ST. PAUL — One player can’t stop Shakopee’s Cooper Simpson. Neither can two, or three, or four, or … 

You get the idea.

Which isn’t to say it takes an army to stop the Sabres’ scoring wizard. No, just a a well-drilled, deeply talented hockey team.

St. Thomas Academy proved up for the challenge on Thursday as it held Simpson, who entered the Class 2A quarterfinal as the state’s leader in goals with 47, to a single assist in a 2-1 triumph at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.

“We did a good job defensively on Simpson, and that’s what we needed,” first-year St. Thomas Academy coach Greg Strobel said. “Their offense generates and runs through him.”

Strobel watched enough video to know that throwing single skater, or even a top defensive pair, at Simpson wasn’t going to work. The Mr. Hockey finalist possesses the lung capacity and endurance to stretch a single shift long past the point most defenders bail and head for the bench.

So Strobel assigned his top two defensive pairings and top two forward lines to shut down Simpson. Add it up, and that’s 10 players. Aiding Strobel’s game plan greatly was the fact the Cadets’ possess perhaps the state’s best one-two combination of centers in Michael Mikan and William Dosan. Both are elite level players with the skating ability, tenacity and smarts to stick with most any player as if they were human Krazy Glue.

“I think for sure we had to dial in in the defensive zone and track him well,” Dosan said. “Just keep him to the outside and keep blocking shots. You have to play him like that.”

The Cadets held the Sabers to a mere 14 shots on goal, including three from Simpson. Three shots. The North Dakota commit scored three or more goals five times this season.

But this game never had that sort of wide-open, end-to-end feel.

“You look at the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Game 7s are never 8-6,” Strobel said about the conservative style, a chess match so to speak, played by both teams. 

Do you play chess Mark?

“I did tonight in my brain for about two hours,” Strobel said. “But it’s hockey chess.”