EAST GRAND FORKS, Minn. — The East Grand Forks boys hockey team gathered at Up North Pizza on a Saturday night in December.

The school’s last boys hockey state champions were there, celebrating the 10-year anniversary.

They heard the stories of how it went down.

The Green Wave weren’t favored to win state that year.

As they closed in on the title with a two-goal lead on Hermantown in the third period of the championship game, they gave up two extra-attacker goals in the final 33 seconds. But in overtime, Tanner Tweten buried a feed from the corner to win it.

East Grand Forks forward Dixon Bowen, left, reacts after the game-winning shot by forward Tanner Tweten gets past Hermantown goalie Luke Olson, right, during overtime of the boys’ Class A state hockey tournament championship game in St. Paul, Minn., Saturday, March 7, 2015. East Grand Forks won 5-4 in overtime. (Ann Heisenfelt / Associated Press)

A lot of players on this year’s team didn’t have to hear the stories to know what happened.

They were youth players who attended the games and followed the run closely.

On that December evening, the Green Wave were 3-5-1. They took solace in the fact that their schedule was a gauntlet, and they knew the story of that 2015 team.

The Green Wave won their third boys hockey state championship on Saturday, beating St. Cloud Cathedral 2-1 in overtime in Xcel Energy Center.

It was an eerily similar finish to 2015.

East Grand Forks players celebrate their 2-1 overtime victory over St. Cloud Cathedral in the Class A state boys hockey tournament championship game on Saturday, March 8, 2025, at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. (Andy Rennecke / St. Cloud LIVE)

East Grand Forks had a 1-0 lead in the final minute, but St. Cloud Cathedral’s Bo Schmidt scored a 6-on-4 extra-attacker, power-play goal to tie it and send it into overtime.

Former Green Wave forward Dixon Bowen, the top player on the 2015 team, watched it happen on his iPad in Stamford, Conn., where he now lives.

“Right when they got that penalty, I said, ‘Please don’t be like Hermantown,’” Bowen said. “The next thing you know, it’s in the back of our net. But I had a good feeling, because we had been there before and I know these guys watched us. They handled it great.”

In 2015, Grant Loven fed the puck from the corner to Tweten, who tipped home the winner at 3:34.

In 2025, senior forward Jace Van Eps fired a puck from the corner toward the crease. It hit St. Cloud Cathedral goaltender Keaton LaGrande and trickled in at 1:46.

“It’s crazy, the flashbacks,” Bowen said. “Same corner. The celebration was in the same spot.”

It was a state tournament run for the ages.

The Green Wave entered the playoffs with a 10-13-2 record.

They beat the No. 1-ranked team in the state, Warroad, in overtime in the Section 8A championship.

They rallied from a three-goal deficit to beat the state tournament’s No. 1 seed, Hibbing-Chisholm, in the semifinals.

Then, they beat defending state champion St. Cloud Cathedral — a team that hung 11 goals on the Green Wave five weeks earlier — to cap it off.

“We just preached all year long that adversity is going to happen,” head coach Tyler Palmiscno said. “You know it’s coming. You just don’t know when and what it’s going to look like. Today, it happened to be 50 minutes and 30 seconds into the game.”

It didn’t matter. The Green Wave won anyway.

On the bench, Palmiscno embraced assistant coaches Coltyn Sanderson and Jake Useldinger.

Tucker Lovejoy sat against the boards, tears running down his face.

Defenseman Nick Corbett, who gave an intense stare to the cameras for his pre-tournament introduction, exchanged it for a big grin.

“It’s something we’ll never forget for our lives,” Van Eps said. “This is what you dream of.

“It’s so unreal. Words can’t even describe it.”

This group of players won the peewee state title. They won the bantam state title.

Now, they’ve got the biggest one of all.

“We’re taking the state title home to East Side,” Palmiscno said. “We’ve got a community that’s going to be fired up to see that.”

Perhaps in 10 years, they’ll be back at Up North Pizza, inspiring another generation of players.

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