DISAPPEARING DIASPORA

Hello, it’s me again.  In case you were wondering if there was a missing person’s report filed in my name, not to worry, as I am alive and well enough.  I am in retirement hockey mode, living 220 miles south of my hockey zone and have taken in enough high school games that I can actually count on one hand.  Yessiree Bob, my hockey life is the polar opposite of what once was.  Here it is, the 1st week in February and I am finally getting around to writing this season’s 2nd article.  I guess it’s about time since the girl’s regular season ended last night with some make-up games and the sectional playoffs start today.  My goodness where has the season gone?  It seems like yesterday I was in a feeding frenzy at the South St. Paul Girl’s Kaposia Hockey Tournament.  Boy oh boy, those hockey moms lock and load those steaming crock pots to the hilt and almost dare you not to eat.  Word on the street has it that not a single morsel made it out alive, save for the two donuts I tossed in my computer bag, although, neither one made it home.

So, how do things look for our Iron Range teams?  I would like to address a stat that I had on my old site that no one else prints.  I do not have it on the new site yet, but we will figure that out for next season.  The stat I am mentioning is the non-conference win record.  It was a weekly report on the running banner we had on the old site that listed the previous week’s win-loss record plus the winning percentage.  The tracking of that stat in the past few years was dismal.  In baseball, if a player had a 300+ batting average, they would be a superstar.  The greatest all-around player of all time, Willie Mays, would be an example with his lifetime batting average of .302.  Josh Gibson holds the all-time highest average of .371.  Now that's baseball.  Hockey is another story.  It isn’t as lenient.  I base my calculations of a winning percentage at a minimum of .5001%.  So, I have good news, after last week’s games, the stat is 101-87-13, for a winning percentage of .5024, which is an astounding accomplishment.  In fact, we had 6 weeks of 50+ percent with the highest week being xmas week, which went 6-1-1 for 75%.  Wheeee!

As I have already mentioned more than once, I am not living in the area anymore and in the mix of things, so it is hard to report on the conference.  The result now is that I have a tendency to talk of the old days, which I classify from 1945 through the 2019-2020 pre-covid season, which we barely completed before the MSHSL called everything off, just 5 days after the boy’s state tournament.  In reality, I miss those days.  I graduated in 1965, so I have gone from the St. Paul Auditorium, to the Met Center in Bloomington, to the St. Paul Civic Center (my favorite), to the Target Center in Minneapolis (my least favorite), to the Xcel Energy Center now known as the Grand Casino Arena.  Not sure if I will make it there for any hockey since the MSHSL has pulled the credentials of some of us hockey puck reporter grunts.  I did connect with Hibbing native and South St. Paul icon Dave Palmquist for a couple days at the aforementioned Kaposia Classic at Doug Woog Arena.  We chatted about the changes here in the Cities of all the storied programs that no longer exist such as Herb Brook’s alma mater St. Paul Johnson and the elite program at Minneapolis Southwest.  With all the mergers and co-ops that abound, there is only 1 hockey program in each city, St. Paul Highland Park/Central on the east side and Minneapolis on the West.  I don’t even want to talk about the outstate areas that have dissolved into co-ops and lost their identity.  For me, Virginia and Eveleth are foremost in identity theft.  Sayonara to the Bluedevils and the Golden Bears.  Now it’s the Dark Green & Black Rock Ridge Wolverines.

Who’s next?  Grand Rapids and Greenway?  The only areas that are a safe haven are Warroad and Roseau.  Everyone else is fair game.  So goes the State of Hockey.  Stay tuned…..!