Stranger from Japan proves familiar
By John Gilbert
It seems a long time ago, because it was, in the mid-1960s. I was just starting out as a sportswriter, and the University of Minnesota-Duluth was just starting to dabble in hockey at the Division I level. The Bulldogs, under coach Ralph Romano, played in the old Curling Club, and while their favorite rival was Minnesota, the big powers in college hockey were Michigan, Michigan Tech, North Dakota, and Denver.
Michigan won the NCAA hockey championship in 1964 with a collection of big, strong and talented players, and one little guy — a darting centerman named Mel Wakabayashi. In Duluth, we knew all about talented little centers, with Keith (Huffer) Christiansen directing virtually all of the meaningful offense the Bulldogs could muster. Huffer won a WCHA scoring title and became an All-American, shortly after Wakabayashi won a league scoring title and became an All-American.
It was easy to pay attention to Huffer’s play after college, because he played on the 1972 U.S. Olympic team as a naturalized citizen from Fort Frances, Ontario, and then got a chance to play for the Minnesota Fighting Saints in the World Hockey Association. It was not as easy to keep up with Mel Wakabayashi after college.
Fast forward 40-some years. Now it is 2013 and the University of Minnesota women’s hockey team opened its season with an interesting exhibition game against the National team from Japan. Now, Japan is not a threat to win any medals in men’s hockey, and seems farther removed from the comparatively fledgling women’s international hockey.
But Japan came to Duluth and acquitted itself well. Having tied St. Cloud State, and lost to the WCHA’s top two seeds — Minnesota (6-0) and Wisconsin (3-0), Japan jumped ahead of UMD when Rui Ukita scored on an unprotected rebound to open the game. UMD freshman Ashleigh Brykaliuk tied it 1-1 on a power play late in the opening period. Hanae Kuba scored for Japan at 13:33 of the second period, and it took another power play for Meghan Huertas, another UMD freshman, to score for a 2-2 tie.
Japan was quick, moved the puck better than the first-game-rusty Bulldogs, but UMD prevailed in the third period as Jamie Kenyon scored a hat trick, including an empty-net goal, and Katherine McGovern, yet another unknown UMD skater, also scored. UMD outshot Japan 43-13 for the game, but Japan’s goaltender, Azusa Nakaoku, was outstanding.
After the game, I scanned the Japan lineup in the AMSOIL Arena press box, hoping to see some name that might ignite a glimmer that I could find a brief communicator. At the bottom of the roster, it said: “Team Leader — Mel Wakabayashi.”
Could it be? I scoured the lower corridor of the arena and finally a team liaison fellow produced a short, stocky Japanese fellow, and pointed at him. I approached with some degree of caution and asked if he had ever played college hockey. “Yes,” he said. “At the University of Michigan.”
Bingo!
We had an interesting conversation, and I told him I had watched him play in the Curling Club, against UMD, and down at the old Williams Arena, against the Gophers, while writing for the college newspapers, and then for the Duluth News Tribune.
He was extremely humble, and gracious, and I had to drag his personal information out of him.
“Yes, I played against Huffer in Duluth once,” he said. “Yes, I led the league in scoring once. I played with Gordon Wilkie, Wilf Martin, and Tom Polonic at Michigan, and Bob Gray was our goaltender…”
I mentioned that Polonic, in particular, was a huge tough guy who made it to the NHL with his ruggedness. “Yes, I needed players like that,” he smiled. “We won the NCAA title in 1966. Beat Denver 6-2 in the finals.”
What about after college? The NHL didn’t give college players much of a chance. “I signed with the Red Wings after college in 1967,” he said. “They sent me to their Memphis farm team, but after a few games I got the chance to go to Japan and play in their six-team professional league.”
I insisted Walabayashi must have been the best player in Japan by a mile, and he insisted he wasn’t. But I’m pretty sure I’m right, even though he said there were a couple of good players from Northern Japan, and then his brother. Herb Wakabayashi was an All-American at Boston University.
“Herb changed to Japanese citizenship so he could play for Japan in the Sapporo Olympics,” said Mel. “I was the first foreigner to play in the Japanese league when I moved there in 1967. I played in that league until 1979, and I live in Tokyo now. I got my Japanese citizenship in 1994. You aren’t allowed to have dual citizenship in Japan, and I was a third-generation Japanese Canadian.”
After playing pro hockey in Japan for 12 years, Wakabayashi — whose name officially is Hitoshi Mel Wakabayashi — moved into player development, and rose in prominence until he now is vice president of the Japan Ice Hockey Federation. He is guiding the women’s national team as it tours and plays in preparation for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Russia.
I asked Mel where he grew up. “British Columbia,” he said. “We lived in Slocan City.”
I’ve been to British Columbia, and watched hockey games there, and I’ve heard of almost every little town in the province, since they feed a lot of players to college and pro hockey. But I’ve never heard of Slocan City. I asked him about the town, which is deep in the Canadian Rockies, quite a distance east of Kelowna, and considerably north of Trail, and Castlegar.
Without hesitation, Wakabayashi said: “It was an interment camp, during the second world war. I was born in 1943, and we lived there.”
We in North America, both the U.S. and Canada, didn’t treat Japanese immigrants very well during World War II, securing them in separated villages that a fool could mistake for low-pressure prison camps. He shrugged. “It was wartime,” he said, as though that excused such confinement.
He looked good, like he could still skate few darting moves out there on the rink. Made me wish I had called Huffer. He probably would have come down to AMSOIL to renew acquaintances, and maybe I could have coaxed the two of them to play a little 1-on-1. Huffer Christiansen and Mel Wakabayashi. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.
ESKO’S NEW FIELD
The big dedication game was last Friday, and Esko High School opened its slick new artificial-turf football field with a rousing 28-14 victory over previously undefeated Two Harbors. The passing of Marc Carlson was virtually unstoppable, and the fired-up Eskomos ran up a 20-0 lead almost as soon as the pregame ceremonies were over.
A skydiver dropped in, and all sorts of other festivities set the proper tone, with returning past heroes of the Eskomos and a big crowd providing a big home-field advantage. The field is impressive, with the current trend of propping up the artificial blades of grass with a few million tiny black particles form shredded discarded tires. Makes for a springier step and expanded usage.
Just for good measure, it rained pretty steadily, as if to prove the turf’s merit. And the next day, instead of a muddy mess, they played a couple of soccer games on the same surface.
Wild put potential on display in Duluth
It was a win-win situation when the Minnesota Wild made what could become an annual preseason trip to Duluth. The act of bonding a team together for a couple of days provides a break from training camp and exhibition games and can serve as a positive influence before the start of the regular season. Meanwhile, it’s positive public relations to show Northern Minnesota and the Duluth area that the Wild are the state’s team, not just a neat logo on a Twin Cities operation.
It’s also a major plus for the North Shore hideaway lodging facility, and for the hockey fans who chose to attend the open, and free, Wild practice at AMSOIL Arena.
There are a lot of reasons to be enthused about the Wild this season. Not the least of those is that general manager Chuck Fletcher showed the patience and good sense not to tear apart the team for reckless trades. He made a couple of key acquisitions, and added the fine-tuning touch coach Mike Yeo needs to put together a consistently competitive franchise. The divisional realignment is another huge plus.
“We’re excited about the upcoming season,” said Fletcher. “We should have a fun division, with the Stanley Cup champs (Chicago), the St. Louis Blues, who are as good as any team in the NHL right now, and from a geographical standpoint, teams like Winnipeg, Dallas and Denver, who will become big rivals.”
That means so long to so many long-distance, midnight-finishing road trips to Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, as well. The resurrection of old-time North Stars rivalries with the Blackhawks, Blues and Colorado, as well as the built-in intensity of the Dallas (former North) Stars, is a huge plus, and Fletcher may be less aware that Winnipeg, while never a huge rival of the North Stars, was indeed a huge geographic rival of the old Minnesota Fighting Saints in the World Hockey Association — the days of Bobby Hull, Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson on the best line in hockey.
The good-news/bad-news finish to last season was frustrating, but the facts remain that a couple of crippling injuries prevented what might have been an impressive playoff rush. Dany Heatley went out with an injury, and the timing couldn’t have been worse. The Wild were leading their division and clicking on all cylinders, and Heatley was finally looking like his old sniper self when he went down, and the Wild power play went down as well.
In the closing two weeks, newly acquired Jason Pominville was hurt in a cheapshot incident that knocked him out for the rest of the season before Wild fans could learn to appreciate how much he added to the roster. In fact, if you lined up the Wild offense, you could make the case that Zach Parise, Mikko Koivu, Heatley and Pominville were the most dangerous scorers, and to remove two of the four was simply not fair.
The ensuing drop meant the Wild had to win their final game of the season to grab onto the eighth and final playoff spot in the West, and that earned the Wild the opportunity to face the Chicago Blackhawks, who were the best team in the entire NHL. The Wild might even have made a run at an upset, but ace goaltender Niklas Backstrom suffered a badly pulled groin during warmups for the first game of the series, and he was done. Josh Harding did a great job as backup, but he, too, was hurt during a pileup after winning Game 3.
No teams that advanced to succeed in the playoffs could have done so if you remove two of their top four goal-scorers and their starting goaltender. So just retaining those key players and staying healthy might secure the Wild as a contender. At the same time, key additions like Matt Cooke, Keith Ballard, and Nino Niederreiter could be difference-makers. Add in the potential of former UMD star Justin Fontaine, who has proven he can score and play the whole game at both ends of the rink while at the Wild’s top farm club, and you have to like the balance and potential of this roster.
“We think we have good balance through four lines, and on defense,” said Fletcher, before the Wild hit the AMSOIL ice Monday morning.
“We’ve been impressed with Niederreiter’s play. He played well in the American League, and he scored well in the World Championships. He was probably a little overwhelmed when he played a little in the NHL at age 19. He’s big, at 210 pounds, and he liked to go to the net and battle with defensemen. I would say that he and Dany Heatley probably have the heaviest shots on the team.”
Niederreiter scored six goals in the World Championships for his native Switzerland, which, if your recall, was the surprise of the whole tournament, going undefeated all the way to the Gold Medal game, where it lost to a Sweden team reinforced by some players like the Sedin twins of Vancouver, after early Stanley Cup exits.
With the season getting underway for real Thursday night, against the Los Angeles Kings at Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, the judging of the Wild will commence immediately. It won’t hurt their fan base that they now have an enhanced and enthusiastic backing from the Duluth area — for “our” team in the NHL.
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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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