You have to allow this one vulnerability.

Phillippi let it be known during a postgame media gathering that his victory Saturday was the 63rd of his high school career and that the number has special meaning to him. When pressed by the group, Phillippi brushed it off. Later, though, he spilled the beans: Phillippi wears No. 33; his girlfriend, junior Rochelle Cichy, wears No. 30 for the Hill-Murray girls' basketball team. That adds up to 63. Everyone: Awwwww.

Any teasing he gets should be offset by the fact that he just had the best hockey week of his life. It started, Phillippi said, with a meeting after Hill-Murray's section title victory over White Bear Lake. Coaches gathered the team's seniors on the ice and laid it on the line.

"It hit home that this was the last chance," said Phillippi, who was also with the Pioneers for state tournaments in 2006 and 2007. "That meeting totally changed my outlook."

Looking back

After St. Thomas Academy beat Marshall 5-1 for the Class 1A state title, Cadets co-coach Tom Vannelli was asked to compare this team with the one that won the championship two years ago.

"That's a really good question," he said. "They really are a lot alike. Believe it or not, this team put more goals in the net by about 50 than that team did."

Several of the current Cadets played on that 2006 team. But one of the keys to this season's success was the offensive improvement by some of them. Last season, St. Thomas Academy finished third in the state.

"[Conor] Rooney had 12 goals last year and 25 or 26 this year," Vannelli said. "[James] Saintey had eight last year, and he has 24. [Christian] Isackson had five, and he comes in and gets 20 for us. Those are big step-ups."

Yes, they did

Written on the whiteboard inside the Hill-Murray locker room were two simple words: "Proved it." The Pioneers have a storied hockey program, but were 2-6 all-time in state title games before Saturday and entered this year's tournament somewhat under the radar as the No. 4 seed.

"Their banner will hang at Aldrich forever," Hill-Murray coach Bill Lechner said, referring to the team's home arena. "Now they get to taste it. This was their night."

Elsewhere in 2A

• Roseau and Benilde-St. Margaret's battled in the anticlimactic third-place game Saturday. Benilde-St. Margaret's claimed third place with a 5-1 victory, giving Roseau consecutive losses to end the season after 29 victories to start it.

• Ben Goff had a hat trick and an assist, while Brandon Wigen made 39 saves for Woodbury, helping the Royals to a 4-3 victory over Blaine in the Class 2A consolation title game.

Elsewhere in 1A

• Warroad won the third-place game 2-1 in overtime against St. Cloud Cathedral. Dane Shaugabay scored the winning goal at 3:38 of overtime.

• Ben Hanowski scored four goals as Little Falls defeated Mankato West 7-3 in the fifth-place game.

Etc.

• A record 129,721 fans attended this year's state tournament, breaking the record set in 2006 by nearly 5,000. Attendance for Friday's Class 2A semifinals -- 19,559 -- set a record for any hockey game in Minnesota.

• Hill-Murray had a senior-laden team that was, in Phillippi's words "sick of losing" at the state tournament after coming up short two years in a row. If Edina's talented junior class remains intact, the Hornets could be in the exact same position in 2009.