Arrival in Columbus, the arena is fantastic, top notch. The local management sold the NHL well on their arena. Nice civil war theme to the Jackets logo/schwag. Kepi is featured on some iterations of the logo with crossed hockey sticks where infantry rifles would be. Nice touch. Question is: can the team survive? They must make the playoffs and inject some life into these fans and this city. I just learned they are the only NHL city to not make the playoffs, pity. At last I got to play pickup hockey down the road in Dayton, how many states does that make it for me and playing puck? Let me count…eight.
Next day is a short flight to Minnesota, via Atlanta; correct, Atlanta. Picked up by local support via Puck Hog network. Off to hotel check in before dinner. Look, it’s the Mall of America, second in the world to the one in Edmonton, eh? Off to drinks/dinner in a quaint St. Paul downtown before game. Beer is good as is salad. Yes, salad in the Midwest = fail. Worry not, the Midwest will soon have its revenge.
It’s time for Minnesota hockey: ringing the concourse at the Xcel Energy Center is the jersey of every high school hockey team in the state. Minnesota claims to be the “State of Hockey”: the jerseys are our first indication as to why; these people do hockey right, they are the State of Hockey. After the bitter divorce and movement to Dallas, Minnesota is whole again. Only one jersey in the rafters, #1: “The Fans”. Cheesy, yes, but point taken. Can a real Wild goalie take that number if he wants it? Jumbotron shows idyllic hockey scenes of kids through pros playing the great game, button pushing done right, this is the essence of hockey I’ve not seen captured since the Hockey Hall of Fame video of the same ilk.
Final fantastic pregame moment: a youth hockey player adorned in Wild jersey skates to center ice with a matching Wild flag mounted to his hockey stick and plants the standard “into” center ice while the crowd crescendos all accentuated by a dazzling light show. Announcer belts “Your Minnesota Wild!” and the team skates their warm-up laps each player, including the million dollar ones, eventually high-fiving the pint sized standard-bearer. Awesome, well done, State of Hockey. Wild win the game and the home town boys take two-thirds of the three stars of the game. They autograph pucks in the tunnel, skate out and toss them to the crowd. First star Antii Mietinen skates across the rink and toss his to the other side. In Minnesota even Finns do cool things.
Next stop, the dairy heartland of Wisconsin. The pond hockey circle team forms up the next morning as the remaining members arrive. We take two Hummer H3s in caravan the four hours to Eagle River, WI. We are an L.A. team after all so must roll as blingy as possible. That and we got them for the same price as the Suburban the rental agency botched. Seven players with hockey gear is a mighty tight fit.
You’re right budday, it is zen. This is what you feel when you see Dollar Lake on the eve of the tourney. Sixteen mini rinks hewn from the lake bed and defined only by the snow banks that form their borders. The next morning we park on the lake 90% dressed, don our skates and skate to our rink (from the car, did you catch that?). Veterans of last year warned “take everything you’ve learned about playing hockey and forget it”. Skating on this stuff vice an indoor ice rink is analogous to road biking/mountain biking. Very choppy stuff, must keep center of gravity very tight. Watch for skipping pucks, watch your knees bear the shock of all this off-road skating, watch yourself if you dare a full hockey stop. But we are skating on a pond, we are skating with friends, it’s below freezing: we are adding to our collective hockey resumes. The game itself is somewhat brutal and lacks much of the intrigue of “real” hockey. But it’s an outstanding novelty that should be experienced by every hockey player. Two losses, one win (beat the bastards from Detroit) and tourney is over. Even got interviewed by a mini-corder toting USA Hockey reporter. The California flag on our jerseys brought lots of comments and looks. As Glennybits likes to say “We came a long way”.