ST. PAUL -- Warroad was unable to power its way to a fourth consecutive trip to the Minnesota girls hockey championship game.
Warroad's run of two straight Class A state titles was snapped Friday in St. Paul, when South St. Paul beat the Warriors 4-2 in the semifinals of the Class A state tournament semifinals.
"It's a major disappointment," Warroad coach David Marvin said. "We felt we were the better team. But that wasn't the case today."
Warroad was betrayed by its power-play unit. On six power plays, Warroad was a combined 0-for-7 on shots.
"We've been so good on the power play all year," Marvin said. "We were at 37 percent -- that's awesome. And we had some chances to score. We just missed, shots we don't usually miss. We just didn't bury them. And South St. Paul was very good on defense."
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South St. Paul took a 2-0 lead when Lauren Wilcox and Anna Barlow scored to open the second period. Warroad pulled even, however, with Demi Gardner scoring at the 12:53 mark of the second period and Lisa Marvin tying the score at 2-2 just 22 seconds into the third period.
It remained that way until the 11:35 mark. Just seconds after South St. Paul had killed a penalty, Emily Reibert's shot from the right side just inside the blue line beat Warroad goalie Dayton Hilgert low to the glove side. It was the second goal of the game in which South St. Paul scored quickly after killing a penalty.
"That's pretty common," David Marvin said. "Teams kill off a penalty and they gain momentum. They were opportunistic."
Reibert added an empty-net goal in the late going for the final score.
Hilgert finished with eight saves. Freshman Sydney Conley turned back 17 shots for South St. Paul.
"Their goalie played well," David Marvin said. "We had opportunities where she made big saves. And give their defense credit. It's not like we put 30-some shots on them. They were physical and limited us."
Warroad plays Red Wing, an 8-4 semifinal loser to Breck School, at 9 a.m. Saturday at Xcel Energy Center in the third-place game.
