One of the oldest precepts in sportswriting is to, when possible, visit the losing locker room.
Cover the winners of a big game and you'll often hear unintelligible yelling. Cover the losers and you'll get pathos and determination, maybe philosophy, often poetry.
Sportswriters didn't have access to the athletes and coaches on championship day at the Minnesota state hockey tournament on Saturday, but you didn't need to be in the building to see how much this tournament means to these kids.
When Edina beat Andover 2-1 with a last-second defensive stand in the Class 2A girls' final, the Andover players reached fingers between the bars of their face masks to wipe away tears, and hugged one another as if something precious had just ended, because it had.
Four championship games in one day in an empty Xcel Energy Center on Saturday introduced a unique combination of urgency and quiet to the tournament, but the pathos really began on Friday night, when the Eden Prairie boys won a frenetic shootout, 6-5, over Maple Grove in overtime.
Upon seeing the puck in the net, some Maple Grove players collapsed to the ice. Others seemed to melt. Some slumped against the boards, staring into space, and remained frozen in place until Eden Prairie's players began surrounding them, patting shoulders, enveloping them in hugs.
"With COVID, it's been an unusual world, and you're always wondering whether or not you can do certain things," Maple Grove coach Todd Berglund said. "We were told we needed to get out of there as quick as we could.
"I'm glad all of those kids had the opportunity to talk to each other, and do those things. It was a touching moment. You wish you could be on the other side of a game like that, but I commend those Eden Prairie kids for reaching out and doing what they did. It's not always that way, certainly. It's kind of funny how hockey is unique in that way, I think."
