Blog

Spent at good part of the weekend at my booth at the Let’s Play Hockey Expo in St. Paul. The two-day event attracts thousands of people each year. It was great to see everyone who stopped by to say hi. My former high school coach – hockey legend – Willard Ikola, and former Rochester great and Stanley Cup winner Shjon Podein were among the hockey folks who I visited with at my booth.

Like many of you, I grew up dreaming about playing in the state high school tournament. My dream came true during my senior year at Edina-East High School as we beat our crosstown rivals from Edina-West to advance to the state tournament. I remember the awesome experience like it was yesterday.

We had a very good team that include several seniors who would go on to play Division I hockey at schools like Minnesota, Michigan, Michigan Tech, and Notre Dame. I went on to play at Mankato State, while another senior classmate continued his hockey career at Gustavus. I was the fortunate to get the staring nod in the three tournament games.

The tournament was played at the St. Paul Civic Center, which featured the glass dasher boards. It was also an eight-team tournament back then — no AA and A.

Our opening night game was a classic match-up as we faced off against Roseau and a guy named Neal Broten. We came into the game with a 23-1 record, (only loss was to Burnsville) while the Rams entered the contest with a perfect 23-0 mark!

It was number 1 against number 2 and from what I remember it was a barnburner. The Hornets skated with a hard-fought 2-0 win. Turns out, it was one of the few times during his legendary high school hockey career that Broten was held without a point.

In the semifinals, we squared off against the “Big Orange Machine” from Grand Rapids, which was the two-time defending state champions. The Indians as they were known back then, featured a number of future Division one hockey players including guy by the name of Don Lucia. This too, was an exciting back and forth high-scoring game. When the final buzzer sounded, we escaped with a thrilling 6-5 win.

That put us into the championship game against Rochester John Marshall. The Rockets featured a goalie by the name of Paul Butters who stopped just about everything they threw at him and the high-scoring Lecy brothers. The squad from southern Minnesota was just too much for us that night as they captured the title with a 4-2.

Even though we lost in the championship game, having the opportunity to play in the state tourney is something I will never forget. It was quite a weekend!

A photo from the Carroll Goalie School was chosen for the front cover of the recent Michigan Hockey online magazine. The publication cover all levels of hockey in the Michigan area. How cool is that?

Word about our popular program continues to spread throughout the upper midwest.
Great publicity like this will hopefully encourage more goalies from the Michigan area and other parts of the country to check out the Carroll Goalie School experience!

This past weekend, I was at Plymouth Ice Arena, working as a goalie evaluator for Minnesota Hockey’s Advanced Final 54 tryout for the Girls Advanced 16 and 17 Programs.

There were six goalies in each age group. We had the challenging task of ranking the goalies from top to bottom. The highest ranked goalies in each age group have a chance to be invited to USA Hockey’s National Development Camp along other talented goalies from throughout the country.

The other goalie evaluators were Mandy Cronin from USA Hockey and Aaron Haupert, an assistant coach for St. Mary’s University women’s hockey team.

We watched the goalies closely during scrimmages (and expanded warm-ups) and we had some excellent in-depth discussions on the strengths and weaknesses of each participant as we determined the final rankings.