Henry Boucha has been labeled as the most electrifying player in Minnesota hockey history.

Also skilled in football and baseball, Boucha starred for five years at both defense and center for the Warroad High School hockey team. A tall, powerfully-built native American, an Ojibwe, Boucha led Warroad to the 1969 state tournament, where he was injured in an emotionally-charged 5-4 overtime final loss to Edina—one of the all-time classic games in “tourney” history.

“He was the most colorful hockey player ever to come out of Northern Minnesota,” said Warroad coaching legend and fellow Hall of Fame enshrinee Cal Marvin. “When he played, it was so special that he brought people out of the old folks home to come and watch him play. He did it all. He was one of a kind”

Boucha went on to play for the 1972 silver medal winning U.S. Olympic team, and at just 19, he signed with the Detroit Red Wings.

After two years in the Motor City, Boucha “came home” when the Minnesota North Stars acquired him. But his career was tragically curtailed in his third NHL season when he suffered an eye injury on Jan. 4, 1975 against Boston.

He would come back to play for the WHA’s Minnesota Fighting Saints in 1976, and then again in 1977 with the Scouts and Rockies of the NHL, but couldn’t overcome his eye injury. He retired from the game after that at just the age of 24.

Boucha would go on to play for his hometown Warroad Lakers, and then give back by donating much of his time to helping advance various Native American causes.

Note to readers: This article was reprinted from a full-featured Minnesota Hockey Magazine digital issue.  Like what you see?  Get a back issue or subscribe today on the PressPad mobile app platform for Minnesota Hockey Magazine via Apple Store, Google Play, and Kindle/Amazon.  Don’t miss out!  Get all 8 issues for this upcoming season sent directly to your email box, buy a single issue or pick up the printed version at many local stores near you.  Thanks.  MHM Staff

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“Simple move” baffles Wings, helps lift Wild over Detroit

St. Paul — Charlie Coyle downplayed his highlight-worthy goal in Monday’s Wild game versus the Detroit Red Wings. Well, after he joked about the move he made.

“Yeah, that was (Pavel) Datsyuk’s,” Coyle said, with a chuckle. “No, no.

“It’s just something that happened. Just a simple move, I guess. It just went in.”

And it was a beauty.

Coyle broke into the zone and grabbed a passed from Nino Niederreiter in the first period. He stick handled the puck around defender Brendan Smith in the slot. All that was left was to put the puck past Detroit netminder Petr Mrazek for a 1-0 Wild lead at 8:18 of the first period.

That lead held up for most of the game until a late flourish made it an eventual 3-1 victory for the Wild (19-10-6). They finish the homestand 2-2-0.

“We can’t classify it a good one but certainly a win tonight,” Coach Mike Yeo said. “Saw a lot more pace to our game tonight.”

For Coyle, he said it was a good team effort.

“We were solid,” he said. “Too bad some more didn’t go in for us.”

He and his teammates tried, though, outshooting Detroit 35-29. About halfway through the game in the second, Coyle executed a pokecheck right in front of the Red Wings net. It was a play that led to more offensive zone time and a scoring chance off Niederreiter’s stick.

Mikko Koivu, who added goals No. 9 and 10 (empty net) late in the third period, said the increased chances were a good sign.

“For sure it’s frustrating when you’re not scoring, but at the same time … usually that gets players going,” Koivu said.

The first-period tally was Coyle’s ninth of the season and third in the last five games. He has five points in the last six games and 18 for the season. He’s three points shy of the 100-mark for his career.

Coyle is ending the month of December better than he started it, going nine games without a goal before scoring Dec. 21 against Dallas and the following night against Montreal. He’s tied with Jason Zucker for third on the team in goals scored.

Niederreiter got the assist on Coyle’s goal and finished the night with four shots on goal, giving him six points in the last seven games.

Talking about the Coyle-Niederreiter pair, Yeo said it was unfortunate that they were on the ice for Detroit’s goal, off Datsyuk’s stick with less than two minutes left in the third.

Still, Yeo said Coyle and Niederreiter keep going and “keep bringing more.”

“Obviously we need them to produce,” Yeo said. “We need them to be contributors to us both offensively and defensively, and they’ve been doing that.”

‘Duby stepped up’

Darcy Kuemper was supposed to get the start in goal for the injured Devan Dubnyk, but Kuemper was scratched with an upper body injury. Dubnyk started and got the win Monday, while Niklas Backstrom was the back-up goalie.

Dubnyk received six stitches in his right arm after leaving Sunday’s practice. He found out Monday morning that he was getting the nod in net. He took a couple good shots off the blocker Monday morning that stung, but as soon as you get into a game, you don’t think about it, he said.

“It felt a lot better tonight than I expected it to,” Dubnyk said.

Teammate Coyle called him “a gamer,” as he came back to play after his injury.

“That’s Dubs,” Coyle said. “That’s what we expect from him. Comes up huge no matter what’s going on with him.”

Routine saves aren’t routine with a team like Detroit, according to Yeo, but he said Dubnyk played well.

“Duby stepped up,” Yeo said. “That’s a team that’s always going to challenge you. They throw pucks at the net from everywhere.”

The post Coyle comes through appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Parise scores twice but Minnesota suffers second straight home loss

St. Paul – Officially, no one on the Wild is particularly worried.

Unofficially, a small-but-noticeable level of defensiveness emerged among some of the team’s key personnel following Minnesota’s 3-2 shootout loss to the Detroit Red Wings in front of 19,245 Saturday night at the Xcel Energy Center.

It was the Wild’s second consecutive loss after a five-game win streak, and for the second consecutive game, the Wild sputtered early.

Zach Parise scored both Minnesota goals and was one player whose drive and push never wavered, even though some of his teammates seemed to have difficulty getting going.

“We just didn’t play well,” Parise said of the early going. “They were better than us, I thought, for the first two periods.”

Nevertheless, Parise said the Wild’s strong third period turned things around.

“I feel like we should have won the game,” he said, “so it’s disappointing to get a point and not get a second one.”

Asked if he’s concerned, Parise shook his head.

“Well, we play good teams,” he said. “We’re playing other teams that are desperately trying to get in the playoffs, so we’re not going to walk all over every team. … They’ve got good players, too. They want to win, also. You’ve gotta give the other teams a little credit, sometimes.”

Detroit got goals from Riley Sheahan and Gustav Nyquist plus a deciding tally fron Darren Helm in the eighth round of the shootout to move into a tie with Boston for third place in the Atlantic Division.

It did not help the Wild’s cause that captain Mikko Koivu sat out with a scratched retina. Coach Mike Yeo said Koivu’s eye should be recovered enough for him to participate when the Wild play host to the Winnipeg Jets Monday night.

The one point gave the Wild 96 this season and kept them atop the Western Conference wild-card race with four games remaining.

“Any point you get right now is big,” Yeo said.

Still, Yeo’s team has lost two in a row for the first time since goaltender Devan Dubnyk arrived via trade on Jan. 14.

Is that worrisome?

“I’m not worried,” Yeo stated. “It’s not like we were that bad; let’s not paint that picture. We played a pretty good hockey team tonight and we knew they were going to play their best game.”

Yeo talked about “tension” in the media room during his postgame appearance, and disagreed when hints from both Parise and Ryan Suter that the Wild power play needs extra work in practice were relayed to him.

For their part, neither Paris nor Suter were particularly willing to delve deeply into the power play, on which the Wild went 1 for 6 and hardly had a chance when they drew the final man-advantage with just 2:31 remaining in the third period.

Asked about that, Parise hesitated, then said, “It’s not going to do any good for me to say anything. It wasn’t good enough. We’ve got to practice it.”

Suter said Detroit gave the Wild problems when they tried to break into the zone on the power play.

“It’s been a struggle all year,” he added. “We have to get it going. It doesn’t do any good to talk about the past chances; I think we have to focus moving forward. I mean, it doesn’t do any good to sit here and question all these different plays, but we have to practice more and we have to be better.”

Asked specifically if the Wild aren’t working hard enough on their power play, Suter fell silent, then said, “We’ll leave it at that.”

Yeo bristled at the question.

“We come in here and answer 10 questions about the power play,” he said. “We were down a goal and we got a point. We’re not happy getting one point in games here, but we played a good hockey team, they played a great game and we lost in a shootout. Would we be getting the same questions if we scored one more goal in the shootout? I don’t know.”

Yes, the Wild have “spent considerable time” on the power play in practice, Yeo noted.

After mentioning his perception of tension in questions from the media, Yeo said: “I understand that we lost the game tonight in a shootout. It’s disappointing to only get one point. But would we have a different tone right now if we scored (another) goal in that shootout?”

No one could disagree with that, and no one can disagree that his Wild team has rescued a season that appeared headed for disaster two months ago and is on the brink of clinching a spot in the playoffs.

Dubnyk, who stopped 20 of 22 shots and knocked away Helm’s shootout attempt with the back of his leg so convincingly that a review was necessary to confirm the goal, waved off any sense of impending trouble.

“We’re fine,” he said. “We’ve been playing at a really high level for a long time, and you know, that’s going to happen some times. It’s a long season. It’s strange for us because we’ve been playing so well. It’s not how we want to play, and I don’t think anybody in here is worried about that being the way that we’re going to play.

“We know how we can play and what we need to do.”

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Coyle penalty shot goal goes for naught in afternoon loss to Detroit.

SAINT PAUL—Charlie Coyle made a strong case to be included among the Minnesota Wild’s top-three shootout lineup in the Wild’s matinee game against Detroit on Saturday and the jury of 18,000 ruled in his favor.

Coyle was awarded a penalty shot after he was hauled down by Detroit’s Johan Franzen just 15 seconds into the third period. The second-year forward out of Boston University shrugged off a wobbly puck and beat fellow Hockey East alum Jimmy Howard (Maine) with a great backhand-to-forehand move to tie the game 2-2.

But another former Black Bear, Gustav Nyquist, restored Detroit’s lead with his 21st goal of the year just over five minutes later and the Red Wings made it stand up as the game winner in a 3-2 victory over the Wild.

Nyquist crossed the Minnesota blue line near the right wing boards before cutting across and releasing a shot from the left circle which hit Wild defenseman Jared Spurgeon’s leg before ringing off the right post and in behind Minnesota goaltender Darcy Keumper.

“We’ve been playing good but it’s just a break here and a break that’s kind of breaking us right now,” said Keumper, who finished with 27 saves in his second career start against the Red Wings. “But there’s no time to feel sorry for ourselves, we’ve just got to keep sticking to what works.”

The loss marks just the third time in 15 games Minnesota hasn’t earned at least one point and snaps a 10-game streak to that effect at Xcel Energy Center.

Coyle goal came on his first career penalty shot and the Wild’s first attempt of the season. The last Wild player to score a penalty shot goal was Matt Cullen who performed the feat on Dec. 11, 2001 against the Phoenix Coyotes.

The Wild and Wings traded power-play goals in a fairly physical, tight-checking first period, each team scoring on its lone shot with the man advantage.. Mikko Koivu got Minnesota on the board first, one-timing a Ryan Suter pass from the top of the left circle for his ninth of the year and 14th point in his past 15 games (2-12–14).

Detroit fired back five minutes later and just eight seconds after Suter snapped his stick slashing Red Wings’ forward Darren Helm. David Legwand’s shot caromed off the left post to the bottom of the right circle to Brendan Smith whose backhand shot slipped between Darcy Keumper’s left skate and the goal post.

Minnesota nearly made it 2-1 near the three-minute mark of the second period when Matt Cooke changed course with the puck behind the Detroit net and walked to the right post. Cooke slid a cross-crease pass to Nino Niederreiter who whiffed on his attempt with nothing but net in front of him.

Legwand, however did bury his opportunity later in the period, the Red Wings’ second power-play goal of the day at 17:48. Riley Sheahan received a pass from Smith near the left post of the Minnesota net and patiently protected the puck before feeding a backhand pass to a net-crashing Legwand for his 12th of the season.

“It’s up to us to win games here, but we’re in the middle of a tough stretch,” Yeo said. “We have to grind through it, we have find a way to win tomorrow.”

“It’s coming down to the wire and we’ve got to make the most of every game right now,” Coyle said. “We can’t take any more games off, any more periods off, any more shifts off, we’ve got to come ready to play every night and play a full 60 [minutes] and take care of business.”

The Wild and Red Wings complete their whirlwind season series in just over 24 hours with a 6:30 pm rematch at Joe Louis Arena on Sunday, a game which will air on NBC Sports Network.

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Last season, a season shortened by the National Hockey League lockout, the Minnesota Wild had to win their last game of the season to secure themselves the eighth seed in the Western Conference and clinch a spot in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Through 71 games this season, the Wild (36-24-11) have 83 points and are in playoff position with 11 games left on their schedule with eight points separating them from the Dallas Stars (32-26-11), who have 75 points with 13 games left to play.

Wild coach Mike Yeo said that there is a “big time” difference in the way he was coaching last year, just trying to make the playoffs, and this season, as they are already in playoff position.

“We’re trying to build for something,” Yeo said. “We don’t want to just make the playoffs, we want to do something in the playoffs.”

With the eighth seed in last year’s playoffs, the Wild were defeated in five games by the eventual Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks.

“We’re not satisfied with just being in a playoff position,” Yeo said. “We want to be a team, every night, that goes out and dictates the game, controls the play and we want to carry that momentum in the playoffs … We have to work to build that for sure.”

Wild captain Mikko Koivu said that they don’t look too far past the next game on the schedule.

“You’ve got to go game-by-game,” Koivu said after a 3-2 loss to the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday. “You can’t look beyond it, you can’t look too far ahead. You’ve got to play the right way and get ready for the next one.”

Koivu has 41 points (nine goals, 32 assists) this season in 54 games played.

So far in the month of March, the Wild have dropped seven of 10 games, but have gotten at least one point in the standings in five games. Wild goaltender Darcy Kuemper, who stopped 27-of-30 Detroit shots on Saturday, said he thinks the atmosphere in the locker room is pretty good.

“We could easily be getting down on ourselves,” Kuemper said. “We’ve been playing good but it’s just a break here, a break there. It’s kind of breaking us right now but no time to feel sorry for ourselves. We’ve just got to keep sticking to what works.”

Kuemper has a .922 save percentage and allows 2.26 goals per game on average with a 12-6-4 record for the Wild.

The post Getting In Is Not Enough appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.