‘Cloquet Connection’ helps Cup-favorite Stars
DALLAS, TEXAS
It seemed strange, with the temperature in the 90s, to be fighting rush-hour traffic to get to Reunion Arena in downtown Dallas for a hockey game in late April. At that, it was sort of a reverse homecoming, because the Dallas Stars were once the Minnesota North Stars, and there are still some familiar faces.
The best Up North touches, however, are newcomers to the Stars this season. Among them is Duluth resident and former UMD star Brett Hull, who came in from St. Louis and is the No. 2 scorer on the club, which took the NHL’s top regular-season rating into the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
More to the core of Up North hockey, Jamie Langenbrunner and Derek Plante are both regulars in the Stars lineup. Langenbrunner, in his second full season with the big club, scored the game-winning goal in last Friday’s 3-2 victory over Edmonton in Game 2 in Dallas. For good measure, Langenbrunner set up linemate Joe Nieuwendyk for the winner in Edmonton on Sunday night for another 3-2 victory — this one after the Stars rallied from a 2-0 deficit for a victory that put them on the brink of a four-game sweep against the Oilers.
The odds of two hockey players from Cloquet both making it in the NHL are pretty steep; the odds of both of them playing on the same team are off the scale.
“It’d be fun to figure out the odds on that,” said Plante. “Not bad for a town of about 11,000. And not only are we both here, but Corey Millen, who’s now playing in Europe, played for the Stars a few years ago. And Rick Mrozik was drafted by the Stars. So there could ha ve been four Cloquet guys playing for the Stars.”
At 28, Plante is five years older than Langenbrunner, and while Plante started his sixth NHL season in Buffalo, he has had to make a major weather adjustment. “I’m not high on heat, but at least in Dallas you can see the sun,” said Plante.
Langenbrunner saw the light last season, when he followed up a 13-26–39 rookie season by scoring 23 goals and 29 assists for a 52-point season that earned him a spot as a solid regular in Dallas. But he missed the start of this season when negotiations for his second pro contract broke down. Since signing, he has been satisfied to work hard, skate hard, and increase his assists to 33 while scoring only 12 goals.
“It’s been frustrating at times,” said Langenbrunner. “But I’ve been playing with Nieuwendyk quite a bit this season, so it’s not like I haven’t been on a line that can score. Sometimes the pucks go in quite a bit and sometimes they don’t.”
Langenbrunner’s output indicates how NHL has changed since its days in Minnesota. Defense is everything, and scoring chances — let alone scoring — are at a premium. So Langenbrunner’s hustling, hard-charging style is a tremendous asset, and when the chances come, he can score.
It was that way Friday. Langenbrunner might not have had another good chance all game, but in the third period, with the Stars leading the rugged Oilers 2-1, Langenbrunner moved off the right boards to pounce on a loose puck at the top of the circle. He veered toward the net with the puck on his backhand, and, with no chance to shift to his forehand, he snapped off a wicked backhander at goaltender Tommy Salo.
“I got it just over his blocker,” said Langenbrunner. “The odds are, you won’t get many chances, especially in the playoffs, so it’s nice to put it in when you get the chance.”
While Langenbrunner and the Stars established themselves as the stingiest defensive team in the NHL, Buffalo was having a decent season across the continent. But Plante wasn’t playing much. He’s a quick, light, creative player and the Sabres decided they needed beefier players in the lineup. His ice time diminished last season, and lessened this season, where he only scored 4 goals and 11 assists in part-time duty in 41 games. Things had reached such a low point that Plante asked for a trade from the Sabres, the only team he had played for in the six years since he left UMD.
“It got pretty frustrating in Buffalo,” said Plante, who was sent to Dallas for a second-round draft pick on March 23 for a second-round spot in the amateur draft. “Their plan was to be more physical, so I probably only played in half their games, and not many shifts in those. I’d asked for a trade earlier in the season, but it never came. I was praying I’d get traded, anywhere, even though I knew I could get sent to a rebuilding team. So to finally get traded right before the deadline, and to have it be to what possibly is the best team in hockey, it couldn’t have been better.
“We were in New Jersey when I heard I’d been traded, so I had to go back to Buffalo and then be on a 10 a.m. flight to join the Stars in Los Angeles. My stuff just got sent here.”
While both of them grew up in the Cloquet youth and high school system, they were separated by five years, which meant they never played together.
“I watched Derek play when I was younger,” said Langenbrunner. “My dad was an assistant coach of the high school team when he played, and then I watched him at UMD, and we’ve skated together some in the summer. We didn’t know each other all that well growing up, but I’m really glad we go him. He’s a great guy and he’s played well since coming here.”
Plante went on to UMD, where he made sensational progression in four years, with scoring stats that went from 10-11–21 as a freshman, to 23-20–43, as a sophomore, 27-36–63 as an outstanding junior, and finally to 36-56–92 in his splendid senior year as captain. Langenbrunner chose a different route.
After leading Cloquet to the state tournament as a junior, he bypassed his senior year after being drafted by the North Stars, and went to play at Peterborough, in the Ontario Hockey League’s Tier I junior competition. He played 62 games at Peterborough for two seasons, scoring 33-58–91 and 42-57–99. In 1995-96 he got to play a dozen games with Dallas and spent the other 59 games in the International Hockey League, scoring 25-40–65 for Michigan, before getting his chance to stick with the big club for a 13-26–39 rookie year in 1996-97.
With such high-profile stars as Hull and Mike Modano, both Langenbrunner and Plante know and accept their roles with the Stars.
“This team has a system where it doesn’t matter who scores, we focus on defense,” said Plante. “It’s basically the same system — a basic trap — that we played in Buffalo. You always have to make sure some forward is back defensively.”
General Manager Bob Gainey is always cautious with his praise, but he has built this team according to his own defensive playing-style. “Jaime has struggled at times this season, but only because, with his tools, we’d like to see him be a bit more noticeable,” said Gainey. “We’re hoping that Derek may be able to pop a few goals. They’re both good kids — good people.”
In that Friday game, Modano centered Hull and Jere Lehtinen, while Guy Carbonneau centered Blake Sloan and Dave Reid on lines that accounted for the Stars first two goals. Langenbrunner played left wing with Nieuwendyk at center and Benoit Hogue on left wing, while Plante centered Mike Keane and Grant Marshall. The lines got jumbled from frequent power plays and penalty kills, but coach Ken Hitchcock did an excellent job of juggling lines to keep everybody in the game.
“It’s so funny how this game goes,” said Plante. “You start thinking about how much luck has to do with it. You get a chance and take a great shot, and hit the goaltender in the helmet. Then you get a lousy shot and somehow it goes in. But it’s great to win.”
The Stars, with their Cloquet Connection, are likely to still be winning when the playoffs of April and May turn to June.
Bulldogs thrive on hectic baseball schedule
It was a bright, fairly clear and fairly mild spring day in Duluth, but it would turn into typical Duluth spring weather soon.
By the time the UMD baseball team had whipped Bemidji State 11-4 and the second game of Tuesday’s Northern Sun doubleheader had begun, the clouds had swept in, the temperature plunged about 15 degrees, and the handful of fans who remained zipped their jackets up to the top and wished they had worn heavier ones.
It was a critical doubleheader for the Bulldogs, who had gone into last weekend with a 2-3 league record, and stood 6-8 overall. But they swept Minnesota-Morris 10-4 and 7-1 on Saturday, and took Morris again, 7-2 and 10-0, on Sunday. A rescheduled doubleheader at Carleton was played on Monday, with UMD winning 3-1 and 12-4.
So the Bemidji State doubleheader meant doubleheaders on four consecutive days — eight games in four days. Winning the opener was huge, as ace pitcher Chris Swiatkiewicz, who set a school record for career strikeouts on Saturday, struck out 11 more.
“Chris is a great pitcher, he’s something like 15-1 now,” said coach Scott Hanna. “The Dukes are looking at him, and the White Sox have scouted him.”
Robert Rothe hit a home run in that first game, while Dave Tafelski, Bryan Spaeth and Jed Meyer had two hits each.
The second game, the team’s eighth game in four days, became enormously important to the Bulldogs in the league picture, and Hanna started Jamie Swenson, a sophomore from Woodbury, on the mound. “He worked his way up from pitching relief to become one of our four starters,” said Hanna, who is in his 21st year as UMD coach.
Swenson had good stuff, chilly weather or not, as the second game stood 2-2 in the last of the fourth. With two out and a runner on third, Kiel Kreidermacher attempted a squeeze bunt that went foul. But two pitches later, Kreidermacher, a senior from Mendota Heights, lined a single to right-center to break the tie.
Matt Joesting, the team’s top hitter at .390, socked his fourth home run of the season in the fifth to make it 4-2, and Andy Dooley, a junior from Albert Lea, and another reliever who has earned a starting slot, relieved Swenson and finished off the last two innings of a 5-2 victory.
The back-breaking task of eight games in four days had resulted in eight straight UMD victories. The Bulldogs, once 1-3 in the Northern Sun, vaulted to 9-3, and from 6-8 to 14-8 overall.
It’s been a team effort, with Joesting (.393), Tefelski (.388), Kreidermache (.357), Ryan Skubic (.349); Steve Battaglia (.333), Rothe (.306), Bryan Spaeth (.302), and Marty Spanish (.300) leading the way offensively. As for pitching, Chris Swiatkiewic is 5-0, Swenson 3-1 and Dooley 3-0, seeing double-duty between staff rotations.
“It’s a stretch on the pitching staff, and it wears me out, but the players seem to thrive on it,” Hanna added. “It was tough, because we played at Carleton last night, then bused home late, and had to play Bemidji today. But it’s the same for everybody.
“Besides, next week we’ve got 10 games in six days. We play Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.”
Monday’s game is against Wisconsin-Superior at 1 p.m. at UMD; Tuesday is a return trip to Bemidji State; Wednesday, Mount Senario comes to Duluth for a 1 p.m. doubleheader; and Southwest State visits UMD for Friday and Saturday doubleheaders. Before that, though, UMD hit the road on Thursday to play doubleheaders at Northern State in Aberdeen, this Friday and Saturday.
As for the jammed-up schedule, Hanna described it best.
“It’s kind of like a fight with a muskie,” said Hanna. “It’s a short, violent fight.”
]That was one of the equalizers in playing Bemidji State, which is possibly the only school on the schedule with a shorter, less-predictable baseball season than the springtime in Duluth.
Laaksonen, Bottems lead Minnesota to title
So far, the concept of not taking any scholarship hockey players to the Chicago Showcase high school hockey all-star tournament seems to be working just fine for Minnesota. Bolstered by the goaltending of Cloquet’s Adam Laaksonen, and two goals from Hibbing’s O.J. Bottoms, Minnesota whipped Pittsburgh 6-2 in Sunday’s championship game to complete a clean sweep of the nationwide tournament in Chicago.
Minnesota won all three games in its four-team preliminary bracket, then beat the Missouri all-stars in the quarterfinals, Buffalo, N.Y., in the semifinals, and Pittsburgh in the title match. It was the third consecutive Chicago Showcase championship for Minnesota.
“We were as good as we’ve ever been,” said Ted Brill of Grand Rapids, the organizer and co-coach with Dave Hendrickson of Virginia. “I didn’t notice any letoff of the other teams, but we had a good group. Everybody we had knew we all had to work together, and we had all ‘We’ and no ‘Me’ on the team.”
After competing well in the tournament for several years with the top players chosen from the annual post-season Maroon and Gold all-star series, it was Brill’s idea to select the team but to exclude those players who already had Division I scholarship commitments. The plan was to give maximum exposure to some very good players that had so far been overlooked, and even though Minnesota is the only team in the nationwide tournament to exclude its top players, this was its third straight championship.
“Everyone involved with Minnesota hockey can be very proud of the way these kids performed,” said Brill. “We had outstanding goaltending, our defense dominated play in our own end, and our forwards were flying everywhere. Our lines were balanced, and we rotated straight through.”
In fact, Brill added, he told goalies Laaksonen and Adam Berkhuel from Stillwater to split up the games anyway they chose, and they agreed to split each game, alternating which one started. Brill said he also told each line to rotate who sat out penalty kills, and everything went smoothly.
With all players selected from the recent Great Eight statewide tournament, Minnesota opened the tournament last week with a rousing 11-4 victory over Buffalo, then beat Northern New England 10-2, before completing its preliminary-round sweep with a 5-0 victory over Wisconsin. Critics could suggest that Minnesota had the easier bracket, with traditional co-favorites Massachusetts and Michigan both in another bracket, but the playoff round suggested Minnesota’s bracket was the toughest.
Up North players made major impacts on Minnesota’s success. When Minnesota beat Missouri 7-3 in the quarterfinals, Roseau’s Mike Klema scored two goals. In the semifinal 10-5 romp over Buffalo, Roseville’s Brett Hammond and Hill-Murray’s Dan Miller scored twice each.
Pittsburgh eliminated Michigan 5-4 in the other semifinal, but in the title game, Bottoms scored for a 1-0 lead, but Pittsburgh came back to gain a 2-2 tie after one period. Hill-Murray linemates Dan Miller and Matt Koalska scored for a 4-2 second-period lead, as Laaksonen allowed only one goal in the first half of the game. Minnesota put it away in the third period, clinching the victory when Bottoms scored into an open net at the finish.
UMD women’s hockey team has international flair
UMD women’s hockey coach Shannon Miller isn’t ready to announce her first team’s roster yet, but with more players close to committing, the team has taken on a distinct international flavor.
Duluth Dynamite teammates Tresa Lamphier and Leah Wrazidlo are the top Up North recruits, and prospects from this past season’s UMD club team include defensemen Jessica Smith and Angella Harvieux, and forward Jessi Flink.
Otherwise, prospects include goaltender Amanda Tapp, defensemen Pamela Pachal and Nevada Russell, and forwards Michelle McAteer and Joanne Eustache, all from Canada; goaltender Amanda Tapp of Switzerland; forward Maria Roth of Sweden; and defenseman Breana Berry from Wayzata, and forward Alexa Gollinger of St. Paul Academy.
Miller said that some other top prospects are set, pending finalizing of scholarship papers, but wouldn’t comment on the list of prospects. She said she still intends to conduct open tryouts in the fall before the team’s inaugural season.
UMD FOOTBALL COACHING
LIST NEARING FINAL STAGE
The UMD football coaching selection committee met again Tuesday with the intention of paring down the list of candidates from 16, in hopes of having a half-dozen finalists by next week. Vince Repesh and Jim Malosky Jr., the two assistants under just-retired Jim Malosky and the co-coaches of last falls Bulldogs, both remain in the field of candidates. And both are assured of being retained as assistant coaches if another candidate is chosen.
Among the rumored front-running candidates is Randy Hedberg, the offensive coordinator at the University of North Dakota, and several head coaches from the Wisconsin State University Conference, have reportedly applied, including Bob Nielson of Eau Claire, John Miech of Stevens Point, and Ed Meierkort of Stout. Lloyd Danzeisen of Fergus Falls Community College is rumored to be another candidate.
“We’re sort of in a vacuum right now, but the last 16 candidates give us a good cross-section of different perspectives,” said Jonathan Conant, chairman of the search committee.
Gretzky departure leaves NHL to its own defenses
As an eager hockey reporter, I covered the Minnesota North Stars of the NHL and the Minnesota Fighting Saints of the World Hockey Association back in October of 1978. So at the start of the season I accompanied the North Stars to Chicago for a Sunday night game at Chicago Stadium — which had that phenomenal old pipe organ, and the horn from a Great Lakes freighter that would blow the lid off the place every time the Blackhawks scored.
The North Stars were scheduled to fly into Toronto the next day, to prepare for a Tuesday night game against the Maple Leafs. Instead of going with the team to Toronto, Lou Nanne, — who had moved from North Stars player to general manager by then — and I rented a car and drove to Indianapolis. The old WHA was trying to hang on in those days, a last gasp before an inevitable merger of its strongest franchises, and on that Monday night in October of 1978, the Indianapolis Racers were at home in Market Square Arena to play the Edmonton Oilers.
The attraction for me was one of the most amazing stories in professional sports history. The Indianapolis Racers had angered the entire NHL by going into Canada’s junior ranks and stealing away a kid who was only 17 years old. His name was Wayne Gretzky, and he was something special, everybody said. But seeing would be believing, because the thought of picking any high school junior, and inserting him into a major league roster in any sport, was bizarre.
Lou Nanne’s reason for going was because “Sweet Lou from the Soo” was already well into his alter-ego career as a lifetime public relations man for everybody who ever came from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and Gretzky had scored 70 goals and added 112 assists for 182 points in 64 games the previous season for the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds junior team of the Ontario Hockey League.
The mainstream NHL media avoided the WHA in those days, so I had no trouble setting up an exclusive interview with Gretzky. He was shy, but warmly personable as he explained how he was living with a family, and between road trips he was attending high school in the daytime, and playing pro hockey at night. Gretzky was relaxed and poised, and humble and unassuming — traits he carried always during his throughout his storied 20-year career. But this is about the 21st season, which seems to have been forgotten by historians.
At the game, I sat in the seats at the end of Market Square Arena rather than the press box to focus in and see what was so great about this skinny teenager. He could keep the puck on his stickblade like a yo-yo on a string, and even then he could tantalize grizzled pros by luring them to come after the puck, then pull it away and pass to the area they had vacated.
At one point, Gretzky skated toward the goal where I was sitting but the puck was blocked away and wound up behind the net. Gretzky pounced on it and fired it off the back of the goaltender’s leg and into the net for a goal. Later in that game, Gretzky scored a more conventional goal, too.
It was a couple games into the season, but I wasn’t aware until after the game that those were the first two goals the kid had scored. It seems like that game was just a couple of years ago, instead of 21 years ago. Just like it seems incomprehensible that Gretzky, who will always look like he’s 25, has decided to retire from the game at age 38.
Gretzky scored three goals along with three assists in eight games with the Racers, then he was traded by the soon-to-be-extinct Racers to Edmonton, where he went through the remaining 72 games by scoring 43-61 — 104. Hard-core NHLers said the WHA was lousy, and nobody could score like that in the NHL. As it turned out, that was the final year of the WHA, and Edmonton was one of the surviving franchises that was accepted into the NHL one year later. So in 1979-80, Gretzky scored 51-86 — 137 in the NHL.
The rest, as they say, is history. Gretzky had so many stupendous seasons, that recounting the stats simply becomes meaningless. True, the ’81-82 year was something special, because Gretzky had 92 goals (still a record), including 50 in the first 39 games, and added 120 assists for a record 212 points. That year, he set another NHL record by winning the league scoring title by a 65-point margin.
He jacked his record up to 215 points in 1985-86, with 52 goals and a record 163 assists. But the points are only numbers compared to how he played the game. People marvel at how Gretzky goes behind the goal and torments defense by making plays from there. True enough, he used the net as a built-in “pick,” waiting for a defenseman to come after him one way, then escaping on the other side to trap a defender and assure himself of an open pass-receiver. It turns out, Gretzky also is legendary for scoring from behind the net.
But to me the most memorable part of Gretzky’s game was to rush across the blue line while everybody in an opposing jersey sprinted to get back and defend their goal. Gretzky then would do a quick, tight, outside curl, waiting to let the defenders pick up the first winger coming in, while he’d always find a trailer, who was always wide open, and feather a pass to him in perfect shooting position’
His magical ability to sense where everybody on the rink was at all times enhanced his ability to lay soft passes to open ice that could only be anticipated, and therefore caught, by alert teammates.
Opponents, even thugs, never took runs at Gretzky. It almost was an unwritten rule that nobody wanted to be reviled for injuring the league’s treasure, but just as important was the certainty that if you ran at Gretzky, he would get the puck to someone you should have been covering.
Gretzky led Edmonton to four Stanley Cups in nine years before financial problems caused the Oilers to trade the franchise to the Los Angeles Kings. He was there for seven-plus years, got the Kings to a Stanley Cup final, and it was while wearing his No. 99 jersey with the Kings that Minnesota fans got to see him in the North Stars final season. Gretzky finished the 1995-96 season with the St. Louis Blues, then was off to Broadway, where he spent the last three years.
His numbers faded. Gretzky, now 38, scored only 9 goals and 53 assists this season, but the Rangers were dismal, missing the playoffs, which is no small achievement in the NHL. Nine goals. When you think about it, he has scored more goals than that in the playoffs alone in six different seasons.
I have my own theory on why and how Gretzky’s point tallies have faded. The obvious thing is that the Rangers don’t have a perfect winger, like Jari Kurri, who complemented Gretzky by anticipating and finishing off those magnificent no-look passes both at Edmonton and Los Angeles.
But back then, when Gretzky was changing the way the NHL would perceive excellence, there was a reason that Kurri, who was from Finland, could anticipate Gretzky’s brilliance. There were no Russian players in the NHL in those days. But if you saw those old Soviet teams, you realized that players like Valeri Kharlamov, or Alexander Maltsev, played with the same creative flair of Gretzky years before him.
In recent years, the arrival of outstanding Russian players, like Sergei Fedorov or Igor Larionov, or Pavel Bure, plus Czech superstars like Jaromir Jagr, have followed Gretzky’s lead. Almost every team has a Russian or two, and if you noticed, when Gretzky zoomed up the rink, crossed the blue line, then did that patented little outside curl to pass to the trailing winger, that pass suddenly started being anticipated and intercepted by those European players.
It didn’t mean Gretzky, the Great One, was any less great. It just means that he taught the world too well, and it took the NHL a little longer to figure it out.
It would be wonderful if we could assume that Gretzky has changed the NHL forever. In truth, he has. But not in the way we might like. Instead of other franchises trying to play like Gretzky, they all have spent so much time trying to corner the elusive No. 99 that almost all of them now stress defense. Nobody can get open, everyone is checked to submission, and freedom to make plays is at an all-time premium in the NHL.
Jagr won the NHL scoring title with 127 points this season. That’s fantastic. Those 127 points also are a mere 36 fewer than the ASSISTS Gretzky earned 13 years ago. So maybe the new NHL style is good. Along with retiring Gretzky’s No. 99 for life, the NHL’s current style seems certain to also be retiring his records.
Funny thing about the NHL, it still hasn’t forgiven the WHA. Gretzky’s career goals are listed as 894, but that’s just NHL goals. They don’t count the 43 more he scored for Edmonton back in 1978-79, or the three he scored for the Indianapolis Racers. They would run his total to 940. And, great as are the memories of those subsequent 938 goals, I’ll always cherish the memory of the first two.
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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