It’s been a good first 10 games of the 2024-25 campaign for the Wild. Here are five rules recapping their latest win:

1. The number of the night was seven.

Things started on a good note when St. Paul’s own, and Major League Baseball Hall of Fame catcher, Joe Mauer helped lead the “Let’s Play Hockey!” call alongside his twin daughters. Mauer, sports fans know, wore the jersey number 7 during his entire baseball career as a Minnesota Twin. That retired number seven is now hanging over Target Field.

Perhaps it was fitting when another Minnesota kid, Brock Faber, scored a goal early in the third period to break a 1-1 tie. Faber also wears No. 7.

“There seemed to be a little bit of a screen,” Faber said. “I just tried to put it on net, really.”

But the most eye-popping stats of the night having to do with the number seven came from – who else? – Kirill Kaprizov as he continues his hot start to the season. He scored a pair of goals and added a crafty assist for a three-point night. The tallies bumped his points streak to seven consecutive games. He also has recorded multiple points in seven consecutive games this season, which is a new franchise record.

Oh, and the Wild have seven victories, too.

2. NHL scoring leader – that’s right – Kirill Kaprizov lived up to his “Kirill the thrill” nickname.

Kaprizov’s first goal Friday gave the Wild the lead for good a few minutes into the third period for a 3-2 game. He followed later with an empty-netter.

Kaprizov leads the NHL in scoring with seven goals and 14 assists for 21 points in the season’s first 10 games. It’s unprecedented for the Wild to have such a dominating points producer. A fact not lost on his teammate, and Minnesota native, Faber.

“I’m from Minnesota, you know,” Faber told the media after Friday’s game. “Obviously, you guys all see how good he is on the ice, how well he’s playing. Such a complete game.”

With his latest efforts Friday, Kaprizov is the first player in Wild history to become the fastest to reach 20 points in a season. The game was also the 35th of his career scoring three points, which passes Mikko Koivu for the most in franchise history, according to NHL Stats.

Only three active players have scored at least 21 points through 10 games in a season: Kaprizov, and Edmonton Oilers’ Leon Draisaitl (23 points in 2021-22 and 21 points in 2022-23) and Connor McDavid (22 points in 2022-23 and 2021-22).

Marco Rossi recorded an assist and two shots on goal in Friday’s game against Tampa Bay. (MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

3. Watch out for… multiple pucks?

A bit of an odd sequence about halfway through the game: There were two pucks on the ice during play. Marco Rossi went into the Tampa Bay zone on a breakaway and fired the puck on net. As he skated around the back of the net, he picked up a puck that was sitting behind the cage and put it into the goal on a wraparound. But that wasn’t the puck he had on his stick a few seconds before. The puck was being played up the ice.

It was a confusing moment as some fans in the arena cheered seeing a puck in the goal. Officials went over to the penalty boxes to look at the play. There was no goal awarded on the play, rightfully so.

Wild coach John Hynes hadn’t seen anything like that before.

“Never. Never,” Hynes said. “It’s funny because when the puck went in… I didn’t know what everyone was cheering about, because I was following the real puck.

4. Special teams could haunt. But they didn’t.

All three Tampa Bay goals came with an extra attacker on the ice. The Wild got caught with a too many men penalty late in the first period, which led to the Lightning’s first power-play goal with 45 seconds left in the period. Goalie Filip Gustavsson made a sprawling save initially, but the puck popped right out to Brayden Point for his seventh (there’s that number again) goal of the season and a 1-0 lead at intermission.

The Lightning tied the game in the third period with another power-play goal, going 2-for-4 with the man advantage on the night. Tampa Bay pulled goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy with a few minutes left in regulation and capitalized with the extra skater to make it a 4-3 game with 2 minutes, 26 seconds left in the game.

The Wild power play, meanwhile, went 0-for-2 on Friday.

“I think the positive side of that is, again, we won a game where we didn’t win the special teams battle,” Hynes said. “But our objective every night is to make sure that we do win the special teams battle. Because that, lots of times, could turn a game.”

It was the first time this season that the Wild’s penalty kill surrendered two goals in a game. Coming into the game, the Wild were 5-for-17 on the kill, ranking 28th in the NHL at 70.6%.

5. Jake Guentzel cashed in on the #OneOfUs narrative.

The Woodbury/Hill-Murray product had a nice homecoming visit when he tied the game 2-2 with nine seconds left in a Lightning power play. With 13:37 left in the third period. The first-line left-winger is among the team’s scoring leaders with five goals and seven assists so far this season.

Guentzel now has 15 points (6-9—15) in 14 career games against the Wild.

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But a Minnesota native stole his thunder once the puck dropped.

Arizona center – and another former Wild player – Nick Bjugstad, who grew up playing hockey in Blaine, Minn., scored his second career hat trick in a 6-0 shutout of the Wild.

“It felt good,” Bjugstad said. “It had been a while since I scored. That first one, it felt pretty good.

“Sometimes it just goes in for you. It was one of those nights.”

Nick Bjugstad scored 13 goals in a Wild sweater a couple of seasons ago. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

For the Wild, it was “one of those nights” in a completely different way as Minnesota was shut out on home ice for the second time in less than a week, dropping their fourth consecutive game to make it eight losses in the past nine games. The loss led to a players-only meeting following the game.

As of Saturday’s game, Bjugstad skated in 659 career NHL games. He has one four-point game to his name, plus five other three-point games. His one other hat trick came with the Florida Panthers on March 6, 2018, against the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Bjugstad played in 101 games with the Wild in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons. He scored 13 goals and 30 points wearing his home-state sweater.

He came into Saturday’s game with only six goals this season, his last tally coming Dec. 4 against Washington. But maybe the dam was just about to burst; he recorded eight shots on goal in the Jan. 11 game against Calgary but came up empty other than a single assist.

“You want to create volume,” Bjugstad said. “I’ve been in situations where I’ve been in some droughts. I just tried to stay even-keeled through all that. You just know eventually it’s going to go in.”

When Bjugstad completed his hat trick in the second period (with an assist from another former Wild player, Jason Zucker), hockey fans tossed a few hats onto the ice for the hometown player. There wasn’t much else to cheer about for the Wild faithful, other than the “t-shirt guy” pumping up the crowd with his hype moves.

As one would expect, the hat trick was all the more special for Bjugstad because it came in a building that he referred to as “the mecca” for him as a kid.

“I don’t really know how to put it in words,” Bjugstad said. “Yeah, it’s a fun one to have, and it’s a fun one to have with this team.”

PWHL Minnesota wraps up its first homestand, gets goals from alternate captains
One Minnesota professional hockey team still sits atop the league standings. That’s despite PWHL Minnesota (3-0-0-1) suffering its first loss of the season with a 3-2 overtime defeat at the hands of PWHL New York (2-1-2-0) on Sunday.

Roseville native and alternate captain Lee Stecklein scored her first goal of the season with a point shot that made it through traffic for a 1-0 lead in the first period. Another Twin Cities native, Kelly Pannek, of Plymouth, added to the lead with her first PWHL goal. Pannek’s tally started with her taking the puck into the zone, sliding it past two colliding New York players to get her all alone with the goaltender before firing her shot for a 2-0 lead in the first intermission.

PWHL Minnesota played its first overtime game on Sunday afternoon, against PWHL New York. (MHM Photo / Heather Rule)

“That was the best first period as a whole that we’ve had in the first, now four games,” Pannek, the other alternate captain, told Bally Sports North during the first intermission.

New York pressured more in the next two periods and eventually tied the game with a pair of power-play goals from Alex Carpenter and Jessie Eldridge, who scored with 10:49 remaining in regulation.

Special teams were a huge factor in the game. Minnesota had an early 5-on-3 advantage for nearly a full two minutes. They also had another power play in the third period with the chance to regain their two-goal lead. The puck possession and offensive zone time were there, but the conversion was not.

“It’s just a little lack of finish,” said Minnesota coach Ken Klee. “We’re getting good looks.

“You get enough good looks, you’re going to score goals.”

Minnesota is 0-for-8 on the power play so far this season, standing as the only team that hasn’t cashed in on the power play.

Minnesota had a couple of prime chances to win the game in the 3-on-3 overtime, too. Taylor Heise just missed popping the puck over the goal line right in front. Then Grace Zumwinkle was hauled down on a scoring chance and was awarded a penalty shot. She couldn’t convert with 1:40 left in OT. Then 41 seconds later, the game was over when New York’s Emma Woods fired a shot that deflected high on the blocker side to beat Minnesota goaltender Maddie Rooney.

New York celebrated handing Minnesota its first loss of the season.

“They obviously came out hot,” Woods said. “But I think we just stayed in the game and battled. They’re a fast team and very skilled. We matched that tonight. It felt good to take them out of the win column for a bit.”

There’s still plenty to be excited about with PWHL Minnesota as the season is now a couple of weeks old. Minnesota has also scored first in all four of its games and has yet to allow a first-period goal this season while scoring six goals of their own in the first frame.

Minnesota still remains the only PWHL to win on home ice thus far. Minnesota leads the PWHL in points with 10; it’s three points for a regulation victory, two points for an overtime victory and one point for an overtime loss.

Minnesota opened the season in Boston before playing their last three at Xcel Energy Center. After a record-breaking crowd for a professional women’s hockey game of 13,316 for the home opener, Minnesota drew 4,707 fans for Wednesday night’s game before another solid 7,951 on Sunday afternoon, closely filling up the lower bowl.

“Every game we’ve played here, we’ve had a fantastic crowd,” said Minnesota captain Kendall Coyne Schofield. “Definitely have the best crowd in the league, that’s for sure. They showed up.”

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Minnesotans shine in Hockey Day win over Lightning

St. Paul, Minn. — The twelfth Hockey Day Minnesota ended at Xcel Energy Center with a 5-2 Wild win over the Tampa Bay Lighting with all four of the team’s Minnesota native skaters getting points.

Nate Prosser’s goal in the second period ended up as his second Hockey Day Minnesota game winner, and Kyle Rau earned a secondary assist on the play during his debut with the Wild.

“Nate loves Hockey Day Minnesota, he’s a point a game player on Hockey Day,” Zach Parise said. “I think you see the excitement from the rest of the team when he scores, and that says it all. He’s very well liked guy on our team, great person, and you want to see guys like that do well.”

Prosser got the crowd going early in the game when he stepped up to scrap with the Lightning’s Ryan Callahan following a hit on Tyler Ennis in the neutral zone. It was a play his coach though the team appreciated, got the crowd even more amped up, and kept the team’s adrenaline going.

Parise was the first of the Minnesota natives to get on the board, tallying his first goal of the season late in the second period by getting a stick on a Ryan Suter shot. Parise said his conditioning and energy has been fine since coming back to the lineup, but tonight was the best he felt handling the puck.

Matt Cullen was the fourth Minnesotan on the scoresheet tonight, when he got his 700th point assisting on Marcus Foligno’s third period goal.

The win came off of a bye week for the Wild and it was a night where they seemed to have the most energy despite an NHL trend of teams struggling their first game back.

“Yesterday’s practice, everyone was upbeat, probably the loudest practice as far as guys being talkative, and the same with morning skate today,” Bruce Boudreau said. “It would have been a crime if they didn’t come out with same energy they did the last two days.”

Rau wasn’t one of the players coming in off a bye, but off of a call-up from Iowa and contributed a simple, smart, intelligent and fast game with the big club. The former Gopher was so excited to play in his sixth Hockey Day Minnesota that he couldn’t settle in for his pre-game nap.

Rau didn’t see much ice in the first period as he settled into the speed of the game with a couple wall battles on the breakout early, but saw a regular shift during the second on a line with Charlie Coyle and Joel Eriksson Ek. Boudreau liked the line and thought Rau stepped in, didn’t look out of place and his speed and intelligence really wore off. The coach didn’t have any special messages for him other than asking how many tickets did he have to buy.

Rau had a bunch of high school buddies in the rink for the game that saw him get 6:56 of ice time, two shots, one assist and ending up plus one for the night.

“Good play by Rauser, he played well tonight,” Prosser said. “It’s just cool that this Hockey Day thing has become such a big deal, all the guys kind of yelling about, Minnesota guys money on the board, stuff like that, we all got up there, big win.”

Prosser said he told Rau to just play his game, make plays and skate.

“When your feet are moving, the rest of your game usually follows and he was skating well,” Prosser said.

Rau became the 24th Minnesotan to play for the Wild during the franchise’s history, his brother Chad Rau is one of the others, and they’re the first pair of brothers to play a game for the Wild. Chad’s debut was on Hockey Day Minnesota 2012, when he scored the game winning goal. The Gopher Hockey alum also became the 21st player from the University of Minnesota to play in the NHL this season, tying Michigan for the most in college hockey.

“I think this is my sixth [Hockey Day Minnesota], so it’s kind of cool to be able to say that,” Rau said. “Then to be able to contribute on the scoresheet obviously that’s something that you want to do.”

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Goaltender shines in shutout of Lightning

After a critically acclaimed and sold-out run of performances last spring, the Devan Dubnyk Show made its splashiest appearance of the 2015-16 season Saturday night at the Xcel Energy Center.

Dubnyk, who despite a 7-3-1 record coming into the day, had seen his save percentage slip below .900 this season as the Wild seemed to focus on outscoring opponents.

But Saturday, on the heels of two successive Minnesota losses and missing top offensive force Zach Parise because of injury, the Wild turned to their 6-foot-6 goaltender.

“Definitely, Duby’s best game of the season,” coach Mike Yeo said.

Dubnyk stopped all 31 shots for his second shutout of the season as the Wild held off the Tampa Bay Lightning 1-0 in front of 19,066.

Affable, approachable and willing to banter with the media no matter how he was playing, Dubnyk grinned Saturday night as a contingent of writers approached him following the game.

The first question included a mention of his .896 save percentage to start the night.

“It’s something I tried not to think about too much,” he said, “but as the games go on, it’s something that you want to improve on. You don’t do that by going out and thinking about it, I just tried to find my game, find my patience.”

Bingo!

Dubnyk was challenging Lightning shooters from early in the first period, when the Wild had trouble clearing their zone and Tampa Bay led 13-7 in shots on goal.

“I don’t want to say more aggressive,” Yeo said, “but he was almost attacking some of the shots tonight.”

Tampa Bay outshot Minnesota 31-25, including 11-7 in the third period as the Lightning applied pressure to try to erase a one-goal lead built on a second-period goal by Jared Spurgeon.

Dubnyk’s shutout lowered his goals-against average to 2.41 and raised his save percentage to .907.

“Duby did a great job tonight; it starts with him,” Wild defenseman Ryan Suter noted.

Suter, who played nearly 28 ½ minutes, led a defense that also got shutdown play from its forwards, notably the Mikael Granlund-Jason Pominville-Charlie Coyle line which had Coyle taking the place of Parise.

“They just dug in and played the right way,” Yeo said.

That line and the line of Mikko Koivu, Jason Zucker and Nino Niederreiter were called on often to oppose Tampa Bay sharpshooter Steven Stamkos.

Stamkos had three shots on goal and three more blocked.

“Dubs stepped in and played great,” Pominville said, “but it’s not one guy who’s going to be the defense; everybody’s going to have to chip in.”

Parise, who has an apparent knee injury and is also expected to miss Tuesday night’s home game against the Winnipeg Jets at the least, remains Minnesota’s leading goal-scorer with seven. Consequently, Yeo noted, goals might be a bit more difficult to find in his absence.

“You know what, we’re going to miss him,” Dubnyk said. “There’s no replacing what he brings to what he brings to this team. It’s an opportunity for each guy to kind of step up their role in the lineup and we’re going to have to find ways to win while he’s gone.”

Saturday night, they found the simple way: Turn to Dubnyk.

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Efficient shooting and sound defense key yet another Minnesota home win.

The Wild don’t seem to do a lot wrong these days on home ice.

Heck, they aren’t doing much wrong at all.

After posting 5-0 and 2-0 home wins to begin the season, they ripped four first-period shots past an unrecognizable Evgeni Nabokov and rolled to a 7-2 triumph over the Tampa Bay Lightning Saturday night at the Xcel Energy Center.

Nabokov came into this match with a 16-8-3 all-time record and a 2.09 goals-against record versus Minnesota, but he played less than 18 minutes before Lightning coach Jon Cooper put an end to his nightmarish evening.

Now the Wild – they were 3-0 at home in exhibition play – have won eight of their past nine starts at the X including playoffs and are 34-11-5 at home in games that count since the beginning of the 2013-14 season.

It doesn’t hurt that young goaltender Darcy Kuemper raised his Xcel Energy Center record to 14-3-2.

Before the season began, Wild fans sometimes kibitzed about their team’s offensive talents and defensive prowess but felt obliged to also address what appeared to be an uncertain situation in goal.

Kuemper, one of four Wild netminders that included Niklas Backstrom, Josh Harding and Ilya Bryzgalov last season, did not emerge as the official No. 1 goalie until the day before the opener.

Now he has a 4-1-0 record, a goals-against average of 0.80 and a .966 save percentage.

The 24-year-old from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, seems to have a stranglehold on the starting job, and his play has quieted many of the doubters.

But the 6-foot-5 Kuemper will be the first to tell you he’s getting tons of help.

Indeed.

Minnesota has outshot its first six opponents and on Saturday the Wild defense did not allow a shot on goal when the Lightning had a five-on-three power play for 29 seconds early in the third period.

“Our ‘D’ is great,” winger Thomas Vanek said. “I’ve never seen a group that gaps up as well as they do, and them doing that gives the forwards confidence that, ‘Hey, they’re going to give us a chance to get the puck back,’ so we’ll help them out. It’s a two-way street, and right now it’s going pretty good.”

Coach Mike Yeo says his defensemen carried the day in a 2-0 win over Arizona Thursday night and followed that up well on Saturday, adding, “They’re playing to our expectations.”

The offense, meanwhile, has 19 goals in six games and spread it around Saturday: Six players scored and 13 players picked up at least one point, led by two goals from Jason Zucker.

“We had production from every single line,” said winger Erik Haula, who scored his first goal of the season. “That’s huge.”

Part of that production came courtesy of captain Mikko Koivu, who netted his first point of the season with a goal in the first period.

Koivu said he had been getting chances and wasn’t overly worried about his scoring drought, but paused and admitted, “You’re starting to think — let’s be honest – that you should be scoring.”

Koivu’s left wing, Thomas Vanek, also came into the game without a goal but chipped in his third and fourth assists of the season, one on a pinpoint pass to Jared Spurgeon at the corner of the net for a tap-in.

“I’m thinking, ‘Shoot! Shoot!’” Yeo said. “Then he makes that pass and I’m: ‘Good play.’”

The final shot total was 22-19 and Minnesota has limited its opponents to 133 shots through six games, leading the NHL by yielding an average of 22.2 a game.

That’s nice, Koivu said, but pointed out that “it’s only six games.” Still, he added, all five guys on the ice are playing with confidence, especially defensively.

“We’re trying to be in their face,” noted defenseman Marco Scandella, who recorded a Gordie Howe hat trick with a goal, an assist and a fight against the Lightning. “We have defensemen that can skate and that’s a big advantage for our team.”

And the 18,884 customers, who represented the third consecutive sellout for the Wild, could sit back and enjoy another easy one.

“We’ve played good on the road, too,” Koivu said, “but we didn’t win, and that’s what it’s all about, so yeah, when you do good you get that confidence at home.”

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J.T. Brown surveys the arena where he and his UMD teammates won a national title.
(MHM Photo/Jeff Wegge)

In the college hockey galaxy J.T. Brown was a supernova, exploding in a brilliant burst of light and then, seemingly as quickly, he was gone. But the galactic remnants the former Minnesota-Duluth star left behind could hardly be more memorable. His 84 points (40-44–84) in 81 career, while impressive enough, are eclipsed by his role in leading UMD to its first national title at the 2011 Frozen Four at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.

A freshman at the time, Brown was named the most outstanding player of one of the finest Frozen Fours in recent memory, a feat the former Rosemount, Minn. high school star accomplished , as is often said, right in his own back yard. He made his return to the scene of the highlight of his hockey career on Tuesday, only now as a member of the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning in Tampa’s 2-1 loss to the Minnesota Wild.

Although he expected somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 friends and family members to be on hand and was excited to play in front of them, Brown said he was making an effort to take a “more business as usual” approach.

J.T. Brown with the championship trophy in the locker room.
(Photo by Jordan Doffing)

“You don’t try to put too much into it but, at the same time, you get out there, you sit on the bench, I mean you still have to take it into consideration,” he admitted. “I still remember everything that happened in the national championship game so those things still come back to you.”

Not surprisingly, Brown’s focus after the loss was on his team rather than himself when asked about his first trip home as a professional.

“You obviously want to win the game but, I mean there’s good things to take out of it, we battled hard at the end,” Brown said of the Lightning’s third-period rally coming up short. “There’s obviously things we’d have like to have done better but it was still good to play here.”

Having opened the season playing 13 games for the Syracuse Crunch, Tampa Bay’s American Hockey League affiliate, Brown was recalled on Nov. 12 the day after Lightning star Steven Stamkos broke his right tibia in gruesome fashion:

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After registering just one assist in a five-game stint with the Lightning late in the 2011-12 season, Brown tallied his first NHL goal in just his third game back in the league, beating Coyotes goaltender Mike Smith in a Nov. 16 contest in Glendale, Ariz. as you can see here.

Brown has since scored three more times and added eight assists in 33 games and has become a fixture in the Tampa Bay lineup wearing his familiar sweater No. 23,  the number his father Ted wore as a star running back for North Carolina State in the late 1970s and later throughout his eight-season (1979-86) career with the Minnesota Vikings.

Ted Brown was an All-ACC selection following each of his four seasons with the Wolfpack and capped off his NCAA career as a consensus All-American. His distinguished tenure at NC State earned him an induction into the College Football Hall of Fame in 2013 where he will be officially enshrined this summer with the likes of Vinny Testaverde, Tommy Frazier and Tedy Bruschi.

Vikings fans may or may not remember Brown’s crucial role in, perhaps, the most memorable drive in team history. Ahmad Rashad’s one-handed reception of a 46-yard Tommy Kramer “Hail Mary” pass to beat the Cleveland Browns will be forever remembered in the annals of Vikings lore. But that 12-second, 80-yard NFC-Central-clinching drive on Dec. 14, 1980 doesn’t happen without Brown’s 34-yard gain the previous play courtesy of a Joe Senser lateral.

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It would seem natural that the man’s son would grow up pursuing a football career. While J.T. Brown played some football as a youth, it became apparent it was on the ice, not the gridiron, where his passion lied and his eighth-grade football season was his last.

J.T. said it just came down to wanting to focus his full attention on pursuing a hockey career, a decision his father had no trouble with. “I always told all my kids to do what they want to do and what they feel like they love to do and I’d support them,” Ted Brown said. “That’s an awful lot of pressure for a young kid to have a dad who has succeeded and for that kid to follow in his footsteps.”

In a way, Ted saw the writing on the wall when he first moved to Minnesota, well before J.T. came along, when he saw the sheer number of hockey-playing kids in the area. He said had a feeling, once J.T. arrived, hockey might be something his son would take up and, of course excel at.

“Being in Minnesota, everyone in my neighborhood played hockey so I wasn’t going to be the one person who wasn’t playing,” J.T. said, acknowledging the self-imposed peer pressure which sparked his hockey career. “It was just me hanging out with all my friends and, whether it was roller hockey or going out and skating on the ponds, I just started skating and getting into teams with local guys in my neighborhood.”

Father and son grew in the game together, each learning the intricacies of the sport in progression. Ted said he learned a lot about hockey from being around J.T. and being around the rink with his coaches as well as traveling the country and into Canada with the elite teams his son was selected to growing up.

J.T. says his dad’s hockey knowledge is now to the point where you’d never know he wasn’t raised in the sport.  On the other hand, Ted’s unfamiliarity with the sport had its advantages growing up, according to his son.

“That was one thing that was good for me, too, about hockey growing up is that he always said he couldn’t correct me,” J.T. said. “He just told me to work on how hard I’d compete and that’s the only thing you can control. So since he didn’t know the game that well he couldn’t actually criticize me too much or give me constructive criticism.”

Although Ted Brown was limited in what he could offer in terms of hockey instruction, his influence on his son’s character and playing style is immeasurable.

Drawing from his own experiences, Ted says he has preached to J.T. about the responsibility he has as an athlete, not only to himself, but to his team as well to consistently work hard. Play hard, play smart and play together is a Brown family mantra which has succeeded in getting both father and son to the highest level of their respective sports.

“He can’t dictate the outcome of someone else but he can dictate how much effort he puts into what he’s doing,” he said. “Play smart is not getting yourself caught up in things that may be said on a hockey rink that has been said to him and not letting those things upset you.  As for play together, hockey is a team sport and you’ve got other players on your team; try to make other members of your team, or on your line, be better. No matter how good you are, there’s some other people around there that are helping you to become great.”

Brown’s illustrious high school career at Rosemount included 140 points (75-65–140) over three years and culminated with a senior year in which he led the Irish to a 20-win season. The icing on the cake came when Brown was distinguished with the honor of becoming the first African-American to be nominated as a Mr. Hockey Finalist in Minnesota.

Ted Brown, a 19-year veteran of of the RamseyCount Correction Department as a juvenile probation officer, sees J.T. as a role model to young African-Americans who might not otherwise consider taking up the sport.

“There’s not a lot of African-American kids playing hockey, I know they have a few NHL players, but hopefully he can become a pioneer to help other kids be interested in playing,” Ted said. “I’m happy for him that he’s gotten to this point where he is a professional hockey player and he can help other kids that might want to become a hockey player and show them that anything is possible if you believe in what you want to do.”

J.T. Brown takes on current New York Rangers forward Carl Hagelin in the 2011 NCAA title game.
(Photo by Jordan Doffing)

Following UMD’s national title season, J.T. returned as a sophomore and helped lead the Bulldogs to the brink of the Frozen Four once again. But a 4-0 loss to Boston College in the Northeast Regional final shattered their dreams of a championship repeat leaving Brown with a difficult decision to make.

As an undrafted player, Brown was free to sign with any NHL organization which pursued him and, after his exceptional two-year stint in Duluth, suitors for his professional services were aplenty. The decision wasn’t easy for him but three days after the B.C. loss Brown signed a contract with the Lightning.

“There’s chances that you could get injured, obviously, playing again in college and you never know what’s going to happen the next year,” Brown said of his decision-making process. “I think, also, winning a national championship helped make it a little bit easier because that’s one of your main goals when you come into college is to try to win a national championship and we had done that. At that point, we kind of decided that Tampa was the right fit and it’s been a good fit so far.”

Brown feels like he is adjusting well to NHL level but he knows there is much more work to be done.

“You’re still learning things every day, it’s still new and I’ve only played so many games and the only way you’re going to get accustomed to playing this style and the way the NHL is being played is to continue to play games.”

Tampa Bay assistant coach George Gwozdecky, who now coaches Brown as opposed to game-planning to stop him as he did as the long-time coach of Denver University, sees an impressive present and an even brighter future for his former foe.

“He is a guy that works hard every day, always has a smile on his face, he’s got a great personality and fits in great with the team,” Gwozdecky said. “He’s a very team-oriented guy and you can see why a team like [Minnesota-Duluth] did well with him as one of their leaders because of his zest for the game and the skill set that he brings.”

While Brown’s adjustment to the NHL remains a work in progress, all indications would indicate the transition from Minnesota resident to Florida resident is complete.

“When you’re still wearing shorts to the rink right now, it’s definitely something that you take advantage of,” Brown said. “It only took two and a half short months to not really like the cold weather anymore.”

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