Katiie’s Beer

My favorite source for Minnesota State High School Hockey news is back! Be sure to visit Follow The Puck!

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It’s the third night this week I’ve stayed up late and the Wild have lost again. So many chances to score and NOTHING. They have one more chance in this series and then its done. At least I’m not at the game and can head right to bed…

Tags: hockey by TK
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My dad insists he was the guy fighting Reggie Morelli, though he had nothing to do with the disappearance of the jersey..

A little more than two months ago, Brenda Morelli received a strange phone call. Without introducing himself, the caller asked if her husband was alive and if he was in good health. Brenda told the caller he was doing fine and the mystery caller responded by telling her to expect a package in the near future at their Minot home. About a week later, that package arrived on the Morelli’s doorstep. Contained in the package was a University of North Dakota hockey jersey. Maybe not completely unusual since Brenda’s husband is former Sioux hockey standout Reggie Morelli. But it wasn’t a replica or a recent game-worn jersey. It was the No. 16 jersey that Morelli had worn 49 years before as a member of the Sioux. Where it has been for the past 49 years remains a mystery as the package had no return address or name of sender — only a Minneapolis postmark. While Morelli has no idea where it has been, he remembers clearly how he lost it. “It was in the second period of our second game against (University of) Minnesota in my junior year,” he said. “I got into a fight near their bench. He pulled my jersey off me and threw it into the crowd. ”

Read on…

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Lack of posts here at Katie’s Beer? Blame it, in part, on my interest in hockey and on a bittersweet turn of events. At one point, Hopkins Hockey (in its various forms) was a well-respected powerhouse in boys hockey. During my high school years, we made it to state twice. Sure I was influenced by my family’s hockey background, but hockey was THE sport in Hopkins and in the western suburbs back then. I grew up and moved away for a while, so I didn’t notice how hockey fell out of favor and suffered from a lack of interest. Fast forward to the mid-90’s when many of us former hockey devotees started our own kids in hockey and were happy to see they liked it. Soon, though we discovered that the high school program was in disarray. Thankfully, through the efforts of many, the youth program started to be infused with new interest and talent. I have had the privilege of watching these young men grow from Termites to Mites and on up to Bantams over the last ten years. Now, these boys who are so very passionate about hockey made it to the high school team and took us all for a ride that we will never forget…and we didn’t even make it to the state championship….YET. Our boys tied the school record for overall wins and set a record for season wins. We are losing only 4 seniors, though they will be sorely missed, so hope remains for another fantastic year in 2008-2009. Here’s a recap of our final game in the semi-finals of the sectional tournament which precedes the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament:

A spectator who parked about a quarter-mile from the entrance to Braemar Arena on Saturday before the Minnetonka vs. Hopkins boys’ hockey Section 6AA semifinal exclaimed to a writer on his way to the rink, “This is the event.”

It did not disappoint. Minnetonka, the No. 1 seed, defeated Classic Lake rival and No. 4-seeded Hopkins 4-3 in overtime, netting the winner a little more than three minutes into the extra session on standout Jake Gardiner’s second goal of the game.

The goal ended an entertaining contest that saw Minnetonka build a 3-1 lead in the second period and outshoot Hopkins 52-26, only to have a pair of Royals sophomores almost steal the show.

Forward Archie Skalbeck, who gave the Royals a 1-0 lead in the first period, tied the score 3-3 midway through the third period. Meanwhile, Hopkins goalie Alex Fons turned away 48 shots and was nearly impenetrable except for a four-minute stretch early in the second period when Minnetonka scored all three of its regulation goals. In overtime, Fons robbed the Skippers’ Paul Giel on a breakaway.

“I was thinking, ‘Maybe it just isn’t our night,’” Minnetonka coach Brian Urick said.

Moments later, however, Gardiner picked up the puck and scored on a wrist shot from the left faceoff dot. It brought a sense of relief to the Skippers, who split with Hopkins during the regular season and are attempting to navigate a loaded section. The top four seeds — No. 2 Benilde-St. Margaret’s and No. 3 Eden Prairie — were all ranked in the top 11 of Class 2A.

“It doesn’t get any easier from here,” Urick said.

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Katie’s Beer and Son are on location from Detroit, Michigan. After a mind-numbing 15 hour bus ride, team Minnesota is in the middle of a battle with their counterparts from Michigan. Actually. they aren’t really counterparts. Minnesota produces youth hockey teams by the well-respected youth hockey program- leading to high school hockey teams- method. Michigan basically fields semi-pro clubs sponsored by businesses. The kids skate together for years. Which is better? Their are good arguments on each side, but I prefer the natural method. Besides, who could live in a state that doesn’t have a roaring crowd each March at the state high school hockey tournament? Now that is what I call unnatural!

My mom and I took an interesting drive today in between hockey games. We drove along Jefferson from Wayne University to Grosse Pointe Park. The drive took us through an area, just east of the Daimler Chrysler plant, that astounded me. I saw burned out buildings, unmowed lawns as far as I could see, abandoned neighborhoods and businesses with store fronts that most people would never dare to enter. Then, within a matter of seconds, we crossed a road and entered the city of Grosse Pointe Park. This city has no unmowed lawns, no peeling paint, no unpulled weed, etc. All the children look clean and perfect. Women jogged with smiles down boulevards, some pulling dogs or pushing carriages. Elderly people walked or sat, looking well-kept and happy. Each house was completely cared for. After walking up and down an outdoor shopping area filled with the finest stores, we got back in our rental car, drove back through Beirut and to the rink. I will never forget what I saw today, but I do intend to find out WHY I saw what I saw. Hmmm…..

Tomorrow, we play another game and then check out the 2006 World Series rematch between the Tigers and the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals. I’ve got to remember to buy batteries for my camera so I can document the game for a certain gorilla and his family.

Glen, we drove by a sign for Valpariso and I thought of you. Awww….

Tags: hockey, travel by TK
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Rules against tight clothing
Rules against baggy clothing
Movies censored for smoking cigarettes
Trans fats banned in whole cities

As someone who learned about the Holocaust in school, read 1984 in junior high and watched Logan’s Run in high school, I don’t have to be a libertarian (small “l”, not captial “L”) to view such censorship in a very negative light. On one hand, I worry for my kids’ future, but on the other hand I know that human spirit can triumph even terrible circumstances. i also know that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

When life makes my head spin, I turn to hockey to put a smile on my face.  I give you Clark, the Canadian Goalie

Tags: hockey, Humor, Everyday life by TK
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For the record, I LOVE Rake Magazine.  It’s a free local magazine that has some of the best writers in town contributing to it.  Sure, I can tell that some of the writers probably get sore leaning to the left all the time but I also sense a commitment to writing things as they are and without much bias.  Some of the best non-blog reading can be found in that little magazine.

Fred Habermann, the commissioner of the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships, sent out this Rake Magazine review by email.  I’m including the entire article for my own selfish purposes, but you’d be shorting yourself if you didn’t go to RakeMag.com and look around.

Inside the U.S. Beer Hockey Championships
I sat in a lawn chair in the middle of frozen Lake Nokomis, nibbling on chicken kabobs and sipping a tequila slushy, thinking, How serious can this pond-hockey thing be?
A minute after the puck dropped in my first game, I immediately regretted my warm-up smorgasbord. This pond-hockey thing was apparently very serious. We were playing a team named the Whiskey Bandits, an ass-kicking juggernaut of players in handsome red jerseys who were definitely in it to win. My crew, the Arden 6, was there to play and to party. While the Whiskey Bandits were a team of sculpted Adonises in their mid-twenties, the Arden 6—made up of a forklift driver, two office maxes, a stay-at-home dad, and a couple of slackers—looked like a bunch of Chris Farleys on skates.

The Whiskey Bandits skated with crisp, robotic efficiency. We chased them like slobbering dogs, somehow managing to score a lucky goal before the onslaught began. Within moments of the opening face-off, we were losing 10-3. A Whiskey Bandit made a wicked tic-tac move on me, twisting me right, then left, then right. I almost pooped my pants. The referee called out the score. “27-5.” Slight pause. “28-5.” They scored more than a goal a minute. The final tally, 37-5, represented one of the worst defeats in the two-year history of the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships.

The beleaguered Arden 6 headed into the massive party tent to regroup over a few beers. We were baffled by the extreme drubbing we had suffered because we thought we had a pretty good squad. All of the players on my team played high school hockey in the Twin Cities. Nick Brown, our ringer, even played at Dartmouth and has fantastic speed and silky moves. As we sat and sulked, the Whiskey Bandits strolled in without a hint of arrogance; they came over to apologize for the slaughter.

“Sorry ’bout all that,” a fresh-faced Bandit said sheepishly. “I had to get a waiver to come play here this weekend.” “A waiver from what?” I asked.
“I play pro hockey in Oklahoma,” the guy said. He took a giant chug from his plastic keg cup. “Most of my teammates played in the minors, too.”
My posse spit up their beers.
“You guys are pros? Big deal,” I said facetiously. “Our right-winger is a thirty-eight-year-old stay-at-home dad who calls himself The House Admiral.”

I walked outside to the patio that overlooked the entire tournament. Bright sun filled the blueberry sky with blinding light. A horn blew across the frozen lake, signaling the start of another round of play. All at once, on twenty-four rinks, forty-eight teams accounting for 288 players started playing hockey the way it was meant to be played: wide open, four-on-four, with no offsides, no goalies, and no hitting.

Before our next game, I made my way to a giant board containing the tournament schedule and scores from all of the games. It gave me hope to see that many of the other teams had pathetic names like A Lot Better than Last Year, Fattys, and Footlong Meatball Sub on White with Double Pepperjack Cheese!—indicating they probably wouldn’t be as awesome as the Whiskey Bandits.

We held a team meeting over doughnuts, hotdogs, and more beers while The Admiral talked to his babysitter on a cell phone. Back on the ice, the junk food in our systems worked like magic. We spanked our opponents, the Campbell Avenue Crawlers, a team that traveled from Connecticut just to get whupped, 20-3, by our sorry asses.

The day ended with more hockey, more beer swilling, and a funk band named the Prophets of Soul jamming tunes like “Ain’t That a Bitch!” and “Skin Tite!”

The next morning, cold air burned my lungs like shots of vodka; an orange sunrise painted a few white clouds the color of a dreamsicle. Our game against the Flying Saucer Attack was hard fought with lots of slashing and chipping, but we eventually lost 14-8.

That afternoon, the beer garden bristled like a busy trading session on the New York Stock Exchange. Hordes of sweaty bastards, grown men still wearing breezers and shin pads long after their games were over, waved dollar bills to pay for beer. I asked an old-school guy in a vintage helmet how his team was doing. “I ain’t playing,” he mumbled. He pointed to the helmet and said, “I just fall down a lot.”

Later my team stood rink-side and watched the Whiskey Bandits dismantle Kari Takko (a team named after a Minnesota North Stars backup goaltender) to win the championship game 10-2.

“Next year, I think we should use steroids,” I suggested to my teammates. They chuckled and ambled on sore legs back to the beer garden.

© Rake Publishing, Inc. | visit www.rakemag.com

March 2007

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Posting will be lighter than usual for several days….  My email works, though!

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The cold and dangerous drive to the Cloquet hockey tournament

This weekend was the end of one era and the beginning of another. After nine years in the local youth hockey program, my son and I went on our last out-of-town travel hockey tournament. I’ve been mildly nostalgic since August, realizing with each event that it was “the last one”: the last tryouts, the last MASH season (preseason hockey), the last Thanksgiving tournament, etc.

At least for this past weekend, I wasn’t the only one talking about it being the last one. Before going, I had made up my mind that I was going to enjoy every minute - talk to people I hadn’t talked to much, relax and just enjoy the experience. I accomplished my goal. My son seemed to be more relaxed, too. I have a tendency to live life in over-analyzation. I tend to study faces and listen to others’ conversation, rather than participate; that is a well-honed habit and often fuels my writing. This weekend, I participated. I learned things about people rather than go on assumptions and rumors. I learned that my life isn’t so very different from others (a misconception borne of that habit of isolation and over-analyzation).

This morning, I am nostalgic. I treasure the faces of my fellow hockey parents. I have watched them over the years and we’ve all changed. Some of us commented the other night on our signs of aging. I wish I had gotten to know them all a little better over the years. I wish I hadn’t been so uptight on some travel tournaments. But mostly I am happy that I let go and just started talking to people. And now I’m sad that this era of my life is over.

Oh, hockey will go on for sure. My son will likely play high school hockey, but I’ve been informed that they travel on their own in a bus and stay in hotels in groups. Parents are welcome to come along, of course, but the coaches are in charge. I welcome that! I’m sure we parents will still find time to share coffee in local shops, small-town pizzerias, trips to the local Wal-mart for more blankets, wool socks and mittens, casino dance bands playing country music you haven’t heard in years by old guys in bolero ties, leather vests and snappy cowboy hats (OK, the drummer had three earring in each year), a couple of beer and toasts to life in the hotel bar and all-you-can-eat breakfasts on those trips or we will start to gather in each other’s homes, but it won’t be the same because not all parents will be there. I guess I shouldn’t be afraid of the future, it may be even better than today. I hope to put my thoughts together and share them with my fellow hockey parents at our season-end party.

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I bet you didn’t know that today is Hockey Day Minnesota! Neither did I, which is fitting since every day in our household is hockey day. Ha! Our own personal observation includes volunteering (”no” wasn’t an option) at the Mite clinics at our home rink, off to watch grandpa and Coaches Josh and Mark skate in the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships, then miss grandpa skate in the great Gopher v. Badger alumni game (pond hockey version) for our son’s own game against the “evil” empire of Wayzata (Hopkins= Luke Skywalker and Wayzata = Darth Vader).

If we didn’t have hockey to watch in person or actually play, we could sit on the couch all day and watch 11 consecutive hours of hockey, highlighting the game from peewees to the pros. Three games at three different levels: St. Paul Johnson high school at Lake of the Woods high school at 1:00 PM, Denver University at the University of Minnesota at 5:30 PM and the Dallas Stars at the Minnesota Wild at 8:00 PM will highlight the day. Why they aren’t highlighting the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships is beyond me, but maybe they will do highlights from Lake Nokomis.

Hat tip to Chad the Elder of Fraters Libertas who appears to be planning to play and watch hockey today.

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