Minnesota, Walt and Tim and Steve

 

Capitalism has changed the dynamics of hockey. Across our continent, junior hockey has invaded not just traditional hockey territories but also places as far from the hockey norm as Corpus Christi, Texas. With that said though, Minnesota as a whole has stayed true to combining elite-level hockey with education. Very few junior hockey opportunities exist is Minnesota as kids grow up dreaming of winning a state championship for their communities’ high school.

The IIT tournament marks the end of the Minnesota Elite League Schedule. The league is in place to give the best in the area a place to play waiting for the Minnesota high school season to begin, which happens this week. Last year’s NHL draft saw 9 former Elite League players picked.

Our trip began shortly after midnight Thursday as we headed into Montreal for a 6:00 am flight to Minneapolis, where two practices and a little study would await before the start of the event on Friday night.

Our first game was against Minnesota White, a team made up of players from the Elite League. In total, nine of the players on the Minnesota White have already secured NCAA Div 1 commitments, and they quickly proved to be worthy of these commitments. The final score was 4-1 for Minnesota White, but what was apparent was that as the game went on and our players unblocked their thoughts and believed in what we do day in and day out, we closed the gap, outplaying and outscoring our opponent in the third period.

The loss put us in the consolation portion of the tournament, and we played the MDHL (Michigan) team, winning 3-2 on Saturday and Chicago Mission U18 on Sunday, winning 3-0 to claim the Consolation Championship, playing in front of a large number of junior, NCAA and NHL scouts.

After our Friday game saw us go from struggling to playing a very good third period, Coach Poliziani and I had a nice Chinese food dinner back at the hotel. The meal ended with a fortune that said the following: “Focus on your long term goal. Good things will happen.” We always go out to Minnesota wanting to represent the school well and be competitive. This year was the first time we have won two games, and most importantly we did it playing the style of play that we know will allow us to be successful moving forward with the year. As an aside we gave up the lowest amount of goals in the tournament, which again speaks to our players playing an intelligent all around game.

Hockey and the trips that bring us around North America and at times beyond are not limited to the stories on the ice. This trip in particular speaks to the people that you meet. Our bus driver Walt was pure class. At times it is hard to believe how fast people can start to care about the group of people they are with, but it was clear that Walt wanted what was best for our group. A huge thank-you to him.

For the third year, we were lucky to have our #1 fans in Minnesota, Tim and Steve Collins (pictured with team). Tim and Steve, if you can’t tell, are brothers; they truly love hockey and spend countless hours in the winter travelling and finding the best high school hockey to watch. They know the game well and have become big fans of the Spartans and continue to follow us online. In many ways it is fans like Tim and Steve who make Minnesota high school hockey have the special place that it does within the hockey community. I am glad to know that when the brothers go to games at some of the hockey powerhouses in the State of Hockey, they will do so, proudly wearing their Stanstead College gear.