John's Journal: A Broken Skate, A Quick Repair, A Big Win

Disaster struck East Grand Forks junior defenseman Cole Schmiedeberg shortly before the biggest hockey game of his life. The fourth-seeded Green Wave was preparing to meet top-seeded Hibbing/Chisholm in the Class A state semifinals at Xcel Energy Center on Friday afternoon, and the energy was indeed high.

The previous game had just ended (with St. Cloud Cathedral beating Orono 4-1) when the Green Wave players exited their locker room for the short walk down a hallway, followed by a right turn into the tunnel that leads to the bench, the ice and pregame warmups.

Cole never got to the ice.

“We were walking through the tunnel,” he said after the Green Wave upset the Bluejackets 7-5. “I took a step and boom, my tuuk separates from my boot.”

The tuuk, a plastic component that connects the boot and the skate blade, was busted real good. Rivets popped out when he took that fateful step with his left skate.

So now what do you do?

“There were a lot of things running through my head at that moment,” Cole said. Terror? “Oh there was a lot of that. There was a lot running through my head. I mean, why now? I did my best and the coaches helped me relax.”

While he remained in the hallway, pacing to the locker room and back in his socks, his coaches got to work in searching for replacement skates. Assistant coach Braden Shea had brought a pair to town for practice, and they reached the locker room in time for the first period ... but not in time for Cole to warm up.

“I went out there for starting lineups and did a quick little skate and it was go time,” he said.

He wore Shea’s skates during the first period and “my feet were killing me, I’m not gonna lie.”

In the meantime, someone on the tournament staff knew just what to do. Andrea Schmidt, the activities director at Roseville High School, went to school at Roseville with Dan George, who along with his brothers Brian and Chris are fourth-generation operators of George’s Shoe-Leather-Hockey (“Over a century of craftsmanship and innovation”) on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, only a mile and a half from Xcel Energy Center.

Andrea gave them a call, Chris George drove to the arena and Andrea was standing at the curb outside Gate 4 with the skate. A few minutes later, it was in the shop and Dan got to work. When he was done, he drove to the arena and handed the skate to Andrea.

“Hands on, it probably took 20 minutes,” said Dan, 44, who played high school hockey at Roseville and still plays with buddies. “At first they wondered if I could have them ready for their next game (on Saturday). I said, ‘I’m going to fix this now, for this game.’ That was my goal, to have them waiting for him in the second period. I never want kids to miss ice time for any reason.”

When the first period ended and the Green Wave, including Schmiedeberg and his aching feet, returned to the locker room, his skates – repaired and looking good – were waiting for him.

“Oh man, I was real happy to see my skates when I came back in after the first period,” Cole said. “They felt good.”

After the game, East Grand Forks head coach Tyler Palmiscno described how they dealt with the situation.

“It was a mad scramble trying to figure out, do we fix it? Do we find other skates? We talk all the time about handling adversity, because you know it's coming. We didn't expect it to come before a player hit the ice, but it came. I thought we did a good job of handling that. And obviously there was a lot of adversity through the course of 51 minutes, and we handled that really well.”

The Green Wave’s upset of Hibbing/Chisholm was the first seismic shock of the tournament, which will end Saturday with championship and third-place games in Class A and Class 2A.

The semifinal between East Grand Forks and Hibbing/Chisholm was wild. The Bluejackets led 3-1 after the first period and 5-4 after two periods before the Green Wave exploded for a trio of goals in the third. Cole Bies had two goals and an assist for EGF and Jace Van Eps had a goal and two assists. Schmiedeberg assisted on a second-period goal by Tucker Lovejoy and blocked two shots.

“This was awesome,” Cole said. “I can't thank my teammates enough. We stuck together through the ups and downs, we stayed level, we got to our game and we got the job done.”

Dan George said he often attends the state tournament, although he didn’t have any tickets this year. So if anybody from, say, the East Grand Forks area has any extra tickets for Saturday … you know what to do.

“I’m real happy for those guys who fixed that skate,” Cole said. “Big props to them.”

--MSHSL staff member John Millea has been the leading voice of Minnesota high school activities for decades. Follow him on Bluesky at johnmilleamn and listen to "Preps Today with John Millea” wherever you get podcasts. Contact John at [email protected] or [email protected]