High school hockey tryouts don’t have to be the end of the line

It was a March afternoon in Bemidji when my White Bear Lake Bantam B team finished our season by going two-and-out in the 2010 Minnesota Hockey State Tournament. As I skated off the ice I was stopped by my mom. She pushed my Dad out on the ice and I smiled for a picture.

She wanted to capture my final moment of “youth hockey.”

I made a decision based on stereotypes and fallacies that if I didn’t make the White Bear Lake High School hockey team, I would quit hockey. My goal was always to play for the high school team so, if I didn’t make the team, what was the point of continuing to play?

Junior Gold even draws its own student sections. (Photo courtesy of Michael Shearen Photography)

Junior Gold seemed like a hack league meant for angry, hormonal teens to get out their frustration by hitting each other and fighting. As a playmaker who valued creativity and passing far more than physicality and toughness, it didn’t seem like a good fit.

Acknowledging my skills were not up to par with my peers, I didn’t even want to try out for the White Bear Lake High School team. However, my mom talked me into it as she didn’t want to stop being a hockey mom to me. And considering she never missed a game, no matter how sick and tired she was throughout my nine years of hockey up until that point, I figured I owed her one so I decided to lace up my skates one last time.

For the first time in my youth hockey career, I was told I didn’t make the team and it didn’t end in tears. I expected it, I knew it wouldn’t happen, and I thought I was ready to move on.

Then I starting taking off my shoulder pads. After that, my elbow pads. And by the time I got to my skates, I knew that there was no way I was done. The persistent pleas from my mother all summer to not quit hockey finally sunk in, and I decided to keep playing. My mom was very happy, and so was I.

Ultimately, I discovered rather quickly that Junior Gold hockey was not, in fact, a goon league like the stereotype made it out to be. Yes, we shake hands at the beginning of the game. Yes, there are consistent exchanges of swear words and the occasional scrum around the net if the puck was covered and you happened to be within 20 feet of the crease. But there were only about five fights in the entire season, which for a season as long as Junior Gold’s, that’s not bad all things considered.

What Junior Gold did provide plenty of were games. There were about three to four games a week and they were so plentiful that I actually looked forward to practices because they were so rare that we, in the words of my coach, “really didn’t have time for conditioning.” Almost every day at school I always seemed to have a game to look forward to that night.

Coaches Harley Greene (foreground) and Mallard Teal. (Photo courtesy of Michael Shearen Photography)

After a fun sophomore season on White Bear Lake’s Junior Gold B team, I survived the cut the following fall to make my first ‘A’ team. I spent my junior and senior seasons enjoying the honor of playing for legendary White Bear Junior Gold A coach, Mallard Teal, in the final two years of his distinguished 30-plus year career.

Teal and long-time assistant Harley Greene formed a respected coaching tandem my dad had looked forward to me to playing for since I was a mite.

Following a successful junior year in which I finished the season tied for the team lead in goals, I was voted as a captain my senior year. It was my first captaincy since squirts and I helped lead the team to the 2013 Minnesota Hockey State Tournament. After losing the first game, we won our second game and earned a spot in the consolation final.

I will never forget the feeling of putting on my equipment, walking out to the ice, skating around and warming up, all while doing my best not to make eye contact with my misty-eyed mom waving from the stand. The drop of the puck, the intermissions and the final buzzer, all of those lasts remain with me to this day.

But the one I remember most was my mom, dad and my younger brother meeting me on the ice, as I skated off for the final time with tears streaming down my cheeks, for one last picture of my truly final moment of youth hockey.

Leaving the ice for the last time.

I sat in the locker room with my gear on for what seemed like an eternity. It was a quiet, solemn place filled with tears, hugs, and bewilderment. We all couldn’t believe it was over. I finally calmed down enough to start taking my gear off, and as I got my shoulder and elbow pads off, I looked down at my skates and the tears came flowing back.

This is how you should leave the game you love. For me, it could have easily ended three years before that in Bemidji with a smile on my face in the short term but a lifetime of ‘what ifs?’ over the long haul.

Thanks to my parents as well as others who helped convince me to continue playing, it ended in tears but with no regrets.

For more information about Junior Gold, visit MetroHockeyLeague.org.

Feel free to contact me via Twitter, @ZachHalverson if you have any questions about the Junior Gold hockey experience.

The post Junior Gold: A viable option appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

MINNEAPOLIS — Outdoor professional hockey is coming to Minnesota.

The National Hockey League announced details on Wednesday of the NHL Stadium Series game to be played between the Minnesota Wild and the Chicago Blackhawks on February 21, 2016 at TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold, and an assortment of Wild players including Zach Parise were a part of the media event emceed by KARE-11 sports anchor and Minnesota Hockey Magazine columnist Dave Schwartz.

“We are pleased to bring the Coors Light NHL Stadium Series to ‘the State of Hockey’ as a highlight of the Hockey Day in America triple-header on NBC and NBCSN and as part of USA Hockey’s national celebration of our sport, Hockey Weekend Across America,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “With so much great hockey having been played on the University of Minnesota campus, TCF Bank Stadium will serve as an ideal setting for this outdoor renewal of the Wild-Blackhawks rivalry.”

This will be TCF Bank Stadium’s second time hosting an outdoor hockey event. The 2014 Hockey City Classic featured the University of Minnesota women’s and men’s teams battle Minnesota State Mankato and Ohio State respectively. The event drew 45,021 fans to the event and remains the largest crowd to witness a hockey game in Minnesota.

An alumni game will be played the day before February 20 with former Wild and Minnesota North Stars players battling past Chicago Blackhawks greats. Neal Broten, Mike Modano, Andrew Brunette, Brad Bombardir and more will represent the North Stars/Wild. Former North Stars teammates Lou Nanne and Tom Reid will coach the team.

Team Chicago will feature Blackhawks alums such as Eddie Olcyzk, Ed Belfour, Denis Savard, and Jeremy Roenick. The team will be coached by Tony Esposito and Pat Foley.

Complete alumni game rosters are available below.

Priority access for tickets will be given to Minnesota Wild, Chicago Blackhawks, and University of Minnesota football season-ticket holders. Information will be sent to those holders in the coming days while any general public ticket availability information will be released at a later date.

The post Stadium Series details announced appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Apollo wins battle of St. Cloud 4-2, earns trip to state

ST. CLOUD – The Section 6A final’s location was moved down I-94 on Saturday night after both St. Cloud Apollo Eagles and St. Cloud Cathedral won their respective semifinal games. Rather than play it in Alexandria, the two teams would battle in an intercity section championship game at St. Cloud’s Municipal Athletic Complex in front of a standing room only crowd of more than 2,100 fans.

The St. Cloud Apollo Eagles scored three first-period goals and put on a solid defensive effort the rest of the game to earn a 4-2 victory over the defending Section 6A champions St. Cloud Cathedral Crusaders.

After taking an early lead just two minutes into regulation, the Eagles saw their 1-0 lead slip away with a power play goal from Logan Neu to tie the game up at the 7:28 mark of the opening frame. 10 seconds later, Gino Lucia reclaimed Apollo’s lead after sneaking the puck past Cathedral goaltender Zach Fritz.

“You always look to answer right away if you can, obviously, and in hockey there’s opportunities” St. Cloud Apollo coach Pete Matanich said. “But for Gino [Lucia] to come out on a 2-on-1 and make a good shot on Zach [Fritz] and catch him off guard off a little bit, it was exactly what we needed.”

Apollo increased their lead to 3-1 with just 51 seconds remaining in the first period, as freshman Noah Bissett netted a power play goal. It was the eventual game-winning goal, a goal which was hard-earned after Noah Bissett received medical attention twice during the game; once during the second period after taking an elbow to the head and another during the third period when he suffered a brutal open-ice check in front of the penalty box.

“For us it was exciting just to see him take step up in a big role over the course of the last three weeks for us” Matanich said of Bissett. “Obviously he takes a little bit of abuse for it too, but when you’re 5’ 4”, you’re gonna get beat up.”

Leo Lommel capitalized with a power play goal at the 12:41 mark of the second period to cut the lead in half. Lommel’s goal was part of a second period surge for the Crusaders, who more than doubled their shots on goal total from the first period with 10 in the second period alone.

Cathedral’s Zach Fritz played well in the final two periods of his high school career, stopping the remaining 12 shots he faced for total of 16 saves on 19 shots.

An uneventful third period turned eventful as the Crusaders pulled Fritz for the extra attacker. A few late Cathedral opportunities with the 6-on-5 man advantage were thwarted by Eagles goaltender Nick Althaus, who stopped 19 of 21 Crusader shots.

Jason Omann added an empty net goal with 23 seconds left to seal the Eagles’ 4-2 victory and second Section 6A championship in the last three years.

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Featured Image:
Inside the Lee & Rose Warner Coliseum.
(Photo/Vintage MN Hockey.com)

I tried to see as much as I could from the concourse while my parents asked the lady checking tickets if I could go into the arena for just a few seconds. She was puzzled at the question but gave my parents the go-ahead.

I walked up the ramp and up to the front edge of the seating area. I was just tall enough to see over the edge of the wall, but on the tips of my toes I looked over and saw dirt. There were horses, but I really didn’t care. I was too busy picturing a hockey rink in the center of all this.

I scanned my eyes around and looked at the green wooden seats, the box seats in the front rows, and what I thought was the coolest part of the building—the ceiling. The way the ceiling curved from one side of the arena to the other fascinated me and it is still cool for me to look at today.

My dad told me it was time to go and I reluctantly made my way back down the ramp. It would be a long six months, including the month of December which took forever because of Christmas, until I returned to this place; I couldn’t wait.

Every single year since I was under two months old, I have attended hockey games at the Lee & Rose Warner Coliseum on the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. Sometimes my White Bear Lake Bears won, but most of the time they lost. And even though it sucked when the Bears lost, they usually did it in a dramatic way that involved overtime and me watching hockey way past my bedtime.

When the Minnesota State Fair rolled around each year, I always made sure that I would pay a visit to the Coliseum. Up until a few years ago, you had to buy a ticket to get into the seating area. I wasn’t much of a horse or cow show person so, rather than buy a ticket for me to do my annual 30-second viewing, my parents opted to work out a deal with the person checking the tickets.

However, there was one year that the ticket guy didn’t let me go. Screw that guy.

You could say that I developed a sort of love affair with the Coliseum. After all, I can’t think of a time in which I passed by it or saw it out past left field at a St. Paul Saints game and not think of all the great memories I have made there.

(Photo/VintageMinnesotaHockey.com)

For starters, I love the fact that fans in the concourse have to stop and move out of the way when the Zamboni leaves its makeshift garage in the concourse itself. I mean, I can’t think of any other hockey arena that its Zamboni is parked in the concourse. As a kid with an unhealthy obsession with Zamboni’s (a Halverson tradition that continued with my younger brother), this was the coolest thing.

I understand that Lee & Rose Warner have certainly done many great things and they definitely earned their name on this historic building, but this place will always be known as the Dave Wright Coliseum to me. The Coliseum’s acoustics seemed to be designed for Dave’s awesome pipes, and I don’t think high school hockey would be what it is at the Coliseum without Dave reminding fans that the fire marshall isn’t happy and that they need to find someplace other than the stairwell to watch the game. And who doesn’t love the throwback “No Smoking” announcement every year? “There is NOOOOOO SMOKING in the Lee and Rose Warner Coliseum!” Be sure to ask my buddy Eric to do his Dave Wright impression for you sometime. It’s pretty great.

The two teams that have defined the Coliseum as a premier high school hockey venue are White Bear Lake and Hill-Murray. The games, both between these two teams and these teams against other teams have been epic, and it is no wonder why the Coliseum is sold out year after year.

I looked around before the start of the third period of the White Bear Lake vs. Hill-Murray Section 4AA final last year and took it all in as best as I could. I saw the fans lined up along the very top row all the way around the place. I turned around and saw the White Bear Lake student section filled to the brink—sometimes two or three students deep per row. I felt the atmosphere that only a game like this can exude. And it made me realize that those idiots that say “It’s just a game!” are so unbelievably wrong.

My favorite day of the year is not Christmas Day, nor is it my Birthday. My favorite day of the year has always been that Friday night in late February or early March in which I was a part of something greater than me. It was an evening that saw four communities fill a 5000-plus seat arena and root on a bunch of kids who all have the same dream.

Half the kids will throw their gloves, sticks, and helmets in the air and, to the dismay of arena officials, climb on the glass and celebrate with their fans. The other half will sit hunched over on the bench, prone in their crease, or on one knee on the ice in absolute total heartbreak. Some seniors will continue their high school hockey careers, some seniors will see their high school hockey careers end.

It is the ultimate display of the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, even more so than anything you will see in the state tournament. Once you make it to state, you are guaranteed at least two more games with your teammates. Before that, nothing is guaranteed and your season can end at any moment.

When I read the Facebook post from the Minnesota State Fair in December detailing the end of the Lee & Rose Warner Coliseum as a hockey venue, I was heartbroken. Heck, I’m even man enough to admit I shed a few tears. My passion for hockey was, in part, fueled by that building each year and wherever they move this tournament to, that place will never, ever match the atmosphere that the Coliseum created.

I spent a good half hour after everyone left the Coliseum after the section final last year with my friend Chad Olson in a random seat in the empty arena. The Bears lost, which sucked but this really wasn’t just about what happened on the ice. It was about everything about that evening and, as I stared across the 5248 empty seats, I reflected on everything this building has done for me and thousands of hockey players and fans across the state of Minnesota.

As I walked out the doors that night I turned around and said out loud, “See you next year.” I don’t know what I will say as I leave the Coliseum on the 28th of February this year, but it will be tougher than ever before because this time I won’t be saying goodbye for six months.

I will be saying goodbye forever.

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