When Alaina and Brooke Gnetz were 6 years old, the identical twins made up a secret language.

“It was gibberish,” the two high school hockey players recently recalled in unison, now speaking fluent English, through giggles.

The shared vocabulary — a common phenomenon among identical twins called cryptophasia — might have died out when the sisters’ parents sent them to speech therapy to quell the indecipherable dialect, but the forward-defender duo still find themselves communicating without words on ice.

Their preferred language is sailing a puck from one stick to the other. Last season, the two racked up 85 combined points in 27 games for Woodbury.

“She’ll pass to me and she doesn’t even look, she just knows where I am,” Alaina, who also goes by Laini, said.

“From the very beginning, people didn’t think we had twins because they were bouncing off the wall,” said Chris Gnetz, the twins’ dad, remembering two blonde streaks forming a single person on the ice. “They were one.”

But for the first time, the twins aren’t sharing the ice this season. Laini, a Ms. Hockey finalist, now wears Centennial/Spring Lake Park crimson. Brooke has been sitting in the stands after a torn ACL benched her for her senior season at Woodbury.

Two tough mentalities

“I can go first,” Laini said before launching into the story of the twins’ wobbly legs slicing through ice for the first time.

It’s no surprise the senior forward took the reins.

“Laini right away was first, Brooke was second,” Chris said about the day they were born. “Laini takes control of everything, and Brooke kind of sits back.”

It’s fitting then that Laini jumped at the chance to join her best friends, Grace Laager and Katie Ball, on the same line. After their dad moved to the Centennial School District last year, Laini transferred. It was a risk, moving schools and slotting into a new team, but it paid off. Centennial/Spring Lake Park won its section tournament to advance to this week’s Class 2A girls hockey state tournament as the No. 2 seed with a 24-3-1 record. Laini is the team’s top scorer with 33 goals.

“When you watch her play, right away you see the kind of skill set that she has,” said Centennial/SLP coach Sean Molin, who used to coach Laini and Brooke’s older brother, Nash. “Everybody comes up to me that didn’t know her before and is like, ‘Wow, she’s a really good player.’ She shows up in the big moments.”

Both girls aren’t timid in the face of conflict, especially not when the puck drops.

“They both are game changers,” Woodbury coach Scott Waldo said. “They both have a physical style of play, the aggressive style. There’s been years of people telling me, ‘You need to bench them’ or do this or that. It’s just who they are, and that’s just the way they play and can’t change it.”

But it’s Brooke who is the silent killer.

“On the ice, it’s a little bit different,” Chris said. “Brooke will almost tomahawk you over the head. She’s just a fierce competitor.”

The whole family attributes the hard-nosed style of play — honed through countless training sessions with Minnesota hockey pros John and Krissy Pohl — to the twins’ first memories of lacing up their skates.

“When the girls were born, they were at the rink,” Chris said. “[Their brothers] would treat them like little brothers. That’s how Laini and Brooke got to be so aggressive on the ice.”

He insists, however, “they’re sweet off the ice.”

The two are tough. At 12, Brooke broke both her wrists after jumping off a trampoline. Three weeks later, Laini launched herself into the couch, splitting her knee open. A month later, Laini was on the ice playing Edina, dragging her stiff knee behind her.

“She was skating on literally one leg. It was like an army soldier,” Chris remembered. Brooke cheered from the bench with a cast on each arm.

Those bulldozer personalities have come in handy this season, when the obstacle is more mental than anything.

‘I heard a pop’

“I heard a pop! I heard a pop!” Brooke recalled yelling while sandwiched between an opponent and the sheet of ice.

Last June, before Chris Gnetz moved into the Centennial district, the twins were playing in a summer league game against a Boston club when Brooke chased down an opposing player. Instead of wrapping the puck around the net, the Boston player twisted Brooke’s leg around her own and then fell on it. The defender knew something was wrong when she tried to move her knee and it wouldn’t budge.

“I like waking up and like getting to see my best friends every single day, even if it’s without Brooke,” Laini said. “But with Brooke, playing with her, I didn’t think that could be over or gone for a year.”

Brooke’s torn ACL put her on the bench for her senior season. She was primed for a captain’s stitch on her blue and gray jersey, and she was penciled in to represent the U.S. at the Under-18 Women’s World Championship alongside her sister.

Those milestones vanished with one bad hit, but the moment that truly stung came at the end of January.

“Senior night was probably the hardest,” Brooke said, remembering tears escaping during the ceremony. “I thought that we would have had our senior night together.”

The senior defender is an honorary captain but no longer attends Woodbury practices or games.

“At the start of the season, I was going to the Woodbury games, and then it was just too hard on me, knowing that I wasn’t playing with them or for them this year,” Brooke said. “So, I backed away from that for my mental health.”

Instead, she has been rehabbing her leg and enjoying all the after-school activities she missed out on after years of prioritizing practice over movie nights and trips to the mall. Most game nights, you can find her watching her mirror image find the back of the net.

“It’s fun watching her, but at the same time, I have that gut feeling: I wish I could be out there playing with her and giving her passes,” Brooke said.

It won’t be long before that is a reality.

In August, both Brooke and Laini committed to play Division I hockey at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Both are confident they will be prepared for college hockey come fall: Centennial/SLP coach Molin has been working with the UMD coach to integrate Bulldogs training tactics into high school practices, and Laini is quick to squash any doubts about Brooke’s readiness.

“She sent me a video of her first time skating, and I was like, ‘Are you faking it?’” Laini said. “She looked fine. She looked good.”

Brooke hopes to study physical therapy, inspired to help athletes just like her. Laini has her sights set on sports management and a coaching gig in the NHL or for the U.S. Olympic team.

The prospect of wearing maroon and gold together is speeding up the year apart and helping Brooke muscle through afternoon physical therapy and private training sessions.

“I’m just so excited to play with her again next year,” Laini said.

In September, the girls will hope to feed passes to each other once again, speaking a language only they can understand.

...

Hockey Across Minnesota

Minnesotans in the NHL

Aleksander Barkov hoisted his second Stanley Cup in as many years last June when Florida once again defeated Edmonton in the Final.

But when the Panthers captain passed the trophy to a teammate to continue the celebration, Barkov didn’t seek out a fellow back-to-back champion for the ceremonial handoff: He gave the cup to a first-time winner in Nate Schmidt.

The veteran defenseman was never drafted by an NHL team despite finishing as the second-highest scoring defenseman in Minnesota after his last season at St. Cloud Cathedral High School.

Schmidt went on to play for the Gophers but didn’t have his breakout season until he was a sophomore when he had the most assists of any defenseman in the nation. After scoring a career-high nine goals as a junior, Schmidt signed with Washington as a free agent.

Since debuting with the Capitals, Schmidt has been traded twice, had his contract bought out and was selected in the expansion draft by Vegas ahead of his best season in the NHL that culminated with his first trip to the Stanley Cup Final in 2018 — a series won by his former team Washington.

But Schmidt, 34, received a do-over seven years later with Florida after the Panthers acquired him on a one-year deal that had a big-time return: He chipped in 12 points in 23 playoff games last year, and two of his three goals were game-winners.

In the offseason, Schmidt joined Utah on a three-year, $10.5 million contract, becoming one of the Mammoth’s most experienced and reliable defenders; Schmidt has appeared in all 57 games, tallying four goals and 14 assists to help put Utah in position for a Western Conference wild-card berth going into the Olympic break.

— Sarah McLellan

College Spotlight: UMD, St. Thomas in good NCAA shape

The year was 2021, and all five Minnesota Division I men’s college hockey teams advanced to the NCAA tournament — a first in the state’s history and a source of pride for the Minnesota hockey community. Bemidji State and the Gophers won their first-round games, while St. Cloud State, Minnesota Duluth and Minnesota State Mankato advanced to the Frozen Four in Pittsburgh, where the Huskies fell 5-0 to Massachusetts in the final.

Five years later, Minnesota has six Division I men’s teams with the addition of St. Thomas. The NCAA tournament, however, likely won’t resemble a Minnesota Invitational this time. The regionals begin in five weeks — March 26 to be exact — and only Minnesota Duluth is a lock to make the tournament, while St. Thomas has a strong shot to be part of the 16-team field. The other four Minnesota teams as of Wednesday, Feb. 18, were on the outside, looking in but still alive to varying degrees.

The NCAA awards automatic bids to the six conference tournament champions: Atlantic Hockey, Big Ten, CCHA, ECAC, Hockey East and NCHC. The other 10 spots are filled by the highest-ranked teams in the NCAA Percentage Index (NPI), a computer formula that compares teams’ results. College Hockey News uses a probability matrix based on simulations of remaining games and ranks the chances of each team to make the NCAA tournament.

The top four teams in the NPI are No. 1 Michigan State, No. 2 Michigan, No. 3 North Dakota and No. 4 Western Michigan. They all are 100% locks to make the NCAA field, according to the matrix. No. 5 Penn State, No. 6 Quinnipiac, No. 7 Providence and No. 8 Denver are 99% or better to make the field. No. 9 Minnesota Duluth (18-12-0) has a 91% chance.

St. Thomas (18-9-3) is No. 13 and is assigned a 76% chance to make the NCAA field — 43% as the CCHA tournament champ and 33% as an at-large selection.

Minnesota State (16-9-5) is No. 16 and would be the first team out if it doesn’t win the CCHA tournament. The Mavericks are in a positioning battle among No. 17 Augustana, No. 18 Michigan Tech and No. 19 Bowling Green in the CCHA.

St. Cloud State (16-16-0) is No. 22 in the NPI and has a 5% chance to make the NCAA field, according to the matrix. The Huskies most likely would need to win the NCHC tournament to advance.

The Gophers (10-19-2) are No. 41 in the NPI and have a 1% chance to advance. Their only route to the NCAA field is winning the Big Ten tournament.

Bemidji State (12-17-3) is No. 49 in the NPI and has a 1% chance — only by winning the CCHA tournament.

— Randy Johnson

Top 25

Boys: Rogers overtook Minnetonka in the rankings this week to claim No. 1.

This Week’s Apple

Meet Maddy Kimbrel, the 2026 All-Minnesota Girls Hockey Player of the Year

Thank you for reading Hockey Across Minnesota (HAM). Email me at olivia.hicks@startribune.com with story tips or message me on X or Instagram. See you at the rink!