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LARSMONT… I was engaging in some hockey talk the other night on the phone with the Fan Jr. and he was telling me about a sports “app” he had on his smart phone called The Score. It is a sports-based site, and in particular he was filling me in about a story he had seen on this site, “The NHL Redux: The California alpha dogs and the real state of hockey” by a fellow named Justin Cuthbert. Hmm, I thought. I had recently heard some guests and commentators on XM Home Ice having a chat about that very topic. Is California the new “State of Hockey”?
Well, I couldn’t conclude anything without reading the piece first, so, with one cocked eyebrow, I gave it a look. The body of the piece generally was to establish the alleged supremacy of the Golden State’s ice hockey prowess based upon what its NHL clubs (Los Angeles Kings, Anaheim Ducks, and San Jose Sharks) had done or accomplished in the recent past. The writer begins by attempting to establish the overall toughness of the teams and their rivalries, somewhat due to the recent skirmish-filled tilt between the Sharks and Ducks.
An early paragraph in the article states, “Discord is usually brought on and aided by championship-caliber competition, but the best rivalries are territorial. When both of these elements come together, you have something special. You have something that transcends the NHL brand. You have hockey in California.” Boy oh boy, sounds almost like a travel brochure or something. Cuthbert goes on to outline the overall ferocity of the contest by giving out the penalty details: nine fighting majors, eight misconducts, and 165 penalty minutes. And this line: “in just the second of 15 tantalizing match-ups between California clubs this season.”
Well, I saw that game, and only about two of the actual “fights” featured anything worth mentioning. Current Shark player and former Minnesota State and Minnesota Wild player Big John Scott tried going with the knucklehead Tim Jackman a couple of times, and TJ appeared to be more interested in self-preservation than in engaging Big John. Former Pengwah Ben Lovejoy knocked the snuff out of former Cheeseweasel Joe Pavelski, Corey Perry engaged someone, and the rest of it was a lot of fluff.
Perhaps the young Cuthbert wasn’t around on February 26, 1981, when the Minnesota NorthStars and the Boston Bruins combined for 84 penalties and 406 penalty minutes in an NHL fight fest. The game took over four hours to finish. And for crying out loud, they weren’t even from the same state!
Cuthbert makes mention of two of their teams winning three of the last eight Stanley Cup tourneys, and I can’t say anything to that other than that’s pretty legit. That’s a respect-getter anywhere ice hockey is spoken. No matter that hardly any native Californians had anything to do with those wins. But if that’s your only basis for staking a claim that you are the new State of Hockey, I would say that your criteria is a bit on the light side.
Minnesota has laid claim to that title because of a number of factors, not simply because a team from here has won a professional title or two. The game has been a part of the fabric and culture of the North Star State for more than a hundred years now. There are records of a team from Two Harbors competing in Senior Men’s Hockey as far back as 1906. I think they were still rinsing dirt off of gold back in Cali in that era. We have had two NHL teams here. We have five NCAA D-1 schools here with very competitive teams, men’s and women’s. We have several D-3 teams, Junior hockey, and the granddaddy of all state high school sports tourneys in the land, the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament.
We have youth hockey programs. We have teams and tournaments coming out of our ears. No state has or is supplying NCAA hockey teams with more players than Minnesota. We have filled Olympic rosters for decades, and national teams as well. We have been a steady and growing supplier of talent to the NHL ever since the anti-American player sentiment was broken decades back, and before that we had a guy from Eveleth set the NHL on its ear with his play between the pipes. Have you not heard of Mr. Zero?
We have had the CHL, the IHL, and the WHA. And since you seem to have a thing for fisticuffs on ice, our WHA club, the Minnesota Fighting Saints, may very well have been the Broad Street Bullies of that league. By God, we can even lay claim to the Hanson brothers! How many Californians were featured on the Charlestown Chiefs? The answer starts with a “Z” and ends with an “O,” that’s how many!
We can boast 200-plus indoor ice arenas and natural ice in most of the state for at least three to four months per winter. Most of the population has ice skated at one time or another. In fact, a majority of our citizens know the basic rules and subtleties of the game at the pro or amateur level, and probably have at least one family member, if not more that, directly involved in the game.
And there is, like, one other little thing. There was this certain game back in 1980; many people call it THE sporting event of the 20th century. It featured MANY Minnesotans, as in one doctor, one coach, and 12 players out of a roster of 20. They were called the Miracle Team, and they beat arguably the best ice hockey team in the history of the game. Ya! We got dat dere gould medal! There wasn’t one guy from Lodi, Lompoc, or LA!
So Justin, my fellow lover of hockey, having the street cred to be called the State of Hockey is based on much, much more than having Big John Scott (we still love him here) throw Timmy the Turtle Jackman to the ice like an empty beer can. It’s more than having two of your cities’ names engraved upon Lord Stanley’s silver chalice. The fact of the matter is that you have a long way to go, brother, a long way. Now get off my lawn and GET BACK IN LINE!! PEACE


Marc Elliott is a sports opinion writer who splits his time between Minnesota and his hometown in Illinois…