East Grand Forks, tucked up in Minnesota’s northwest corner, is about a five-hour drive from St. Paul. But an outsider at Saturday’s Class 1A boys hockey title game might have thought it was just down the road.

No. 4 seed East Grand Forks, which improved to 14-13-2 on the season, scored two power-play goals and killed seven minutes of penalty time in the third period en route to a 3-0 win over No. 5 Northern Lakes in the state quarterfinals at the Xcel Energy Center.

East Grand Forks couldn’t have picked a better time to play its best hockey, a span of a half dozen games that ended with a crescendo in the No. 4-seeded Green Wave’s 2-1 overtime victory over No. 2 St.