Howie's column is powered by Lyric Kitchen · Bar
They don’t announce it over the loudspeaker, but nights like Tuesday are how reputations get cemented.
Hermantown skated into Duluth Heritage Center, took one look around, and went straight to work. Nine goals later — two hats flying for junior power forwards Beau Christy and Mick Martalock — the top-ranked Class 1A Hawks skated off with a 9-2, running-time win over an overmatched 2A Denfeld team that felt less like a conference game and more like a statement of intent.
Denfeld and Superior are the weakest opponents in Hermantown's 25-game regular season schedule.
“We came out and took care of business,” Hermantown coach Patrick Andrews said. “It was very workman-like in the first period. That’s what I was happy with.”
That first period decided everything. Hermantown scored four times, Christy doing his damage early and often, and the game immediately tilted. The Hawks added three more in the second period — two by Martalock — and both juniors had their hat tricks wrapped up before the third period could pretend it mattered.
Denfeld had seen this movie before. Andrews reminded his team afterward that this building has been tricky for Hermantown in recent years — ties, slow starts, even a three-goal hole a season ago. This time, there was no messing around.
“Denfeld always plays us hard,” Andrews said. “Coach (Dale) Jago has them ready. We haven’t handled this game well the last three or four years. Tonight, we did.”
At the center of everything — quietly, as usual — was senior assistant captain Ford Skytta, piling up four assists while making the Hawks’ offense hum. Skytta has been around long enough to understand the bigger picture, the arc of a season, the expectations that come with a letter stitched on your chest in Hermantown.
“It’s a big honor,” Skytta said. “It’s something you dream about your whole life. It comes with a lot of responsibility, but it’s great.”
Skytta doesn’t talk like a guy chasing headlines. He talks like a guy chasing something longer.
“We’re a young team,” he said, “but that junior class coming up is so talented and skilled. It’s really exciting. I think we’ve shown we have all the firepower to make a run. It’s just up to us to do it.”
The run, of course, always goes through defending 7A champion Hibbing-Chisholm, which punched the Hawks out of the playoffs last season. Skytta didn’t dodge that.
“We expect to see them,” he said of the Bluejackets. “We play them at home in mid-January, and we expect to see them again at the end.”
That confidence isn’t bravado. It’s built on lines like the one Christy, Martalock and Kole Lendzyk are rolling out every shift — a mix of size, speed and hockey sense that looks unfair on most nights.
“They’re big bodies,” Andrews said. “They do it in different ways. Mick flies around, creates chaos, scores gritty goals. Beau is as elite a talent as you’ll find — hands, speed, vision. What makes him special is he’s willing to go to the hard areas. That’s surprising for a junior. You get rewarded when you do that.”
Christy said the key is keeping the puck moving and the standard high.
“We can’t play down to anyone,” said the personable Christy. “We’ve got to keep our level up and play our game, offensively and defensively. We’ve got a tough schedule, and that’s going to help us come playoff time.”
Lendzyk, the self-described “water bug” of the line, is the one who makes it all go. First in on the forecheck. First out of the corners. Stirring the drink.
“We’re a quick team,” Lendzyk said. “Speed and skill — that’s one of our biggest assets. Getting the puck up the ice is something we’re good at.”
He talks like a center who understands that points are a byproduct, not the goal.
“I like to think of myself as a playmaker,” he said. “Give the puck, get it back. It’s five guys working together. When we cycle low to high and get pucks to the net, that’s when we’re at our best.”
It helps that they’ve been doing it together for years.
“That’s one of the great things about Hermantown,” Lendzyk said. “You grow up playing together. The chemistry just builds. We think of it like pond hockey — just going out, wheeling around, having fun.”
That freedom is earned, Andrews said, not gifted. He’s quick to remind his team — especially the young ones — that skill without habits doesn’t last long in March.
“We talk about habits all the time,” Andrews said. “I didn’t love our second period. But we were way better in the third. At the end of the day, you want to come out of the game better than when it started.”
There are other pieces coming fast, too, including freshman defenseman Nikolai Zukov, a 6-foot-plus right-hander Andrews didn’t hesitate to pull up.
“He’s elite,” Andrews said of Zukov, a Proctor native. “We don’t usually pull freshmen up, but this was a no-brainer. He’s ready, and he’s helping us.”
Behind it all sits experience in goal and a roster that, while young, doesn’t play that way for long stretches.
“We’re fast, and we’re scoring goals,” Andrews said. “That’s usually the last thing to come. Defense is still a work in progress, but that’s teachable.”
On nights like Tuesday, though, the lessons are easy. Score early. Play north. Trust the guy next to you. Let the hats fall where they may.
Hermantown didn’t just win another game. The Hawks looked exactly like a team that knows where it’s headed — and isn’t interested in waiting around to get there.
Howie, 71, is a veteran Hermantown print journalist and publisher of HowieHanson.com, which he has operated for 21 years. He is the region’s first and only full-time online daily columnist, covering local news, politics, business, healthcare, education and sports with an independent, community-centered voice. Hanson has spent more than five decades reporting on issues that shape the Northland.
