Vintage Minnesota Hockey - History

January 19th, 2013 would earn its place in Hockey Day Minnesota lore for a host of reasons.  Nothing bigger than it marked the start of the regular season in the NHL though.  As I’m sure the memory of the 2012-13 lockout is still a painful moment, Minnesota kicked off the regular season right by marking it with the annual celebration in the State of Hockey.

The outdoor games were also fraught with some heavy winds, and near white out conditions during the games.  It was quite the sight, and very tough on the kids to keep the puck moving across the ice.

The day would start off with the girls Grand Rapids-Greenway team skunking Hibbing-Chisholm 6-0.  Again, this game would not be seen on TV until much later in the evening.  It was not a good day for Hibbing-Chisholm, as their boys team fell by a 9-2 margin to Eagan.  It would be a good day for Grand Rapids, as the GR boys team was able to get past Benilde-St. Margaret’s with a 3-2 overtime victory.  Jack Jablonski who was paralyzed in a game on December 30th, 2011, was on the bench as an assistant coach for the game.

The Gophers this go around would take on one of their biggest rivals, the University of North Dakota.  These games are often physical, and often hard fought.  This one however, there would be no winner as the teams battled to a 4-4 tie.

The feature game of the day would of course be the Wild taking on the Colorado Avalanche.  After 2 Dany Heatley power-play goals, and another by Pierre-Marc Bouchard, the Wild would come out victorious in a 4-2 victory over the Avs at the Xcel Energy Center.

Zenon Konopka showed up in penalty log after fighting Cody McLeod 2 1⁄2 minutes into the game.  Konopka’s bunny however did not show up in the game logs, just later on Twitter that night.

Vintage Minnesota Hockey Take:

For the 7th edition of HDM, it continued a tradition of northern Minnesota to Twin Cities, and back to Northern Minnesota of what fans were thinking was a newly found tradition of 'how it would be yearly now going forward' with this North-South arrangement.  The game marked the first HDM on an actual lake surface, but was the 3rd such rink created on a natural frozen body of water (Baudette Bay-Rainy River 2007, and 2008) were the 1st and 2nd.  Grand Rapids is known as the gateway town to the Iron Range of Minnesota, home to Dorothy of Wizard of Oz lore, and home to several State Championship teams at the history laden IRA Civic Center.