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| Aaron Dell Gets First AHL Call Up - Photo by SceneByKimberly |
- Aaron Dell has received his first AHL call up to the Houston Aeros. Heard he had to drive half way to Tulsa as the team left all of the equipment in Tulsa after the game on Sunday. Casey (equipment manager) met him half way and then Aaron was off to Houston. Aaron should be back for the games this weekend.
- Also heard Houston is pleased with the play of Ryley Grantham and he will remain with the club for a while longer.
- Finally, heard negotiations with a former Americans player are in the final stages so could hear something about this in the near future.
- Want to read a great story about a high school hockey rivalry. Take a look at this story about Roseau and Warroad Minnesota. Roseau is where Brian & Wendy McMillin went to high school. This story was written by John Rosengren of SB Nation.
Late on a January afternoon, a yellow school bus
heads east on Minnesota State Route 11, the single artery just beneath
the Canadian border that connects Roseau and Warroad, a place that the
Ojibwe used to call
Ka-beck-a-nung or the “Trail of War,” for
the blood spilled there with the Sioux. It has since become Hockeytown,
and the only battles are waged on ice between the Roseau Rams and
Warroad Warriors, one of the greatest rivalries in sport.
The bus carries the latest incarnation of the Roseau varsity, 20 boys
becoming men and bearing the tradition of their town. Ryan Anderson,
the goalie they call Bob, sits by himself gazing absently at the passing
trees and wheat fields skimmed with snow. He visualizes himself inside
the Warroad rink, catching a shot with his glove, turning another away
with his pad. He feels the confidence that comes with those saves, but
it’s harder to block out the thoughts that came last night, when he had
lain awake knowing that not just his team but his people counted on him.
The road bends and in the falling darkness Bob can make out the pale
blue Warroad water tower painted with crossed hockey sticks. At the
corner of Cedar and Elk, Bob and his teammates grab their equipment bags
and head inside the Warroad rink.
Two blocks south, the Warroad goalie, Justin King, decides it’s time.
He’s spent the past two hours after school chilling, eating pasta his
mom prepared, watching a Law and Order rerun and trying not to think
about that night, but finding it impossible to keep the biggest game of
his life at bay. Anderson. Yon. Strand. Okeson. Bjugson. Halstensgard.
He’s played against these guys since kindergarten. They faced off five,
six times a year, the closest competition for miles. Now, his senior
year, this will be the last time they meet in the Gardens.
The sickness that’s swept through the team this week—five different
players have missed practice—has settled on Justin. He can feel it in
his throat. He’s running a fever. He’s exhausted. On another day, he
might just crawl back into bed. He has played every minute—625-plus—of
his team’s first 13 games (10 of them wins, one tie)—and there’s no way
he won’t play every one tonight. The goalie with short blond hair combed
straight forward hops into his 2001 Ford Taurus and heads to the rink.
* * *
Warroad has earned its moniker. The town of 1,781 on Lake of the
Woods, the body of water that fills most of the northernmost nib of
Minnesota, has two stoplights, two Holiday gas stations along Route 11, a
Chippewa casino, one grocery store, one major employer (Marvin Windows
& Doors) and an international hockey reputation. Since 1946,
National and Olympic teams have traveled to this remote outpost to play
the Lakers, an elite men’s team that sometimes sent them away humbled.
The Christian Brothers, Billy and Roger, after winning gold in the 1960
Olympics, founded their eponymous hockey stick company in their
hometown, though it has since stopped production. Warroad High, with
only 318 students grades 9-12, has won four state titles in the past 20
years.
Roseau, the town next door, rivals Warroad in hockey tradition.
Bigger, with 2,633 residents, Roseau has the edge in entertainment
options with both a movie theater and a bowling alley. It also has a
single major employer, the Polaris snowmobile and ATV plant. Roseau
High, with 374 students, has appeared in Minnesota’s fabled state
tournament more times than any other school (32) and won seven titles.
When someone here says that hockey is life, they mean just that
Over the past century, the frozen rivers, outdoor rinks and early
indoor arenas in these two hockey hamlets have produced more Division I
hockey players per capita than any other Minnesota municipality. Roseau
alone has sent 71 players to the elite collegiate ranks. Dozens have
gone on to play in the Olympics and professionally. Currently, T. J.
Oshie, who led the Warriors to a pair of state championships, plays for
the St. Louis Blues while Roseau’s Dustin Byfuglien and Aaron Ness play
for the Jets and Islanders, respectively.
Hockey runs in the bloodlines. Scan either team’s varsity roster and
you’ll spot familiar names—Yon, Nelson, Christian, Vatnsdal, Anderson,
King—whose brothers, fathers, uncles and grandfathers played. The game
provides continuity among the generations and forms the core of the
community. “If you’re talking about anything on Main Street in Roseau in
the summer, it’s probably when the hockey season will start,” says Rube
Bjorkman, who led the Rams to their first state title in 1946 and won
two Olympic silver medals. “It’s the intangible thing that keeps the
community together.”
The hockey arena, not the church or the town square or the shopping
mall, is the heart of the community, the center of its social and
spiritual life. “The rink is the hub of all the action,” says Jay
Hardwick, the Warriors coach. “There’s always something going on there.
If you ever need to talk to somebody, you more than likely run into them
at the rink.”
That’s where they raise their children. The doors to the rinks in
both towns are never locked. Kids can come skate any time, and they do.
Indeed, both towns with the purity of their hockey traditions seem to be
a throwback to simpler days before money and marketing and
performance-enhancing drugs soiled sports. Here, in these two towns, a
simple game played on ice provides a singular purpose. When someone here
says that
hockey is life, they mean just that.
* * *
When Ryan Anderson, aka Bob, the Roseau netminder, walks into the
Gardens, the Warroad tradition gets in his face. Before the second set
of doors, two trophy cases overflow with the hardware of the town’s
success. Posters, plaques and laminated newspaper clippings paying
tribute to Warroad’s prowess decorate the lobby walls. To the right,
five glass displays honor the town’s five U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame
inductees: Roger, Billy and Dave Christian, Henry Boucha and Cal Marvin.
Straight ahead, blown-up photos of Warroad’s seven Olympians: Gordon
Christian, Roger Christian, Billy Christian, Dave Christian, Henry
Boucha, Dan McKinnon and Gigi Marvin.
The moon-faced boy with short brown hair walks by all this without
paying it any attention, but he knows it’s there, the way you sense
someone staring at you, the Warroad tradition watching over him. They
have all of this back home, the photos of past greats, seven Olympians,
10 NHL players and three of their own Hall of Famers (Neal Broten, Aaron
Broten and Oscar Almquist, the Rams coach from 1941-1967) but it’s
different walking into someone else’s home.
Like most kids in Roseau, Bob started skating before he started
school. His father, Earl Anderson, who starred for Roseau High and
played for the Boston Bruins and Detroit Red Wings, introduced his son
to hockey the way his father, who had played for the Roseau Cloverleafs,
the senior men’s team before the high school had one, introduced him to
the game.
Bob first played goalie in Mites, for kids 8 and under, and liked it,
though he still skated out some games. Earl, who’s still trim more than
35 years since his professional playing days ended, was not sure goalie
was a good spot for his son, what with the pressure, but he was willing
to let Bob try it. Not Bob’s mom Mary. “You know how many times I tried
to talk him out of it?” she says. “He was too young to understand
you’ve got to be very fortunate or you’re going to be sitting on the
bench.”
She knew. Goaltending, like hockey, ran in the family. Two of her
brothers had played goalie in high school, the younger one for the Rams
after the Pelowski family moved to Roseau.
Earl coached Bob in Peewees and Bantams but wasn’t able to give him
any specific pointers about his position. “He was a right winger,” Bob
deadpans.
Bob is a smart kid, an honor roll student whose favorite subject is
science. College is a given. Hockey is not. There have been no
courtships from any D-I or United States Hockey League (USHL) coaches,
the nation’s top junior league. “He’s smart and will get more out of
life from college than playing hockey,” Earl says.
Bob’s as laid back as he is smart. Take his nickname. In fourth
grade, his team had three Ryans, so Tanner Okeson, now a senior
defenseman, dubbed him “Bob.” Ryan went with it. He has BOB written on
the back of his mask. His mom still calls him Ryan but has him as Bob in
her cell phone. “When I’m mad at him, I call him Robert,” Earl jokes.
Bob’s round face looks to be years before he’ll need to shave. It’s
hard to read any emotion in his demeanor. But he has the skills: a quick
glove and excellent lateral movement. He played only two varsity games
as a sophomore but has won the starting job this season.
In the hallway under the stands, he does some stretching and
juggling. When he was younger, he slapped hands rhythmically with his
mom, who gradually accelerated the pace to hone his hand-eye
coordination. They did that before his team won the Peewee A state
championship, his biggest win so far, but he’s outgrown that. Tonight
there will be no pregame patty cake with Mom.
* * *
Justin King shows up in a black cap over his blond bangs, a
personalized black Bauer jacket, a gray button-down shirt, striped tie,
dress slacks and black shoes, the same outfit he and the other hockey
players had worn in school. He’d had trouble thinking about anything
else, typical on a game day but even more so on
this game day,
which made it somehow a rotten trick that his coach, Dennis Fermoyle—the
goalie coach!—had given a test in AP government. Justin did all right
on it. A straight-A student, he is ranked eighth in his class of 88
seniors. He isn’t cocky—far from it—but possesses a quiet sureness.
Fermoyle, a former goaltender who has coached 20 years, calls King “one
of the two best goalies mentally we’ve ever had—he just doesn’t get
shook up.”
Justin pauses to watch a portion of the JV game. That was him last
year. Coming up through the ranks, he’d always had to wait his turn: on
the B team his first year, then the A team his second. The two goalies
ahead of him graduated after last season, which finally gave him his
chance on varsity. Justin’s small, only 5’7, but adept at squaring up on
the puck. He’s been good enough to stop 332 shots, a .930 save
percentage, and win 10 games. This year it feels different to walk in
later, at this time, knowing you’re no longer the warm-up act but the
marquee event, especially tonight.
While Bob’s dad had been teaching him to skate in Roseau, Justin’s
dad had been teaching him in Warroad. The talent pool in the King family
may not run as deep, but the goalie gene is dominant. Brian King
backstopped the Warriors his senior year, 1993. His brother—Justin’s
Uncle Todd—a backup, played a couple of minutes in the 2000 state
tournament championship game. Justin’s cousin, Tony Soros, whom Justin
looked up to, was the starting goalie on the ‘03 Warrior team that won
the state title. Naturally, Justin fell in love with the position after
his first save as a Tiny Mite. “I loved being the guy everyone looked at
and said, ‘He’s the guy stopping the pucks,’” Justin says.
Coaching his son, Brian was able to offer Justin the special
understanding that only another goaltender can. Father and son still
talk for a few minutes after every game. “If he has an off night, he
says, ‘You know, Dad, I just couldn’t get comfortable tonight.’ I get
it,” says Brian, who’s also short. “Goalies understand one another.”
Justin’s parents split up when he was in eighth grade. His dad still
coached him, and he divided his time evenly between his dad’s and mom’s
homes. But his teammates assumed greater significance in his life. He
found in them the family he lost. They hung out together at the rink
before and after practice, treasuring the locker room camaraderie.
Justin feels particularly close to this year’s Warriors. “It’s going to
be hard to give up after high school because I’m having so much fun with
it,” Justin says. “Hockey’s been a big part of my life the past 15
years.”
* * *
Roseau and Warroad are natural rivals, separated by only 20 miles,
which is nothing up here in the North Country. Warroad got the railroad;
Roseau grabbed the county seat in 1896 under what one Warroad old-timer
still believes were “false pretenses.” When Bill Marvin, the Marvin
Windows & Doors magnate, offered to donate $4 million to build a
courthouse in Warroad and relocate the county seat almost 20 years ago,
the Roseau mayor resisted and made comments about Warroad that the
townspeople remember as “crude and cruel.”
Since their inceptions, the two towns have measured themselves against one another, and hockey quickly became the gauge
Since their inceptions, the two towns have measured themselves
against one another, and hockey quickly became the gauge. As early as
1908, pickup teams from the two towns challenged one another. These
ragtag outfits developed into more serious men’s teams playing in
regional leagues. The focal point of the rivalry transferred to the prep
level in 1945 when the state of Minnesota sanctioned high school hockey
and introduced the state tournament. In those early years, the
qualifying playoff final took place in Roseau, because it had an indoor
rink, much to the chagrin of Warroaders. “They not only had home ice but
home referees,” one old-timer recalled. “It was so bad that everybody
said you couldn’t win in Roseau.”
Not until 1948, when the region playoff moved to Thief River Falls,
did Warroad beat Roseau 3-2 to play in its first state tournament. A
squad with T. J. Oshie’s grandfather, Max, and great-uncle, Buster,
along with the oldest Christian brother, Gordon, made it all the way to
the championship game.
The Rams and Warriors have played 161 times since 1945. Roseau holds a
94-63 edge with four ties, though that’s mostly due to its dominance in
the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Over the past 30 years, Warroad has won 36,
lost 28 and tied two.
Since Roseau opted up to Class AA, the larger school division, in
1998, the rivals no longer have to beat one another to get to the state
tournament, but the two regular season games are still highly charged,
the games everyone in both towns circle on their calendars. “The rivalry
is everything,” says Beth Marvin, Warroad’s historian. “It got its
intensity because each town wanted to win so bad. Each wanted
superiority.”
Beth Marvin arrived in Warroad in 1947 to teach school. For
entertainment, she attended hockey games, standing in snowbanks when it
was 40 below, because that was what people in Warroad did. Now 88, she
oversees the Heritage Center, housed in the Warroad Public Library
building. She sits at a worn oak desk in her office with a recording of
Native American flutes playing in the background and explains that she
became a true hockey fan when she met a Marvin.
You can’t talk about Warroad without talking about the Marvins. Since
George came to town in 1904, three years after it incorporated with 520
residents, and amassed the family fortune with the company that
eventually became known as Marvin Windows & Doors, his progeny have
ardently supported and bankrolled hockey. Two of his sons, Jack, the
youth hockey treasurer for 35 years, and Tut, who promoted high school
hockey, donated a large share of the money to build the Gardens in 1993,
a deluxe arena with a bowl of hard-backed seats, a concourse that rings
the rink, a press box and an Olympic-size ice sheet. The youngest son,
Cal, inked Warroad on the state’s hockey map when he founded the Warroad
Lakers in 1946, the most successful senior amateur hockey team in U.S.
history, which he coached and ran for 52 years, winning a handful of
championships, including the Allen Cup three straight years.
He was the Marvin that Beth met. They married, started Cal’s, a
lakeside resort where the casino is now, and raised 12 children. Cal
passed in 2004, but Beth still never misses a game if she can help it,
even though the excitement can sometimes be overwhelming: “The games are
nerve-wracking because you want to beat them so badly.”
* * *
These games assume a place in the players’ lives that will stay with them wherever they go
These games assume a place in the players’ lives that will stay with
them wherever they go. Ask Henry Boucha, perhaps the purest talent ever
to come out of either town, who won a silver medal in the 1972 Olympics
and played six years in the NHL until an eye injury cut short his
career. He’s back from Alaska, where he has lived the past few years, to
watch his great-nephew Zach Johnston, a senior defenseman. Boucha
played five years of varsity hockey for the Warriors. His retired No. 16
hangs from the rafters. People stop on their way to their seats to say
hello. He shakes their hands and gladly recalls his glory days playing
against Roseau.
He remembers his senior year, 1969, when they played the Rams four
times, with vivid detail, as if it were the day before yesterday. The
Warriors beat the Rams at home 6-3, then went to Roseau in late January
ranked No. 1 and lost 7-4.
Bob’s dad, Earl Anderson, who played for Roseau in ’69, comes up the
stairs. “Don’t believe anything this guy tells you,” he says.
The two laugh, shake hands and Boucha continues his reminiscence.
Roseau beat Warroad in the Region 8 final. “It was a long bus ride
home,” he says.
But those days, the Region 8 runner-up had a second chance to get to
the tournament by beating the Region 7 runner-up. Boucha took a stick
above the eye that would later require 15 stitches. He missed about 10
minutes while a doctor taped the cut closed and the game ran into a
second overtime. He returned in time to score the winning goal.
Warroad met Roseau in the semifinals of the state tournament at the
Met Center in Bloomington, just outside Minneapolis, the first year it
was played at the new home of the North Stars. It was Boucha’s first
state tournament—the Warriors hadn’t been there since 1963, having lost
to Roseau in the region playoffs the past seven years—eight if you
counted 1969. Boucha scored two goals to pace Warroad to a 3-2 victory.
“We had our revenge,” he says.
Tonight’s matchup is layered upon those memories.
* * *
Jay Hardwick waits in the hallway outside the Warriors’ dressing
room. The texts and emails have been coming in all day. Students in the
computer and geography classes he teaches at the high school had wished
him luck, so had faculty in the hallways. They’d be watching the rookie
coach in the biggest game of his young career.
Hardwick was an assistant last year, his first back in Warroad after
graduating in 1998, playing four years at University of Minnesota-Duluth
and another six professionally. But when last year’s coach, Steve
Haataja, couldn’t survive the scrutiny and left to work the oil fields
in North Dakota, the job went to Hardwick. At 34, with receding brown
hair, a thin beard and a soft waistline, he looks more like the father
of four and schoolteacher he is now than the fighting defenseman that he
had been. He returned to his hometown because he didn’t know where else
to go. “I liked the way you can show up at the rink whenever you want
and skate,” he says. “That’s the way I grew up and I wanted the same for
my kids.”
Warroad, with Hardwick on the team, had twice beaten Roseau in the
region finals en route to the state tournament, winning it all in 1996,
his sophomore year. He didn’t feel the rivalry diminish as a senior in
1998, the year that Roseau had moved up to Class AA and had a strong
young team. Hardwick’s Warriors faced them as underdogs and beat them
twice. “That was satisfying,” he says.
Being a former Warrior gave Hardwick instant credibility as a coach,
as did his coaching pedigree: his maternal grandfather, Dick Roberts,
coached the Warriors back in Boucha’s day. The players like Hardwick and
so far the community has been supportive—of course, it helps that his
team’s only lost two of its first 13 games. “They aren’t going to settle
for a .500 team,” he says. “If we were 1-5, I’m sure I’d be hearing it.
There’s pressure, but thankfully I played through it and knew what to
expect.”
* * *
Across the way, Andy Lundbohm figures he doesn’t need to say much to
get his team fired up. In his fourth year as the Rams’ head coach after a
four-year apprenticeship, he knows his players are sufficiently
motivated, the same as when he played for Roseau in the ‘90s. None of
his later games during four years at West Point, six in the minor
leagues and an NHL exhibition for the San Jose Sharks, matched the
adrenaline rush of those high school games against Warroad.
From the time he was 6 years old, he’d attended the varsity games,
memorized every Ram's number and pretended he was Neal Broten or Chris
Gotziaman when he played. He suffered to see Warroad knock off his guys
two years in a row but then, when he was 13 years old, he was thrilled
to make the 360-mile trek to St. Paul to watch Roseau win the title.
“Watching the guys from home skating in front of all those fans, the
whole place erupting when there was a goal, was surreal,” he says.
He wanted the chance to get there himself his senior year, 1995, but
Warroad blanked them 3-0 in the region final. “It hurts pretty bad to
lose a final, but just a little bit worse to lose to Warroad,” he says.
It hurt even more knowing that Warroad had a couple of imported
ringers on the team. That’s been the knock against Warroad for years:
that they recruit outside talent. This year’s team has several imports.
The Sylvester family moved in from Little Falls, Minn., 265 miles south,
a couple of years back. Karley was Ms. Hockey 2011 and powered the
girls team to the state championship. Her younger brother Kyle is a
junior forward and blue chip prospect on this year’s Warriors. Kobe
Roth, a short but quick sophomore forward who will likely play D-I, came
from Mason City, Iowa, and Jared Bethune, another sophomore forward and
the Warriors’ leading scorer, came from Fort Frances, Ontario. The
three imports are the Warriors’ three best players. “If somebody wants
to come here, you can’t not play them because they didn’t grow up here,”
Hardwick says matter-of-factly.
But it doesn’t sit right with the Roseau set. “It bothers us because we’re not doing it,” says Bob’s dad, Earl Anderson.
That just enhances Lundbohm’s desire to win this game for Roseau. He
wants to show Warroad they could beat them with their own players.
* * *
“Oh my god, I’m so nervous, this is such a big game”
A half hour before game time, the Gardens is filling to capacity,
with nearly half the crowd wearing the Rams’ green and white. That
night, Jan. 10, the most notable spectators are the Minnesota Wild
executive team, which has made the 35-minute flight from St. Paul in one
of majority owner Craig Leipold’s jets. They’re the guests of Bob
Marvin, Bill’s youngest son, Warroad mayor for the past two decades and a
Wild minority owner. That’s the sort of draw this legendary rivalry
has.
When told that Warroad is beating Roseau in a Tiny Mite game in the
adjacent rink, Wild general manager Chuck Fletcher says without irony,
“The kids get to dislike each other for a long time.”
* * *
Jay Hardwick waits until the clock counts down seven minutes to game
time to enter the Warriors’ locker room. “I shouldn’t have to get you
motivated, you should be excited,” he says, pacing the narrow space
between the two rows of players facing each other. “Right from the first
hop. Can’t take any shifts off.”
The boys whoop like giving amens and alleluias to a preacher. He
leaves. They stand, bow their heads and say the Lord’s Prayer.
Punctuated by more whoops and shouts of “Let’s go, boys!”
They cluster by the door, their helmets strapped on. Some chatter
sparks the room then fades. The student manager pops his head in the
door, “3:59 left.”
Justin King kneels to adjust a strap on his pads. The room falls
silent. They can hear the Warroad student band above them. “Longest
three minutes ever,” one boy says.
Suddenly the soundtrack changes, rock music pumped over the arena’s loud speakers—it’s time!
“Right away!”
“Let’s go, boys!”
“Let’s f---ing do this!”
Justin leads the charge onto the ice.
The Warroad band plays the school rouser.
The home crowd welcomes their boys.
One Roseau mom turns to another, “Are you nervous?” “Oh my god,
I’m so nervous,” the other mom answers. “This is such a big game.”
* * *
These games are hell on Mary Anderson, Bob’s mom. She’s slender, the
source of her son’s brown hair and has soulful brown eyes. It sometimes
makes her physically ill to watch. She so desperately does not want her
son to be the cause of a loss. Once she left the rink during the third
period and got locked out. That was worse, not knowing if he had let in
any goals. “Now I sit there and suffer through it,” she says. “It’s
awful.”
Bob makes his first save almost a minute into the game, routinely
redirecting a low shot with his stick, but it isn’t enough to settle his
mom’s nerves. Warroad takes a penalty, and Justin faces his first test,
stopping four shots. After one he smothered against his body, he skates
out of the net to his left, spots a group of youth hockey players lined
along the glass with signs and raises his catching glove in a wave.
The first period belongs to Roseau. Though Warroad manages almost 10
shots, only three are on goal, and Bob easily turns them away. The
action’s mostly in Warroad’s end, with several scrambles around the net,
but Justin’s always in position to stop them. After Justin thwarts a
two-on-one, a Roseau mom says, “That goalie’s good.”
When the buzzer sounds, Justin has stopped 11 shots, Bob three, but
Mary Anderson hasn’t made it through the first period. She nearly throws
up in the ladies room.
Warroad skated tentatively in the first period. Hardwick tells his
players they need to pick up their game. They come out harder, play more
physically the second. When a Warrior trips Roseau’s leading scorer,
Zach Yon, with no penalty call, a Roseau fan quips, “They’ve got refs
from all over if they’re hometown refs.”
Sylvester, the boy from Little Falls, does get whistled for a
tripping penalty when he takes down Yon with a slide. Thirty-four
seconds into the power play, Roseau’s Alex Halstensgard fires a shot
from the right circle. Justin has it lined up, clasps his left arm to
his body, but gets only a piece of it, and the puck slips past him. The
Roseau fans roar their approval. Brian King, standing in his customary
spot by the Zamboni entrance, right behind the net where his son has let
in the goal, gives no reaction. He’s been involved in hundreds of
hockey games as a player, a coach, a referee and now a goalie dad. He’s
trained himself not to let his emotions wander too high or too low.
Bob makes a save, leaves a rebound in front, but a defender swats it
away. Earl Anderson wipes his hand across his brow; Mary clenches her
jaw.
Play shifts to the Warroad end with less than five minutes to go in
the second period. There’s a flurry in front. Justin drops to his knees.
Roseau’s Alex Strand slides the puck back to the point. Tanner Okeson,
the team captain and a D-I prospect, rifles a slapshot that stretches
the twine at the back of the net. He raises his arm triumphantly, and
the Roseau fans cheer mightily. Three teammates come back to tap
Justin’s white pads encouragingly.
Warroad jumps right back. Less than a minute after Roseau’s second
goal, Bob stops a shot from the blue line, but Kobe Roth, the kid from
Iowa, pounces on the rebound to cut Roseau’s lead in half. The arena
music blares. Bob stands in his crease. Justin skates up to his bench to
complete the receiving line for Roth and his linemates who high-five
their teammates on the bench.
Almost immediately, Roseau takes a holding penalty. Mary Anderson
climbs the stairs and heads toward the lobby. Twenty seconds after
scoring the Warriors’ first goal, while the announcer is informing the
crowd of Roseau’s penalty, Roth strikes again. A Warroad fan blasts an
air horn. The goal electrifies the home crowd. Just like that, the
score’s even.
It’s a new game, Justin thinks.
A fresh start.
The period ends 2-2. Lundbohm has rarely put out his third line.
Hardwick, as the home team coach, has been able to match up lines, not
taking chances with his own third line.
Mary’s back in her seat for the third period. The hits keep coming.
The refs whistle a tripping penalty on Warroad, then two seconds later
call one on Okeson that nullifies the Rams’ man advantage. Jared
Bethune, the kid from Fort Frances, flies in on a breakaway, tries to
stuff the puck between Bob’s pads, but Bob shuts him down. Mary covers
her face with her hands.
The action rushes back and forth. Nine minutes into the third the
score remains tied. Both teams have ratcheted up the intensity. They
seem to sense that the next goal will win it. The crowd does, too. It’s
on edge, chastising the refs, cheering every rush. A Warrior fan in a
black and yellow jersey and a Russian fur cap bangs a drumbeat on the
boards with his fist.
Warroad charges into Roseau’s zone. Senior forward Matt Harrison rips
a wrist shot over Bob’s catching glove. Goal! The Warroad fans
immediately leap to their feet. They’ve taken the lead for the first
time all night. The clock shows 7:47 remaining. Mary Anderson takes
another walk.
Four tense minutes pass, then Blayke Nelson, Gordon Christian’s
great-nephew, gets called for slashing with 3:44 to play. Less than 30
seconds into the power play, Roseau’s Okeson feeds a pass from the blue
line across ice where Alex Strand one-times it. Justin slides to his
right but not in time. Roseau has tied the game.
Brian King takes it in stride. That was a tough one. He’s just glad
neither his son nor Earl’s has let in a bad goal. The two had run into
each other beforehand in the lobby. Brian wished Earl luck. Someone
asked if they put a wager on the game. “Goalie dads don’t bet,” Brian
said.
Regulation time expires with the score tied 3-3. The two teams take a
brief breather before the eight-minute sudden death overtime.
Play tilts toward the Warroad end. A Roseau player carries the puck
behind the Warrior net. Justin slides over to stymie the wraparound.
Almost simultaneously, he bangs the post with his pad, jarring the goal
off its moorings, and the puck slams into the net. The Roseau fans jump
up. The Rams celebrate on the ice. Justin fixes his eyes on the
official, poised to protest—he knows the net moved before the puck
entered. Down at the other end, Bob’s thinking,
We’ve won! It’s over! Andy Lundbohm’s not sure. He’s seen this happen before.
The ref waves his hands in a washout sign—no goal! The crowd’s
reaction reverses—applause from the black and yellow, groans from the
green and white.
The game goes on. No one has left. Like the rest of the 1,700-plus in
the arena, Deanna Comstock feels the pressure build. She’s a Pelowski,
Mary Anderson’s sister, and grew up in Roseau, but she taught English in
Warroad for 34 years. Her nephew Bob defends the Rams’ net, yet she
knows all of the Warriors on the ice. With each sweep of action, she
throws her hands in the air or clenches her fists. No matter the outcome
she’ll win and lose, lose and win.
Roseau’s Strand dances around a defender. “Uh, oh,” Deanna says. “Here we go.”
Strand snaps a wrist shot. Justin blocks it.
Warroad comes back the other way. “Here it is,” Deanna says.
Bob makes the stop. Normally during breaks, he simply stands in his
crease, knees slightly bent, shoulders slouched, but now he skates a
little lap to his left. As close to a show of emotion as you’ll see from
him.
Halstensgard, who has been all over the ice, making hits, setting up
teammates, crashing the net and scoring Roseau’s first goal, gets
whistled for tripping at 3:40. “He’s going to call it?” Deanna asks in
disbelief.
Lundbohm is surprised, too. Sure, it was a trip, but he saw the refs
let one go during overtime that should’ve been a penalty against
Warroad.
Hardwick calls timeout to rest his players. Brian King sits calmly in
the spot where he’s moved above the Zamboni entrance. Earl and Mary
Anderson can hardly watch.
Warroad buzzes Bob’s net. Bethune, the Fort Frances kid, wrists a
shot that Bob gloves. Each shot heightens the tension; each save
prolongs it.
From the faceoff, the Warriors move the puck back to the blue line.
Junior defenseman Nick Jaycox uncorks a slapshot. Bethune has wrestled
himself into position in front. He nicks the puck with the shaft of his
stick, deflecting it under Bob’s right arm. The home crowd cheers, all
Warroad cheers; the Roseau fans sit stunned.
The Warriors spill over the bench and mob Bethune against the glass behind the Roseau net. Bob skates away.
Eventually, the two teams line up and shake hands. Bob’s the first
player off the ice. He clomps into the dressing room followed by his
teammates. Takes off his mask, strips off his chest protector and arm
pads. His cheeks are flushed, his hair matted with sweat. Lundbohm paces
between his sullen players. “This one stings,” he says staring at the
floor. “You don’t ever want this feeling. That’s the reason you play
your asses off.”
Across the rink on the flip side of defeat, the Warriors parade
jubilantly into their locker room. They blast Kool & the Gang’s
“Celebration” on the stereo. Justin savors it, slowly taking off his wet
gear, drying off and putting on his pre-game uniform. The music changes
to a loud bass-thumping rhythm that fills the cinder block hallway
outside the closed door.
Jay Hardwick listens outside with a smile through his beard, allowing the players to enjoy their time together.
When Justin finally comes out of the locker room, he’s not feeling
sick any more. There’s no elixir like victory. He struggles to find
words to describe the feeling that’s come over him, knowing that senior
year they’ve beaten Roseau at home in a game he’ll never be able to
repeat but will always remember. “Awesome?”
When they were down 2-0, he appreciated that his guys didn’t quit.
“They always find a way to fight back,” he says. Maybe that’s what makes
this moment so special, the way they are there for one another. “That’s
what I love about our team.”
He walks down the hallway, climbs the stairs to where a group of high
school girls waits for him. They scream in delight, and he surrenders
to their hugs.
* * *
Meanwhile, the Roseau players walk outside into a steady rain, load
their gear into the trailer hitched to the back of their bus and pull
out of the parking lot at 9:57 p.m. A couple of players grumble softly
about the overtime penalty call. Lundbohm won’t blame anyone, not the
refs, not his player. They lost as a team, he figures.
Bob sits quietly by himself. In 19 days, they’ll play the rematch.
Warroad will travel Route 11 to their house. The Rams will have the
chance to avenge this loss. But that seems a long way off, farther even
than the drive back home that night. Bob stares outside, the oncoming
headlights stabbing the streaked windows. Later, the rain along Route 11
will freeze to ice. ★
Sources are reporting to TJHN that the minor pro circuit the Central Hockey League is possibly on the brink of collapse.
