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Dispatches from the Xcel Energy Center

By Star Tribune staff reports, 03/10/11, 10:38PM CST

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Backup goaltender keeps his own business on the side

At this tournament, Michael Jordan isn’t a basketball player. He’s the backup goaltender for White Bear Lake, and an aspiring entrepreneur.

Jordan, a senior, has been designing websites for more than two years via his own company, blackballdesigns.com. For this year’s playoffs he designed the black “iBelieve” T-shirts that Bears fans wore Thursday.

About 600 shirts were printed and sold out so quickly that his mother, Laura, didn’t even get one of her own. She wore Michael’s for the Bears’ Class 2A quarterfinal game against Duluth East.

Michael got into goaltending around age 6 when he signed himself up for an evaluation camp.

“The kid was born ready,” Laura said. “He was two months premature and we were out of the hospital in eight days.”

You go, JoJo

Duluth East goaltender JoJo Jeanetta made what could easily stand up as the save of the tournament during the final minute of regulation in the Greyhounds’ eventual double-overtime victory, then nearly became the goat of the week shortly after.

Let’s get the near miss out of the way first.

Moments into the second overtime, White Bear Lake’s Brandon Wahlin fired a harmless shot from center ice toward Jeanetta — but the puck skipped twice and almost hopped over his outstretched right leg pad.

“I let my mind wander; I thought about Frazee,” he said, referencing the rink-long goal that former Gophers goaltender Jeff Frazee gave up to North Dakota’s Robbie Bina in 2007.

His head was surely clear in the waning moments of regulation, however. Jeanetta brought fans from both sides to their feet when he snipe-saved a point-blank shot from the Bears’ Mitch Morrisette to keep it a 3-3 game.

“Most of the game, yeah, I was in the zone,” Jeanetta said.

Oops

Blaine forward Jonny Brodzinski was misidentified as “Joe” a few times on the Xcel Energy Center scoreboard during the Mr. Hockey finalist announcement. It was fixed by the time Brodzinski flashed his skills in the Bengals’ loss with a shorthanded goal, his 29th of the season.

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