Wild home debut results, arena, hockey fans all rank ‘unXcelled’
SAINT PAUL, MINN. — Undefeated at home, or should it be “unXcelled?”
The Minnesota Wild, representing Minnesota’s rejoining of the hockey world as defined by the National Hockey League, opens the regular season this weekend at Anaheim and Phoenix, so everything until now means nothing — nothing, that is, unless you’re a hockey fan living in Minnesota. For the hockey community, last weekend was the dawning of a new era, as the Wild unveiled both their new team and their fabulous, new downtown Saint Paul arena — the Xcel Center — for their final two exhibition games.
Nobody expects this expansion Wild contingent to win much, but success may not require much winning for now. Still, the passionate connection with their new fans inspired a 3-1 victory over the Anaheim Mighty Ducks last Friday night, and a 1-1 tie against the Chicago Blackhawks on Sunday, and those two games meant the Wild go into regular season unbeaten in their last five games (2-0-3).
Both exhibition games were sellouts, with 18,516 seeing the first game and 18,064 watching the late-afternoon game on a pro football, fall-leaf-watching Sunday. Nobody in the glistening new arena could think of a more spectacular facility, making “unXcelled” appropriate as an arena nickname as well. And nobody who was at the first-ever game will forget the chills provided by the opening ovations, both when the Wild hit the ice and when Darby Hendrickson was dispatched to take the opening faceoff. Nobody among the new fans, new media-types, and new players, from Wild management on down, could better relate what Friday’s debut meant to grassroots Minnesota hockey better than Hendrickson and Jeff Nielsen — themselves sprouts from those grassroots.
“You could feel the fans’ presence, even in warmups,” said Hendrickson, a former Gopher from Richfield who is now a Duluthian, living on Island Lake. “Every guy had commented on it when we came back to the locker room. I didn’t know I was starting until just before the game, and when they announced my name, I got a tingling feeling — it’s hard to explain.”
Nielsen, a winger from Grand Rapids, suggested the tingling might have been because of a crowd reaction that was so impressive it provoked a heckle. “It was unbelievable, the ovation Darby got when they announced he was starting at center,” Nielsen said. “That’s got to be the loudest ovation for a mucker in league history. To get an ovation like that, you’ve got to be a marquee player.”
Hendrickson was a marquee player on the opening faceoff, snatching the puck back to his defense away from former North Dakota star and Hobey Baker winner Tony Hrkac.
“Every guy from Minnesota who plays hockey professionally has dreamed about playing here,” said Hendrickson. “You have to sit back and realize how neat it is. I was sitting on the bench, thinking that I might be in the same exact space as when I played in the Civic Center in the high school tournament. How many memories were in that rink — a million. Now there’s a $170-million building on this spot, and the NHL is in Saint Paul.
“Saint Paul is special, when it comes to hockey. The first time I was ever in the Civic Center was in 1976. I was 4 years old, and my dad was coaching Richfield. Now it’s 24 years later, I’m 28, I’m back here playing, and the NHL is back in Minnesota. Hockey’s never changed here — the Minnesota people are the constant — but the NHL is back now.”
The Wild was charged up by the crowd’s welcome. Hendrickson snatched the opening faceoff from Anaheim’s Tony Hrkac, a former collegiate rival at North Dakota. Kai Nurminen scored with Stacy Roest’s pass at 2:49 for a 1-0 Wild start, Brad Bombardir, another former Fighting Sioux, swept in from left point to deflect in Maxim Suchinsky’s shot/pass at 6:05, and Aaron Gavey batted a bouncing puck out of the air before stepping out from behind the net to score on a backhander at 10:46 — all in the first period. Jamie McLellan stopped 21 of Anaheim’s 22 shots, using quickness, skill, and a whole bunch of luck to hold a shutout until 5:46 remained in the third period, when Selanne scored with a quick shot from deep in the left circle.
One Twin Cities columnists, a rare visitor to any hockey event, called Anaheim a “mediocre” foe, but with Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne — both capable of winning the NHL scoring title this, or any, season — on regular duty and on a power-play unit the Wild somehow held scoreless on seven tries, the Ducks were hardly all in a row for the Wild.
“The early goal loosened up the guys,” said coach Jacques Lemaire. “I could tell they were nervous. I could see right away when the guys went on the ice, and the guys in the seats were standing; they appreciated having a team back here.”
After getting seven shots in the first period — most of them in the first 10 minutes — the Wild got only two shots in the second, and wound up with only 14 for the game. That provided a look at the style Lemaire hopes to deploy.
“Myself, I wanted to show the fans we have a decent team,” said Lemaire. “We’re starting, and we’re going to make mistakes, but we’re learning. We have to be careful when we play better teams. We were lucky tonight we didn’t get burned. They have Selanne and Kariya, who are always dangerous, and we had some luck, especially penalty killing, when they had some great chances. Jamie came up big on some difficult shots. It was a good game for us, great to be out there the first time. You could tell the fans were waiting for a good game, and there was a lot of excitement because we worked hard from start to end.”
The new-to-Minnesota players, from Canada, Finland, Russia or Czechoslovakia, had reason to be surprised by the loud and passionate welcome from the fans, but it meant the most to the homestate guys.
“You couldn’t ask for a better script than this,” said Nielsen. “At 11 this morning, when I was here, there were saws, chairs, dust, 50 guys taping, scraping and sanding, and I thought, ‘How are they ever going to get this ready for tonight?’ But they did it. Then we come out and jump ahead 3-0, and the fans had to be asking, ‘What team is this?’ They had to be expecting an expansion team that couldn’t win.”
The next night the Xcel Center ice was covered for a Barenaked Ladies concert, and 24 hours later, the ice was back in place and the Wild concluded their exhibition season with the 1-1 tie against Chicago, highlighted by Pavel Patera’s first-period goal and 28 saves by Manny Fernandez. That meant the Wild — the expansion franchise nobody expects to win — finished their first exhibition season with a five-game unbeaten streak (2-0-3). By any measure, the team, the fans and the arena were, in a word, UnXcelled.
Time to back off from athletes’ and fans’ overdone celebrations
As a sports reporter, I almost always watch an event with the underlying thought of what prominent stories might arise from various events on both sides. Invariably, everybody would prefer to see one side win, but I’m at the point where a good game, featuring a high level of competition and drama, is more important than who wins.
Objectivity, however, seems to be losing in importance among a lot of sports followers, and, not coincidentally, for many athletes winning, losing, and even performing with class seem to be more the exception than the rule these days. Watch any major college or NBA basketball game, for example, and you’ll see fans organizing to sit behind the basket and wave, scream or otherwise try to intimidate an opposing free-throw shooter.
In the last couple of weeks, however, the best examples of where we’re at in sports and sports-following have been provided by the Olympics, the National Football League, the UMD football team, and the Minnesota Wild.
We saw tremendous performances in the Olympics, and some ridiculous actions by athletes, in order to celebrate winning a gold medal, or to show their scorn at having fallen short of the gold. The gross displays so outweighed the impressive ones that the U.S. athletes unfortunately came off as poor sports to the rest of the world. The posing, strutting, and otherwise distasteful and obnoxious gestures of some of the athletes were conclusively summed up by the U.S. 4×100 relay team of Maurice Greene, Jon Drummond, Bernard Williams and Brian Lewis, when, after winning the gold, they tried to outdo each other making faces at the crowd and the cameras, pulling off their jerseys, and twisting American flags into scarves or turbans. This might not even have been the worst of the U.S. displays of boorishness, just the concluding one.
In the National Football League, teams like the Vikings actually amplify crowd noise in an attempt to intimidate visitors to the Metrodome with sheer decibels. So maybe it’s understandable that every touchdown is followed by some outrageous display of duck-walking, strutting and absurd posturing.
However, in most of the distasteful ball-spiking, strutting routines, the perpetrator must think it shows creative imagination, rather than in-your-face bragging while simultaneously showing up the other team. The best, most mellow of such displays is poor sportsmanship, but we’re way beyond spontaneous jumps for joy and over the top into stupid, obviously practiced routines. Two weeks ago it happened in a game in Dallas, when a visiting player ran out onto the big star logo at the center of the Dallas football field to celebrate being the game’s star. He did it not once but a second time, after which I thought it was entirely fitting and proper that a burly Cowboy player ran over the jerk. The Cowboy got fined, meaning the NFL got the wrong guy.
This does not, by the way, include the wonderful post-touchdown thing that Randy Moss did in Detroit, by the way, where he ran directly to the first row of end zone seats and handed the football to his mom. The televised image of her, dancing and beaming with outright glee while she cradled the ball like a baby, was fantastic.
Look at college football to compare it with the NFL. UMD’s undefeated football team has scored some sensational touchdowns on long, quick-striking plays this season, and Erik Hanson scored one on a long touchdown pass from Ricky Fritz, a couple weeks ago. As he started toward the bench, he did a little dance step in spontaneous glee, and was nailed by the refs for unsportsmanlike conduct. It was harsh, in that particular case, but also proves that rules can lead to good sportsmanship. College players don’t strut like the NFL guys, so wouldn’t it be a relief if the NFL decided to pass a similar rule? You could combine out-of-word Olympic judges, who could hold up cards rating the post-touchdown struts, and anything over a “2” would earn a 15-yard penalty.
The Minnesota Wild was free of that sort of thing during sellouts in their two home debuts at the new Xcel Center in Saint Paul over the weekend. Before their opening game, they simply introduced the starters, without the now-tired lights-out, turn on the dry-ice smoke, and let the announcer scream. When that first game ended, the fans stood in an ovation as the Wild players trooped up the walkway to the dressing room. Simple. The players played, and the crowd cheered.
The next day, on one of those call-in sports talk shows in the Twin Cities, I heard some guy call in and say how perturbed he was at the Wild, because after the game, when the fans were standing and cheering, the players just went off the ice — they didn’t stay out to salute, strut, wave, jump up on the glass, tear off their jerseys, or otherwise show a lack of class.
Apparently, we’ve gotten to the point where obnoxious, over-zealous celebrations by athletes have become so commonplace that now some fans are insulted if the players don’t applaud the fans for applauding the players!
High-tempo 1st day hockey games open UMD’s Sandelin Era
The Scott Sandelin Era in UMD men’s hockey began Monday, although the coach was as calm and unruffled as he might have been on any sunny day in midsummer. He gave no indication that he felt any apprehension about his first day as head coach, which is more than his players might have said.
To the Bulldog players, the day was more pressure-filled, and they sped through a three-team tripleheader of mini-games at Pioneer Hall, the under-construction rink adjacent to the DECC. The difference is simple. Sandelin has been through a lot of opening-practice days as assistant coach at North Dakota, and he knew exactly what he wanted to see accomplished. His players, however, really weren’t sure what the new coach was looking for, and they were smart enough to set a swift tempo, every shift.
“We’ll have three days of nothing but scrimmages,” said Sandelin, former Hibbing and North Dakota star defenseman. “Then we’re giving ’em Thursday off.”
What goes without saying is that with 38 players in camp, including eight walk-ons, that Thursday “off” will probably become the day the coaching staff cuts down to a workable number, on the way to a final roster of 23.
If the players don’t know the coaches, the extra edge to practice is because the coaches don’t know the players all that well, either, so everybody is pretty much starting equally. Things will start to crystallize the first week, and the first UMD game will be Oct. 15 when the University of Regina comes to the DECC. One weekend later, the Bulldogs are at Minnesota. But that’s a long way off, right now. For now, Sandelin was satisfied with Day 1.
“It is fun to be able to watch ’em legally,” Sandelin said, noting that during on-campus captain’s practices, he could only walk briskly down the corridor, without stopping to view any workouts or no-check scrimmages. “We were in captain’s-practice shape, now we’ve got to get into practice shape, and it will be awhile till we’re in game shape.”
On Day 1, the gold team, identified as “Team 2,” claimed 2-0 victories over both Team 1 and Team 3. Freshman Adam Coole tended goal in the two shutouts, with freshmen Kyle Nosan and Tyler Williamson scoring in the first one, and Mark Pohl and Judd Medak scoring in the second. The third game also wound up 2-0, with Chad Kolar, a freshman from Hibbing, scoring both goals and Rob Anderson getting the shutout.
“The passing and timing isn’t there yet, but that’ll come,” said Sandelin, who joined assistant Steve Rohlik up above to watch the games, while Mark Strobel, the other assistant, ran the games on the ice. “It’s good for them all to scrimmage in practice, because the hitting is for real, and so is the backchecking.”
Coole, the younger brother of senior defenseman Ryan Coole, will compete with returning Rob Anderson, and back-up Jason Gregoire in goal. Other recruited freshmen among 20 forwards and 12 defensemen include Nick Anderson, Junior Lessard, Craig Weller, Dave Shields, Jerrid Reinholz, plus Josh Miskovich from Greenway and Andy Sacchetti from Eveleth. Nosan, Williamson, Kolar and former Duluth East winger Rheese Carlson are among the walkons, all of whom came in from junior hockey.
Overall, the players showed up in excellent shape. Part of that was because of Sandelin’s Team Olympics, in which all the players competed in each of 15 off-ice conditioning regimens, including various runs, exercises and weight-training events, since the beginning of classes. Points were kept and accumulated, and defenseman Jesse Fibiger won, with 1,130 points, with winger Judd Medak second at 1,115, followed by winger Ryan Homstol, defenseman Andy Reierson, and goaltender Gregoire.
Sandelin said that there were some pleasant surprises, and a few disappointments in the first day’s work, but nothing that was worth more than a shrug from the coach. After the third game, however, all three coaches met for an extended discussion, rating all the players behind closed doors, which undoubtedly will be the same drill through the scrimmage phase.
Josh Miskovich and Sacchetti, who committed out of high school and then spent a year playing in the USHL, chose to come to UMD this season. “Could they have developed more if they had stayed and played another season in the USHL? Probably,” said Sandelin. “I made them aware of that option, but I also like their attitude about wanting to come in and play right now.”
New NHL team, XCel Center, and 18,516 start Wild love affair
SAINT PAUL, MINN. — The owners of the Minnesota Wild had done their thing, coming up with the money to buy the rights to an expansion franchise in the National Hockey League, then they and the City of Saint Paul got together and built a spectacular, state-of-the-art arena right on the site of the old Civic Center. But Friday night was the first test. It was only an exhibition game, but it was the home opener of the Wild and the grand opening of the Xcel Center.
It was love at first sight, as a sellout crowd of 18,516 bought up every ticket, ranging from $10 to $60, with suite seats going for $75. And they were there with an opening roar to greet their new heroes — forget that it was supposedly a group from expansion land. They responded raucously when the Wild got an early start on the opening of duck-hunting season — whipping the Anaheim Mighty Ducks 3-1.
“You could feel the fans’ presence, even in warmups,” said Darby Hendrickson, a former Gopher who is now a Duluthian, living on Island Lake. “Every guy had commented on it when we came back to the locker room. I didn’t know I was starting until just before the game, and when they announced my name, I got a tingling feeling — it’s hard to explain.”
Teammate Jeff Nielsen, a winger from Grand Rapids, suggested the tingling might have been because of a crowd reaction that was so impressive he had to heckle Darby about it. “It was unbelievable, the ovation Darby got when they announced he was starting at center,” Nielsen said. “That’s got to be the loudest ovation for a mucker in league history. To get an ovation like that, you’ve got to be a marquee player.”
Hendrickson was a marquee player on the opening faceoff, snatching the puck back to his defense away from former North Dakota star and Hobey Baker winner Tony Hrkac. But it was clear Hendrickson was moved by the emotion of the night.
“Every guy from Minnesota who plays hockey professionally has dreamed about playing here,” said Hendrickson. “You have to sit back and realize how neat it is. I was sitting on the bench, thinking that I might be in the same exact space as when I played in the Civic Center in the high school tournament. How many memories were in that rink — a million. Now there’s a $170-million building on this spot, and the NHL is in Saint Paul.
“Saint Paul is special, when it comes to hockey. The first time I was ever in the Civic Center was in 1976. I was 4 years old, and my dad was coaching Richfield. Now it’s 24 years later, I’m 28, I’m back here playing, and the NHL is back in Minnesota. Hockey’s never changed here — the Minnesota people are the constant — but the NHL is back now.”
The fans know it, too. Folks wearing Wild jerseys were wandering around town and hitting nearby restaurants as early at 3:30 in the afternoon. The poured into the Xcel Center plenty early, and wandered the wide, spacious corridors and checked it out before hitting their seats. The Wild players admitted they were wondering what kind of impact they’d make on the area and on the fans.
The answer came early, when the Wild was so charged up by the crowd that they appeared capable of leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Or, at least, getting an early jump ahead of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks with a goal by Kai Nurminen at 2:49, a goal by Brad Bombardir at 6:05, and a 3-0 lead when Aaron Gavey scored at 10:46, all in the first period.
While it was only an exhibition game, the 3-1 victory came over an established scoring-machine. Paul Kariya and Teemu Selanne were out there on regular duty and on a power-play unit the Wild somehow held scoreless on seven tries. Jamie McLellan stopped 21 of Anaheim’s 22 shots, using quickness, skill, and a whole bunch of luck to keep the Mighty Ducks scoreless until 5:46 remained in the third period, when Selanne scored with a quick shot from deep in the left circle.
The first goal was on a neat exchange, as Stacy Roest went behind the net to get the puck and came out on the right side as Nurminen circled out front from behind the net on the left. Roest passed and Nurminen put it away.
“The early goal loosened up the guys,” said coach Jacques Lemaire. “I could tell they were nervous. I could see right away when the guys went on the ice, and the guys in the seats were standing; they appreciated having a team back here.”
The Wild went 0-for-9 on power plays, although Bombardir swept in from the point and deflected Maxim Sushinsky’s right point shot past goalie J.S. Giguere at 6:05, the precise moment a power play expired.
The third goal came on a sequence of deft moves by Gavey, after Nielsen’s stickblade broke when he tried to pass from the right corner. The puck hit the base of the goal and bounced up in the air behind the net. Gavey batted it toward himself out of the air, then he batted it a second time as he moved out front on the left side, and when the puck finally settled, he snapped a backhander in on the short side against Giguere.
Then the fans got a look at the style Wild coach Lemaire hopes to deploy. After getting seven shots in the first period — mostly in the first 10 minutes — the Wild got only two in the second, and wound up with only 14 for the game.
“Myself, I wanted to show the fans we have a decent team,” said Lemaire. “We’re starting, and we’re going to make mistakes, but we’re learning. We have to be careful when we play better teams. We were lucky tonight we didn’t get burned. They have Selanne and Kariya, who are always dangerous, and we had some luck, especially penalty killing, when they had some great chances. Jamie came up big on some difficult shots.
“It was a good game for us, great to be out there the first time. You could tell the fans were waiting for a good game, and there was a lot of excitement because we worked hard from start to end.”
It meant most to the fans, and to the homestate players. “You couldn’t ask for a better script than this,” said Nielsen. “At 11 this morning, when I was here, there were saws, chairs, dust, 50 guys taping, scraping and sanding, and I thought, ‘How are they ever going to get this ready for tonight?’ But they did it. Then we come out and jump ahead 3-0, and the fans had to be asking, ‘What team is this?’ They had to be expecting an expansion team that couldn’t win.”
Scissons, Nicklin back at UMD — but only to wish Bulldogs well
All seemed in order for UMD’s hockey team during a midweek captain’s practice at the on-campus rink, because for the fifth consecutive year, Jeff Scissons and Brant Nicklin were there.
There was a difference, however. For the last four years, Scissons and Nicklin have been the team’s security blankets. Scissons ignited the Bulldog offense, scoring as much as he could even while his teammates faltered and fired mostly blanks the past two years, while Nicklin was the stalwart in goal, setting records for games played and shots weathered, even while the team’s ability to win faded.
This year, the Bulldogs will have to do it without them; their appearance at UMD was just a coincidental stopover for both of them as their paths converged while criss-crossing the continent on their way to minor league pro hockey assignments.
Scissons left the Vancouver Canucks camp, picked up his car back home in Saskatoon, and drove in on his way to Kansas City’s International League site. He had to be there Friday. “We play on the 6th,” he said.
Nicklin was sent down by the Pittsburgh Penguins to their Wilkes-Barre American League club, but a glut of goaltenders forced reassignment to the East Coast League, where he’ll play for the Florida Everglades, based in Fort Myers.
Scissons, last year’s captain, typically blamed no one but himself for not sticking with the Canucks.
“I spent the summer in Vancouver working out, and the people out there are really crazy about hockey,” said Scissons. “Going to camp was really a learning experience. You get to challenge yourself at the next level, and I could have played better. I didn’t have my best camp. It was a lot different, very quick, and you have to be quick adjusting. The scrimmages were pretty scrambly, and it was tough to read the play.
“I’m still learning my own capabilities, so it definitely was a good learning experience for me. The biggest difference is that you don’t have much room to carry the puck. So now I’ll go down to Kansas City and learn some more. There are a lot of guys fighting for the same positions.
“In my case, I’ve got a good basis from my education, so I can play hockey because I enjoy it. I signed a two-way contract for two years, so I’m giving myself at least two years to give it a shot and at least establish that I can play at the NHL level.”
Nicklin said: “We had seven goalies in camp at Pittsburgh, and they signed a couple more. There are still three goalies in Pittsburgh right now, and three more at Wilkes-Barre, and I heard they might sign still another one. They have so many goalies that when I had the chance to go to Carolina, their East Coast League team, I thought it was better to go to another team with a chance to play more.”
Just about then, Scott Sandelin walked by in the adjacent corridor. It was perfect timing. Sandelin is the new UMD hockey coach, and his first task is to rebuild a contender from the Bulldogs who remain, without their two biggest cogs, who happened to be observers at that moment.
Sandelin was asked if he felt apprehensive about Monday, when practice officially begins, and he said no. “It’s going to be fun, really,” Sandelin said. “As our dryland training has gone on, all I’ve seen is a lot of enthusiasm. I think almost everybody has come in good shape, and from the way they’ve worked in dryland, I’d say they’re extremely hard workers.”
To prove how hard they’re working, the Bulldogs have been run through their own Olympic-style competition in dryland training. Sandelin put together 15 events to challenge the players’ conditioning before they ever hit the ice
“We’ve got the mile run, 3-mile run, 12-minute run, 40-yard dash, the ‘Bulldog Run,’ bench press, hip-sled, leg-press, pushups, pull-ups, sit-ups, 100-meter run, vertical jump, a flexibility test, and a grip-strength test,” said Sandelin. “We have competition both individually and in three-man teams. The top individuals have been Jesse Fibiger, Ryan Homstol, Judd Medak, Andy Reierson and Jason Gregoire.”
Derek Derow and Mark Gunderson have both been reduced to observers through captain’s practice scrimmages because of arthroscopic knee surgery, considered minor, to clean up some fragments from previous surgery and/or injuries. Both laughed at the inevitable heckles that they were just trying to get out of the early practice regimen, and they clearly are looking forward to hitting the ice.
“No matter how many games we lost the last two years, we played the best teams tough in all but a couple cases,” said Derow, who admitted he was surprised to be named captain. “The new coaches are upbeat, and intense. All three of them have been winners, and I think their intensity is already filtering down through all the players.”
If the lack of scoring was the primary reason that UMD nosedived to the lower reaches of the WCHA the past two seasons, linemates Scissons and Colin Anderson, who also was a senior, can’t be blamed. The Bulldogs started last season 11-11 then plummeted with a 4-11 finish for a 15-22 record. Of the 15 game-winning goals, Anderson had four and Scissons three, meaning they had seven, almost equaling the eight compiled by the remaining 18 skaters. Anderson scored 18 goals and Scissons 14, accounting for 34.4 percent of the team’s goals, while the 61 goals totaled by the other 18 players works out to an average of less than 3.4 goals apiece.
The top two returning goal-scorers are Derow, who scored 10, and sophomore Drew Otten, a walk-on who scored 9 goals, including three game-winners. Scissons scoffed at comparing last year’s numbers. “Every guy I’ve talked to seems real excited,” Scissons said. “I think a lot of guys have something left to prove.”
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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