Youth hockey in Minnesota can be a wonderful yet trying endeavor for any hockey parent. From association fundraisers to far away weekend tournaments and summer hockey camps you know that once you start your son or daughter in the sport and it takes hold of them you are going to be in it for the long haul. While I had only played organized hockey for a brief time as a child I knew of the trials and tribulations of my parents taking me to games and practices at all hours and in all weather, and now being the father of a 7-year-old Mini - Mite 2 in the Rosemount, Minnesota hockey association I steel myself for the long journey ahead. Who knew that on this damp, foggy November morning, our journey into youth hockey would take an unexpected and wonderful turn.
It was Thanksgiving weekend and we were scheduled to practice at Inver Grove Heights since Rosemount was hosting their Peewee and Bantam tournaments. Ordinarily I bring my son to the rink by myself as our precocious 2 year old, Grant, would rather toddle around the rink with my wife in tow than watch what is happening on the ice. But this morning we decided that all of us should come to the rink to watch Stanley and the rest of his team practice. My son plays in the Rosemount Area Hockey Association, located in Rosemount, Minnesota, which is a small-to-medium size, outer ring suburb of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. While not a traditional suburban hockey power, the program seems to be making the right moves to grow and develop players through the association. Rosemount begins with its Initiation Program at the Mini-Mite level, which comprises of kids from the ages of 5-8 years old. Most of this team had played together before in Mini-Mite 1’s the previous year and it was a joy watching how they had all developed and improved in the short time since they had started out. While most of the kids on the team had previous skating and/or hockey ability, there were some who needed a little extra attention while on the ice; and as coaches and parents it was our job to help them along with little coaching but lots of encouragement.
We arrived at the arena running late as usual, and Stanley and I walked down the hallway to the locker rooms while my wife Brenda, and my youngest took to the grandstands. Before too long I had Stanley’s skates laced up, helmet strapped on and I sent him out onto the ice ahead of me. By the time I had my skates tightened and gloves on, the rink was full of Mini-Mite 2’s. Before coming out onto the ice, one of our coaches, Steve Lewandowski was joking around in the locker room telling the rest of us coaches that we were under evaluation, when in fact he had forgotten his skates and was going to have to watch from the stands today. The rest of us joked around that we’d better be on our best behavior lest we be cut from the squad. So onto the rink I went.
Being that it was the Thanksgiving weekend I didn’t quite expect the number of players on the ice or family in the stands that we had show up. I figured that since it was a holiday weekend that there would be a fair amount of kids who would be out of town visiting family, but as I skated around and warmed up it appeared that most everyone must have enjoyed their holiday here. After a few minutes of skating around and stick handling it was time to start our drills. Our Head Coach, Doug Ebner blew the whistle, the kids obediently shot pucks back into the nets and skated down to the far end line for some warm-up drills. During these drills we have the kids practice their strides, their stopping and starting, and making sure they keep “Good Hockey Position,” which is both hands on the stick, knees bent, and head up.
After we do these initial drills then it’s time to break the team into thirds and to move them to different “stations”. Coach Mike Burr and I took our group to the center ice area and started having our kids practice their stopping techniques, while Coach Doug had his group in one end skating around the cones and shooting on the goalie, who this week was his son Wyatt. The far group with Coach Mark Peare was working diligently on how to correctly pass the puck. While we encouraged and exhorted our players about using proper techniques, I slowly realized that something was going on in the lobby.
Soon after starting our drills I looked over to the lobby area, as there seemed to be some sort of commotion happening. Looking over I saw a group players walking into the rink, full gear on, many wearing their helmets, and all wearing dark green hockey pants and socks. They also seemed a size or two larger than your typical youth hockey player. Curious of what was happening I skated over towards the boards, and to my utter amazement I realized who it was.
It was the Minnesota Wild.
I’ve been a hockey fan for as far back as I remember. When my brother went to the University of Minnesota he worked at the ticket office and was occasionally able to get us tickets to watch the Golden Gophers at the old Mariucci Arena. This was in the late 1970’s when Herb Brooks was working magic before the Miracle. I was hooked, and it wouldn’t let go. I’d also catch every Minnesota North Stars game I could, many nights listening to them on the radio in my room as I drifted out to sleep. I can’t remember how many late afternoons were spent at the local rink after school with a few friends, noses running, toes frozen, but never tiring. Each one of us was Neal Broten, Bill Baker, and Mike Ramsey, or a multitude of college or NHL’ers in front of thousands of screaming, cheering fans. When I’d find solitary time on the rink I would forever be Mike Eruzione turning and wristing a hard shot past the Soviet goalie to the delight of a nation, dancing on the ice, with arms raised in jubilation. In my mind I’d run over a running commentary in either Al Michaels or Al Shavers voices; “Up the boards to Broten, across to Christian, fed to the slot to Ancheta…he shoots, he scores!!!” Then I’d gather the puck from out of the goal, skate back the other end of the rink and do it all over again. And again. And again. And again until the lights came on and I’d have to rush home for dinner.
But while I was excited to see the Wild in the building, part of me wasn’t sure to make of it. My first fear was that they were going to kick us off the ice. In fact, once I realized that it was indeed the Wild I skated over to where Brenda and Grant were sitting in the stands and excitedly told them that the Wild were at the rink. Wide-eyed she asked me what they were doing at the rink, and at the time I wasn’t sure. Later on we found out that Xcel Energy Center where they play and practice was being used for a concert that evening and the Wild needed a place to go and Inver Grove Heights was an alternate location for the team. Meanwhile, as the realization of the Wild being in the building began to spread around the families in the stands, and the kids and coaches on the ice I began to wonder if we were going to be able to remain on the ice to finish our practice. I know how disappointed I would be, but my main concern would be how the kids would feel.
I skated up to my son, ”Stanley, guess who’s here?” He looked over to the lobby area, since vacated by the players, “who dad?”
“The Wild just showed up. I don’t know what they’re doing here, maybe we’ll be able to watch them practice before we’re done.” His eyes grew to be big dark saucers; he smiled around his mouthpiece, and skated away to continue his drill.
I found myself looking over to the door that leads from the locker rooms to the ice every few seconds, waiting for a couple of the Wild players to hopefully join us on the ice. I asked Coach Mike if he knew anything about this but he was as much in the dark as the rest of us were. The previous spring after our season was finished, Coach Doug had arranged for our team to skate at Excel Energy Center and Mariucci Arena on the same day, about 3 hours apart. I thought that somehow Doug had pulled a few strings and had the Wild show up as a treat. But he had ho idea of what was going on either. After a few more minutes of drills (which none of us could seem to really concentrate on), I saw the door swing open, and out stepped the Minnesota Wild. And it wasn’t just a few of them, but it was the whole team. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Coach Steve Lewendowski, who had forgotten his skates, had approached Brent Burns (#8) of the Wild and asked him if he and some of the other players would like to join our Mini-Mites on the ice, and he agreed. Instead of sulking about a scheduling mistake, the players piled out of the locker room and joined us all on the ice. They weren’t kicking us off the ice, no; they wanted to share it with us. It was a relief to me, and I wasn’t the only one. Griffin Lanoue, one of our hard charging players, had been worried as well. At first he didn’t know who these guys were, but when he realized that he was staring Dwayne Roloson (#30) in the mask, and recognized Marion Gaborik (#10) skating around he figured that he was going to have a pretty good day. He was right.
So there I was in front of one of the players benches, trying to keep 7-year-olds interested in learning on how use proper edge control when they stop at the cone. Yeah right. Like that’s what was going to happen now. To my surprise, Kyle Wanvig (#27) skated up to me and asked, “So coach, what drill are we running?”
“We’re skating up and stopping at the cones to practice our edges,” I replied.
“Mind if we jump in line with your guys?”
“Sure,” I replied, “why not,” I answered back. Sure enough, players like, Kyle Wanvig, Wes Walz (#37), and Stephane Veilleux (#19) jumped into line, our Mini-Mites looking up at them in disbelief, and we briefly continued our drill. Suddenly I noticed how crisply our players were skating and stopping, fast to start, and hard to stop, an intensity in their faces as they came to stop in front of me. When the Wild came through they also did there best to impress me that they knew the drill, grinning the entire time. Wes Walz looked over to our group of Mini-Mite’s and said in a loud voice, “who wants to skate with me?” All of them let out a resounding roar and followed him in a board-to-board relay as fast as their legs would take them. I noticed my son and how suddenly intense he was, trying to impress, knees bent, both hands on the stick. Good Hockey Position. Just like we were teaching them. Stephane Veilleux approached me and talked to me for a few minutes, asking how old the kids were and which team we were. I commented about the season the Wild were having, and thanked him for coming out to skate with the kids. It was then and there how I realized how surreal this whole thing was.
There we were on a Sunday morning in a suburban ice arena, with 7-year-old kids, and the local professional hockey team sharing the rink. My son has a runny nose while skating after Wes Walz, I had “The Franchise “, Marion Gaborik stickhandling in one end of the rink, with Wild team enforcer Derek Boogaard (#24) who is 6 feet 7 inches tall (without skates), skating next to kids who barely reach the bottom of his hockey pants in the other. Gram Peterson later remarked to his dad, upon looking up at Boogaard, “Dad, he was taller than the Zamboni!” On one end of the rink I saw Wild players curling around the circles to take a shots on goal on Kindergartener Wyatt Ebner, placing well-placed pucks in the middle of his leg pads. When asked by his dad, Coach Doug Ebner, what it was like to make saves on real pro hockey players, Wyatt deadpanned, “Dad, they are shooting them into my legs.” A couple days previous, Wyatt had gone to his first Wild game where they had played the St. Louis Blues, and Pierre – Marc Bouchard (#96) had scored a couple of goals, and now here he was clearing pucks out from behind Wyatt and chatting with him as he stood between the pipes. In the far end, Pascal Dupuis (#11) was giving some instruction on how to zip a pass across and catch a pass softly, our kids absorbing every word. Meanwhile, all of the parents and families of the Mini-Mites who were expecting to be patiently stamping their cold feet and drinking their hot cocoa are staring in the ice in complete disbelief.
After some of this initial shock wore off I realized something, and that was how much of a good time the Wild players were having. The cynical part of me thought that I’d see some dour looks from these adults, some of them multi-millionaires, of having their practice disrupted by a group of 7-year-old beginners. But by the looks on their smiling, laughing faces I knew that it couldn’t be further from the truth. Seeing and hearing them urge the kids along, passing them pucks, chasing them, almost made it seem like they were enjoying the moment even more then our players. All of them, kids and pros were sharing a special time, and all of them seemed to know it. This wasn’t some sort of convoluted publicity stunt thought up by some marketing whiz from the NHL. This was an honest mistake in scheduling that turned into something special. Under these helmeted heads you could sense the joy. In each Wild player you could see that they remembered what it was like to be that 7-year-old, full of wonder and exuberance, before statistics and bonuses seemed important. And in the children’s eyes you could see the joy of know that someday, they could be this player in a Wild sweater, skating in front of thousands of cheering fans.
As was our usual team practice, we broke into scrimmages, again dividing the ice in thirds, with blue on one side, and yellow on the other. We let the Wild figure out where they wanted to play. One of our kids, Nick Peare is a sparkplug of a player, always moving, always skating, and seemingly always scoring. At one point, Wes Walz looked over to me and says, “hey coach we better put a ‘checker’ on this guy.” I laughed and filed that one away to make sure that I told Nick’s father after the skate. Goals were scored, and through it all we laughed and enjoyed the scrimmage. But pretty soon it was time to get off the ice. We gathered our players from each end and congregated at center ice, our players taking a knee, the Wild players taking knees beside and standing behind them. Rather than 2 separate teams on the ice, for 20 short minutes they were all one team. The players faced the stands for a couple of pictures, and the applause of the gathered family and fans, while not necessarily loud, was heartfelt and thankful.
As we gathered in the locker rooms afterwards it sounded like a million voices at once. “Did you see….,” and “Wow, wasn’t it cool…” Each child had his or her own story and wanted everyone to hear it all at the same time. We piled out of the locker room to see if we could catch some practice and maybe a couple of autographs from the players. After the Zamboni was off of the ice, a few of the players took some time to sign whatever pieces of clothing or spare pieces of paper we parents could find in the arena. Dylan Hall had about 6 or 7 autographs on his Rosemount Irish jersey, and my son had his stocking cap signed by goaltender Dwayne Roloson. Andrew Howard didn’t have any paper with him, so he literally took the shirt off his back and had the Wild players sign it while he zipped up his winter coat to keep the chill of the arena out.
We stayed for the rest of the practice session, amazed at the speed, the grace, and the power of the NHL’ers, and part of it was back to business for them. My son and a friend of his from the other Mini – Mite team went back behind the bench to catch some action there. One of the Wild trainers pretended to squirt water at them from behind the Plexiglas. As they were laughing and walking back to us parents, Coach Mike Ramsey scooped a blade full of snow of the ice, lifted it over the glass, and showered our 2 unsuspecting boys. As they looked up surprised, Coach Ramsey had a laugh and skated away back to practice. “Who was that?” asked my son.
“That’s Coach Mike Ramsey,” I answered, “he played for Herb Brooks in the 1980 Olympics.”
“He played for Herbie?”
“Yep, you just got a blade-full of snow from a guy who beat the Soviets and won a gold medal.”
“Cool.”
Yes…very cool.
As practice wound down, and the Wild players cleared the ice, a few of us remained, our children patiently waiting to see if they could get a couple of more autographs. And the players for the Wild didn’t disappoint. They took their time, smiled, signed, and walked out to the team bus that was waiting outside. If anyone on our Mini-Mite team wasn’t a Minnesota Wild fan before, they sure were now.
As we drove home that day we just couldn’t believe what had just occurred. In fact, I couldn’t believe it the next day when the Minneapolis Star-Tribune ran a small little article of the practice in the sports section. Our family left the rink that day walking on a cloud. The memories that we would take away from this day would stay in our minds forever. Someday, Wyatt Ebner would be able to tell his kids how he stopped the Wild shooters again and again, or how Wyatt Solderholm scored a hat trick against Dwayne Roloson. And how my son would be able to tell his kids how Manny Fernandez lightly punched him on his facemask when he smiled and said hello. It’ll be a thousand stories out of a thousand little experiences that were encompassed in those brief 20 minutes on the ice.
For those children on that day, the players and the coaches of the Minnesota Wild did something extraordinary; they inspired without trying. By being everything they were, and nothing they weren’t, they demonstrated to our kids how much they truly love the game. And to us coaches and parents, by showing respect to our kids, they helped to make life long hockey fans. For me, part of a child’s past came true, I can now say I shared the ice with past, present and future Olympic medal winners, Stanley Cup Champions, and NHL All-Stars. For a late starter who’d never made it past Midget “B” I thought I’d made out ok. I know that this life-journey as a hockey dad is going to be filled with challenges. I’m sure some mornings I’ll be sick of sitting in cold arenas while drinking 3rd rate coffee from out of thin paper cups. I’m sure I’ll wince in discomfort every time I get the monthly bill for ice time. But I know that I’ll temper that that by knowing that through it all, hockey dreams can come true.
