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Ryan Carter (No. 22) and fellow former Maverick David Backes await the ceremonial puck drop from current Minnesota State coach Mike Hastings prior to the Hockey Day Minnesota 2022 MSU alumni game. (David Faulkner / SPX Sports)

For the last three years, the longtime NHLer has been knee-deep in Hockey Day Minnesota festivities. With the event in Mankato in 2022, the former Minnesota State Maverick was one of the stars of the weekend, serving as a pseudo-ambassador, playing in the alumni game, broadcasting for Bally Sports North and generally running around like a chicken with his head cut off.

Things didn’t get much easier for him in 2023, with Hockey Day shifting north to his hometown, where the former White Bear Lake Bear is once again one of the starring attractions. 

Because the COVID-19 pandemic delayed Mankato’s day in the spotlight by 12 months, Carter has been essentially living and breathing Hockey Day for the last three years. 

Good thing he doesn’t have any connections in Warroad for 2024 … right?

“Time to take a Hockey Day breath,” Carter said with a chuckle.

The two Hockey Day experiences have been very different but equally satisfying for the affable Carter, who hasn’t turned down a single photo or interview request. 

Former Bears Ryan Carter (L) and Jon Anderson help Bally Sports North’s Marney Gellner reveal White Bear Lake as the 2023 Hockey Day Minnesota site on the ice in Mankato at the conclusion of HDM 2022.

“Last year, that was college alumni, people who supported the program, and lots of people close to the guys you played with,” Carter said. “So I knew a fair amount of people involved with running it [in Mankato].

“Here with this one though … top to bottom, I think I might know every face that comes through this place. It’s good this has finally come to White Bear. We’ve taken a lot of pride in this and I think we can all see why now with how it has turned out.”

Amazingly, Hockey Day Minnesota, celebrating its 17th annual event in 2023, had never ventured to White Bear Lake, which boasts one of the finest traditions in the State of Hockey. 

That’s certainly been the view of many in the community, including former alumni of the White Bear Lake Area High School program, which had so many former players take part in the alumni game, it had to create four teams just to get everybody involved.

“If you were to ask most people, they’d probably say, ‘White Bear hasn’t had it yet,'” Carter said. “It has created a lot of pride in our community, and as much as the other sports have had success, I might be biased, but this is a hockey town. To have the big marquee hockey event here in town is great.”

The last couple of years have provided Carter with a much different look at Hockey Day, who played on the unofficial hockey holiday as a member of the Wild at the tail end of his pro career.

But those Hockey Day experiences were very different, even as a native Minnesotan who was well aware of what this day means to so many.

“You’re kind of in your own world, concentrating on your own game, right?” Carter said. “Then you come out onside and you realize just how big of a deal this is, how big of a production it is and just how many people work so hard to make sure this event goes smoothly. It’s a big deal for these communities.”

Ryan Carter and fellow Bally Sports North personality Audra Martin talk Hockey Day Minnesota from the HDM 2023 Town Square at Polar Lakes Park in White Bear Township.

While Carter’s seemingly non-stop duties the last couple of Hockey Days have resulted in some long days and nights, he said he’ll do everything he can to try and soak in every last minute he can with his friends and family in White Bear Lake.

“I’d like to get things to slow down,” Carter said, “and just get a chance to talk to people and live a little bit more in the moment.

“Last year was such a scramble, trying to be everywhere, every minute. This year, I’ve tried to build in some time to just take it all in, chill and just hang out. It’s been great to catch up with so many people.”

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Literally.

The 91st all-time meeting between these northeast metro schools, separated by just five miles, had another unforgettable chapter written, and not just because this edition was played outside. In a series that has featured countless dramatics and unforgettable endings, this one will go down in the history books forever.

Trailing by a goal in the final minute, the Pioneers used some early celebratory fireworks as motivation to find the tying goal with 46 seconds remaining in regulation before winning 2:06 into the extra session.

Brady Ingebritson is mobbed by teammates celebrating his game winner. (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

Both goals were scored by senior captain Brady Ingebritson, who celebrated his tying and winning exploits by leaping into the glass in front of a jubilant — and stunned — Pioneer student section.

“I’ll be talking about this the rest of my life,” Ingebritson said. “OT, Hockey Day, against White Bear Lake. This is just a dream come true.

“And I love the fireworks.”

Moments before the goal, Hill-Murray coach Bill Lechner called timeout to gather his troops ahead of an offensive zone faceoff and to pull his goalie for the extra attacker. 

Then, rather inexplicably, a fireworks display reminiscent of Fourth of July grand finale, began going off along the near horizon about 200 yards from the ice sheet. 

Did someone hit the button too early? Was there confusion with the horn signifying the end of the timeout? 

Regardless of what happened, it’s set in motion a series of events that will live in infamy in these parts for years. 

With smoke from the display settling in, and fireworks still going off in the distance, officials dropped the puck to resume play in the White Bear Lake defensive zone. Forced into a front-row viewing of the pyrotechnics was Bears sophomore goaltender Leo Gabriel, who corralled a first shot, but couldn’t contain a second, with Ingebritson whipping the puck through the haze and into the cage.

“The fireworks, that got my energy up,” Ingebritson said. “I got together with the guys and said, ‘look at this, they’re already celebrating the win.’

“Our energy was going. The fireworks were great, that helped us.”

It’s not often Lechner, the legendary 69-year-old head coach of the Pioneers, sees something new at a hockey rink. But this certainly qualified.

“We always talk about, ‘play between the glass,’ if we’re focused, they don’t know if they’re playing in front of 10 people or 10,000,” Lechner said. “It’s easier said than done, especially with kids. They’re not pros.”

It’s a consistent message that Lechner preaches, regardless of the setting, the opponent or the time of game, and in this case, that calm paid off.

When things got wild at the end, Hill-Murray looked calm and composed in a setting that was anything but.

“It’s easy to say when you win that you have the perfect formula,” Lechner said. “It’s a little bit early to have everything falling into place, and we still don’t have all the pieces, but we’ll get some guys back and we’ll get closer.”

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The result? Just a hat trick on Hockey Day. No biggie.

“He looked like himself today,” said Hermantown coach Patrick Andrews. “I think he’s back.”

Kohanski’s first goal in the second period against Mahtomedi, ranked No. 4 in Class 1A, put the Hawks up 3-1. He scored early in the third period for another two-goal lead before registering the hat trick with a power-play goal for a 5-3 lead.

Each time the Zephyrs got close, Kohanski made it that much tougher for the opponent in the battle of Class 1A powerhouses. In one afternoon, Kohanski doubled his season goal total.  

“Obviously a difference maker, and we haven’t had him,” Andrews said. “Your whole senior year, you’re watching 90% of it, and then you get to come out on a day like this and have a day. I was really happy for him.”

Being out injured was tough, Kohanski said, adding that you can’t get the time back and he’s trying to make up for it these past few games. Playing without the wrist brace, which Andrews said limited Kohanski’s mobility, came at the right time.

“It felt really good, and I could finally shoot a little bit,” Kohanski said. “Scored a couple goals, so it felt good.”

Kade Kohanski (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

Something else that felt really good for Kohanski and his Hawks teammates, ranked No. 2 in Class 1A? Recording a 6-3 victory over Mahtomedi at Polar Lakes Park. Besides the hat trick from Kohanski, Hermantown’s line of the Kauppinen brothers and Wyatt Carlson scored the other three goals. Joshua Kauppinen put the Hawks up 1-0 only 3 minutes, 13 seconds into the game. Carlson added a late empty-netter, and Matthew Kauppinen scored his second goal of the season (to go with his 15 assists) for a 2-1 lead in the second period.

Since the 2015-16 season, Hermantown is now 8-1 against Mahtomedi, including 7-0 in the regular season. The one loss for the Hawks? The 2020 Class 1A state championship game for Mahtomedi’s first state title.

“They’re obviously a big rival for us,” Matthew Kauppinen said. “Especially when we lost to them in state 2020. It’s always a battle, and they’re a good team, so it’s always fun.”

It was pretty fun for the Kauppinen brothers to play together during such a fun, outdoor event like Hockey Day Minnesota. Both Matthew Kauppinen and coach Andrews talked about the honor of Hermantown being included in the festivities.

This is Hermantown’s second time participating in Hockey Day Minnesota. The town hosted the event in 2010, on a day with freezing rain and snow, a contrast to this year’s event with single-digit temperatures that felt below zero. Andrews was coaching bantams in Hermantown at the time, a group that became the shovel crew for Hockey Day, Andrews said.

The coach used the words “gratifying” and “humbled” to describe Hermantown being chosen to play on Hockey Day this year in White Bear Lake.

“It’s really cool to see how it’s grown in 13 years,” Andrews said. “This is pretty amazing. It’s super special to be a part of. We’re just so honored that they asked us to be a part of it, and to play Mahtomedi is a great treat, too.”

The current roster of Hermantown players were pretty young, though some remember that 2010 Hockey Day. Kohanski was only 5 in 2010 but remembers watching many Hockey Days on TV since then. Matthew Kauppinen recalls skating outside before the big high school game.

“It was an honor to be a part of it,” Matthew Kauppinen said, of the 2023 Hockey Day Minnesota. “And then yesterday, we had practice. We all had a lot of fun. And then to bring it today and win, it was super awesome.

“I’ll remember this for the rest of my life.”

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It also happened to be the first week of hockey season.

Granted the OK by Ponies girls hockey head coach Annie Cashman to take the team’s afternoon practice off, junior Brooke Nelson strolled into St. Croix Valley Rec Center just a few hours after her soccer season had ended ready to start her winter sport.

Cashman describes Nelson as a bit of a throwback. In this day and age of the specialized athlete, Nelson is one of the state’s best soccer players and also excels on the ice. 

And she does it while maintaining a low-maintenance attitude.

“She wants zero attention, zero accolades,” Cashman said. “She just wants to be there for her sisters and go out and play.”

In the midst of an impactful campaign for the ninth-ranked Ponies, Nelson had a bit of a coming out party on Hockey Day, scoring four goals, including a natural hat trick in the first period, in an 8-3 win over host White Bear Lake. 

Four of Nelson’s junior classmates are already committed to Division I schools to play hockey, and if she put her mind to it, Nelson could likely make it five.

Not bad for her “part-time job,” as Cashman describes it.

Brooke Nelson (12) battles a trio of White Bear Lake Bears for puck possession on Hockey Day Minnesota at Polar Lakes Park in White Bear Township. (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

“She’s about as good of an athlete as you’ll come by,” said Ponies senior captain Avery Braunshausen. “She’s excelled in soccer since we were iddy-iddy-biddy. She excels in hockey. Having someone like that on our hockey team, and someone that knows what it’s like to play on a team that makes a state tournament, that knowledge is helpful.”

Nelson insists her soccer skills translate on the ice and make her a better hockey player.

“I think I’m able to see the ice differently than other people,” Nelson said. “In soccer, it’s all about finding space, and I can translate that on the ice, finding the puck in spaces that people don’t really expect you to.”

Nelson is one member of an outstanding junior class where she, admittedly, flies a bit under the radar, something she’s perfectly fine with. 

Josie St. Martin started the month with the U.S. National Team in Sweden and is headed for Ohio State. Addison Finn will play collegiately at Boston University, Josie Lang will attend Providence and Myah Krueger, who did not play at Hockey Day, is committed to St. Cloud State. 

“I’ve played with a lot of these girls since I was really little,”  Nelson said. “So for me, I’m just going out to play with my friends and do our thing.”

With all of that junior talent on its roster, Nelson’s Hockey Day performance showcases exactly what makes the Ponies dangerous as section time approaches.

On any given day, someone new can help carry the load, whether it’s one of their junior superstars, or one of its senior leaders.

“Brooke is a great player and we’re all super proud of her. But it just as easily could have been Josie or that whole junior class,” Braunshausen said. “Our whole team is so talented. Today it was Brooke.

“It’s one of things that makes us so successful and why our team excels, when we’re all using each other’s strengths. One of the things about our team is we all have different strengths and we have lots of moving parts.”

At Hockey Day, Nelson found herself on the business end of a collision early on that left her down on the ice and slow to the bench. 

After laboring back to her teammates and shaking off the trainer, it didn’t take Nelson to exact revenge.

One shift, to be exact.

Her next time on the ice, Nelson scored her first goal, one that gave Stillwater a 2-1 lead, an advantage it wouldn’t relinquish the rest of the way.

“When I scored, I was good,” Nelson said. 

So was Stillwater.

It’s early one-goal deficit was the first time this season the Ponies had trailed in a conference game, but it’s the kind of adversity that could come in handy as sections approaches.

When section play begins early next month, Stillwater will likely start with either Woodbury or East Ridge, two teams that have hung tough in both meetings this season.

Should the Ponies win there, potential semifinal and final foes could include rivals Hill-Murray and Gentry Academy, two of the best girls hockey programs in Minnesota.

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“It started snowing which I thought was really fun to be out playing in the snow,” Cretin-Derham Hall sophomore forward Abby Broz said after the game. “The atmosphere was amazing. Everybody was just so excited, win or loss, that would have been a great game either way to play in. Once in a lifetime.”

For Broz, the event set on top of the park’s primary soccer fields held special meaning for her in that it was a homecoming, of sorts.

“I grew up playing soccer there on those exact fields, all the way up until last year,” Broz said last week. “Being able to go back out there and play on White Bear’s turf, kind of, both soccer and hockey, I think it’s really cool. It’s good for our team, it’s good to be back out in White Bear and I hope everyone is just thankful for this opportunity, because it’s huge to be a part of this.”

Broz was raised in Hugo, where her family still lives, on a pond she grew up skating on with her siblings near the city’s southern border with White Bear Lake. She played her youth hockey in the White Bear Lake Area Hockey Association and recalls her fondest memory as a young Bear came in a tournament in Duluth in her first 12 and under season. “We ended up winning the tournament, which was pretty huge for us because no one expected our little U12 White Bear team to win anything.”

Abby Broz with a Forest Lake backchecker in pursuit at Polar Lakes Park in White Bear Township on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023 (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

As an eighth grader, Broz made the varsity squad at White Bear Lake High School and finished the 2020-21 season with a pair of goals to go with three assists in 19 games for the Bears. But Broz and her parents, Roger and Michelle, felt she needed more from an academics standpoint and was not getting the help she needed at White Bear Lake. That, and another motivation, had the family looking elsewhere for Abby to finish high school. 

“They thought it’d be cool for me to go experience a different place than somewhere I’ve always grown up,” Broz said. “Then we went and we toured (Cretin-Derham Hall) and I loved the school, I loved the team here, I loved, basically, everything about the different dynamics, like all the diversity of people. It was really fast the way it happened. There was like one day, I’m still at White Bear and then the next day I’m like, well, I’m going to Cretin next year.”

She was familiar with Raiders coach Tony Scheid, having played for him as an eighth grader on the 2021 Minnesota Hockey District 2 Girls High Performance 14 team at that level’s Spring Festival in Duluth, so that eased the transition. The move to an SEC rival came as a shock to Broz’s former teammates, who now must face her twice per season, but she still has friends among her relatively new foes.

“Obviously, there’s some tension because I transferred out but I still text a lot of them,” Broz said. “They all support me and I still support them.”

Broz admitted to a small case of FOMO (fear of missing out) when the announcement was made a year ago revealing White Bear Lake as the host of Hockey Day Minnesota in 2023. But the blow was softened when the Raiders were added to the list of participants. 

“I was like, of course, the year I leave, you know, they get to go host,” Broz said. “It’s huge that we got to be a part of it and I’m just glad I kind of get to share it with my old roots because, you know, it’s like old versus new kind of all just mixed into one giant place.”

The Raiders found themselves in an early hole when Forest Lake’s Ava Saxe beat Cretin-Derham Hall goalie Grace Kemp just 40 seconds after the pregame fireworks and the Rangers left the ice after one period clinging to a 1-0 lead. But senior Lily Anderson’s goal 4:36 into the second evened the score and sophomore Hope Hadac’s shorthanded goal with 3:02 remaining in the period gave the Raiders a 2-1 lead after two. 

That’s how it stayed into the late stages of the third before Hadac’s twin sister, Stella, provided Cretin-Derham Hall the cushion it needed at the 13:13 mark before Anfang capped off the scoring with 46 seconds left. 

“We wanted to make a memory and we talked about, win or lose, it’s gonna be a great memory but let’s get the [W] and let’s go for it,” Scheid said. “And they were all in and they were excited. They played with enthusiasm and no fear and they’re just a great group of kids.”

When all was said and done, Broz had nothing but praise for her community’s efforts, responding enthusiastically “It’s sick” when asked about her first impression of the event. 

“We walked in and they had music playing, there’s fires going, everybody’s just like wandering around like lost puppies, just enjoying the moment. No one was kind of paying attention to the game. They were just amazed how everything was set up.

“It’s just so cool out here. It’s so cool to be part of.”

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