Air Force hockey coach Frank Serratore is hoping trickle-down economics play in his favor. 

The tenured Falcons coach enters what could be his most challenging season yet.

Not only did the House v. NCAA settlement in June enable schools to pay athletes directly, but Canadian Hockey League players will be eligible to play NCAA hockey for the first time in the fall. Air Force won’t benefit from either change.

U.S. citizenship is a requirement for entrance into a service academy and the majority of players in the CHL are Canadian-born. 

The hope is that with the Falcons’ opponents selecting players from the CHL in addition to players from American junior leagues, American players who don’t find a landing spot look to Colorado Springs to begin their collegiate careers.

“The only way we may benefit from this is the trickle-down effect. With all the other schools loading up with these Canadian junior players, it’s a supply-and-demand thing. Hopefully there’s gonna be more quality Americans available to us,” Serratore said. “Everybody else is getting deeper right now. There’s 60 CHL teams and there’s 63 college hockey teams, and all of a sudden you’ve got an entire league of 60 teams that all of a sudden saturates the collegiate hockey market.” 

Serratore characterized the addition of CHL talent as a “massive paradigm shift” for the sport. 

The NCAA Division I Council introduced that shift in November. The council voted that players who skated in one of the Canadian Hockey League’s three leagues — the Western Hockey League, the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League, and the Ontario Hockey League — could play in the NCAA this upcoming season, provided they were not compensated beyond necessary expenses before college.

Previously, CHL players were considered professionals and thus ineligible.

Serratore expects many CHL players to come through the NCAA in the future  because the collegiate landscape offers a chance to play against older competition. 

“College hockey is a men’s league. Unless you’re a Connor McDavid, one of those types of players, all the players now are going to be filtering through college hockey, CHL players included,” he said. “The CHL is a good league just like the USHL is but it’s still a junior league, it’s still a boys’ league.

“College hockey is a men’s league, and the agents, the NHL teams, they want these players playing college hockey because they know playing against men in college is going to prepare them for the NHL.”

Come next season, he expects some fanbases to be surprised when they look at their teams’ lineups given all the new faces.

The Falcons will face such a team in cross-town rival Colorado College on Oct. 11. As the battle for the Pikes Peak Trophy goes back to just a single game, the group of Tigers playing at Cadet Ice Arena will look very different compared to last season . CC had nine NHL draft picks on its roster last season, but six departed via the transfer portal, graduation or signing pro deals. However, the Tigers added a plethora of drafted players through their Western Hockey League recruits.

“Between the transfer portal and incoming freshmen from traditional junior leagues, CHL players, transfers from U Sports, some of these rosters are going to be unrecognizable for their fanbases in comparison to last year,” Serratore said.

The Air Force coach said just two or three players in the CHL were American-born and good enough academically to be a fit for the Academy but those players went elsewhere. 

Faced with the prospect of retirement after last season as his previous contract came to an end, Serratore chose to come back on a two-year deal in part due to the challenge of competing in this new environment. 

He enters his 29th season with the same positive attitude he’s always had. 

“The only thing we control as a staff are the same things that our players control and that’s your attitude and your effort level. Our staff has a got a great attitude,” he said.  “We’re going to continue to work as hard or harder than we’ve ever worked. It’s never been easy here at the Academy but it’s never been more difficult than it is right now.” 

While coaching goalies in college five years ago, Vince Stalletti and his wife, Matilda Miglio, visited Seattle from the East Coast ahead of boarding a cruise ship to Alaska. She bought a Kraken ballcap in town, unaware her husband would ultimately graduate to that squad’s AHL farm team a half-decade later following a highly successful stint at NCAA Division 1 University of Connecticut.

Stalletti was officially announced Tuesday as the new goalie coach of the Kraken’s Coachella Valley Firebirds affiliate.

“In her profile picture on my phone, Matilda is wearing that Kraken hat,” said Stalletti after an on-ice session during this month’s Kraken development camp. “I’ve been staring at it for five years. When I got the [Firebirds] job, she said, ‘You know, that’s the hat I’ve been wearing.’ What a coincidence.”

Hmm, coincidence? The great theoretical scientist Albert Einstein once said, “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” Another thinker of a different sort, Hall of Fame baseball catcher Yogi Berra, once said: “That’s too coincidental to be coincidence.”

Stalletti’s five stellar seasons with UConn certainly positioned him for a look this summer when the Firebirds needed a new goalie coach. That job opened when Colin Zulianello, who mentored Joey Daccord during his inaugural Coachella Valley season and resulting AHL Western Conference championship, was named Kraken goalie coach under new bench boss Lane Lambert.

This past season, Zulianello played a key role in breaking 2022 second-round draft pick Nikke Kokko, a netminder from Finland making his AHL debut, into a circuit bigger and more skilled than his prior Finnish pro stopover. The Kraken organization slow-played Kokko’s AHL rookie campaign by limiting his early game action while using practices and 1-on-1 work with Zulianello to get the 20-year-old better acclimated to heavier net front traffic and faster-paced play.

Kokko eventually played more and was named to the AHL All-Rookie Team while proving a clutch postseason performer.

As for Stalletti filling Zulianello’s prior Firebirds post, it wasn’t exactly a coincidence. The pair had met eight years prior when Stalletti was still coaching at UMass-Dartmouth ahead of his Connecticut run, and Zulianello knew pretty quickly this summer who might make a strong candidate to succeed him.

“I thank Colin (Zulianello) because he was the first one who reached out to me [about the position],” Stalletti said. “I met Colin years ago at a goalie conference. It was 2017. We were on the ice together. I didn’t know him well, but we connected.

“When he reached out, it was definitely a welcome surprise,” added Stalletti, who soon was contacted by Kraken GM Jason Botterill, Coachella Valley vice-president (hockey operations) Troy Bodie and Firebirds head coach Derek Laxdal.

“It happened pretty quick,” Stalletti said. “When I heard of the opportunity, I knew whoever would get this job would be fortunate to have it. I’m excited to be here and appreciative of the opportunity.”

Bodie said of Stalletti: “Vince is impressive and the perfect choice to join our coaching staff. He has a clear plan for goaltenders that aligns with our approach and proved successful in the NCAA.”

At the 2023 NCAA Frozen Four in Tampa, Fla., Gophers coach Bob Motzko took questions before the tournament with future NHLers like Logan Cooley, Ryan Johnson and Jimmy Snuggerud flanking him. On that day, just over two years ago, Motzko was asked about how name, image and likeness money was affecting other college sports and how it might affect NCAA hockey in the future.

“Hockey is behind a little bit in the conversation,” Motzko said, perhaps inadvertently quoting Minnesota music legend Bob Dylan in his answer. “I think it’s going to be a conversation that’s going to heat up more and more in hockey over the next couple of years. We just don’t have that many teams compared to football and basketball. But it’s starting to heat up. And there are more discussions. You’re hearing million-dollar deals for football and basketball. Our players get burritos. But I think times are changing.”

It’s 27 months later. And the times have changed in a big, big way.

Gavin McKenna, a Canadian forward with eye-popping offensive numbers in major junior hockey, is 17 years old and projected by many experts to be the top overall pick in the 2026 NHL Draft. Last week, he was reportedly offered $250,000 to attend Michigan State in the fall and skate for a Spartans team that returns one of the nation’s top goalies in Trey Augustine. The Spartans are a not-overly-risky bet to win the Big Ten’s first NCAA hockey title since an underdog Spartans team did it in 2007.

After visiting campus and mulling their official bid, McKenna handed Michigan State a polite ‘No thank you,’ and instead opted to skate for conference rival Penn State next season. That decision came after the Nittany Lions, who are coming off the program’s first Frozen Four appearance, were able to reportedly triple Michigan State’s monetary offer.

Over the past 15 years, the money game is the fourth seismic shift to hit the world of college hockey, which involves roughly 60 teams from Alaska in the West to Maine in the East and as far South as Arizona State’s rapidly emerging program.

The first came in 2010 when Terry Pegula, the billionaire owner of the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres and the NFL’s Buffalo Bills, gave more than $100 million to his alma mater, Penn State, to build an arena that facilitated the Nittany Lions’ move from club to Division I hockey. That made for a half-dozen Big Ten schools with hockey programs (with the Nittany Lions joining Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State and Wisconsin). In short order, the Big Ten became the first Power Five conference to include hockey, and long-standing, hockey-only conferences like the Western Collegiate Hockey Association and the original Central Collegiate Hockey Association either disbanded or radically changed their membership.

The next two changes came in the past five years, as NIL meant, for the first time, college athletes could get paid for the use of their name, image and likeness without losing their NCAA eligibility.

While football and basketball players were receiving six-figure deals from the start, the immediate impact on hockey was players hosting summer hockey camps, websites giving players a few hoodies in exchange for the use of an athlete’s name, and the aforementioned free burritos, with the Mexican chain Chipotle signing several Gophers skaters to endorse their food.

With the money offered to top players skyrocketing, there seems to be a movement afoot in Dinkytown to get the Gophers more involved in that game. Last month, social media posts were sent and a bare-bones website went live announcing the Golden Helmet Collective, which is lacking detail but seems to be the start of a hockey-specific effort to raise NIL money for future Gophers.

The opening of the transfer portal allowed players to move from one program to another without having to sit out or lose eligibility. This brought de facto free agency to college hockey, where smaller schools are now routinely losing their top players to bigger schools after a year or two.

One coach in Atlantic Hockey America, which is home to mid-major programs like Air Force, Bentley, Mercyhurst and Robert Morris, compared their conference to a shopping center, where many of the six players named to the AHA all-rookie team one season are likely to be playing in the Big Ten or Hockey East by the time they’re sophomores.

The Gophers have been sporadic but effective users of the transfer portal, bringing in players like NHL first-rounder Matthew Wood from Connecticut and goalie Liam Souliere, who backstopped much of last season’s Big Ten title run, from Penn State.

In November 2024, a lawsuit prompted the NCAA to allow players from Canadian major junior leagues to maintain college hockey eligibility, which had not been the case for the past four decades or so. Because major junior players often receive a stipend of a few hundred dollars per month for living expenses, they were long considered professionals in the eyes of the NCAA. So, in 2012, when current Minnesota Wild forward Ryan Hartman, who was committed to play college hockey at Miami of Ohio, went to play for a major junior team instead, his NCAA eligibility disappeared.

The opening up of major junior players to college recruitment has meant a windfall of new talent available to NCAA programs. McKenna is just the latest player from the Canadian leagues to pack for a home on campus in the fall, with Wild prospect Ryder Ritchie (Boston University), defenseman Benjamin Vigneault (Bemidji State), defenseman Henry Mews (Michigan), left winger Blake Montgomery (Wisconsin), defenseman Ethan Armstrong (Minnesota State Mankato), left winger Nathan Piling (St. Thomas), defenseman Grayden Siepmann (Minnesota Duluth) and center Cayden Lindstrom (Michigan State) all moving from major junior to college hockey in the fall.

North Dakota, which is a program in transition after a coaching change in the spring, landed two of the top players from the Victoria (B.C.) Royals, center Cole Rischny and defenseman Keaton Verhoeff.

McKenna made his future Nittany Lions announcement live on ESPN SportsCenter, in a move reminiscent of LeBron James and his infamous, nationally-televised “Decision” from 2010. While some decried the big-money signing as an omen of college hockey’s demise, others noted that having the sport covered on national TV in the middle of the summer, and attracting the top young talent on ice, at least for one season, is a net positive, even as the sport goes through yet another recent change.

Whatever your personal opinion, it’s clear that the future of college hockey has arrived. And for programs large and small to attract and keep the game’s best players, more than burritos will be required.

The Atlanta Gladiators have released the promotional schedule for the 2025-26 season, the ECHL ice hockey team announced Wednesday.

The Gladiators have plenty of fun in store for their fans this season, with a wide variety of theme nights and promotions fit for the whole family.

The promo schedule can be found below with the potential for more theme nights to be added, with all dates, times and promotions subject to change. 

OCTOBER

Opening Night | Saturday, October 18th vs. Utah – 7:10 PM

Cheer the Gladiators on as Atlanta drops the puck on the 2025-26 season against the Utah Grizzlies. Be there for the opening moment of the 23rd season of Gladiators hockey at Gas South Arena. The Glads will be wearing Gladiator themed specialty jerseys in a matchup you won’t want to miss. 

Bluey Game | Sunday, October 19th vs. Utah – 3:00 PM

Opening weekend festivities continue as Bluey pays a visit to Gas South Arena for our annual Bluey Game. Kids will have a chance to meet Bluey on the concourse during this fun afternoon matchup.

NOVEMBER

Day of the Dead | Saturday, November 1st vs. Savannah – 7:10 PM

Celebrate Day of the Dead with the Gladiators as Atlanta hosts Savannah in Day of the Dead themed specialty jerseys. 

School Day Game | Wednesday, November 5th vs. Greenville – 10:30 AM

Students from the greater Atlanta area will enjoy a unique educational experience on November 5th at 10:30 AM. Each student attending this game will receive a STEM/STEAM approved hockey-related workbook that covers a variety of subjects and relates to the great game of hockey.

Glads Fight Cancer | Saturday, November 22nd vs. Greenville – 7:10 PM

The Gladiators host the Greenville Swamp Rabbits and stick it to cancer on Glads Fight Cancer Night. Players, staff, and fans will show their support for those currently battling cancer and remember those who have lost their fight, with Atlanta wearing specialty jerseys for the occasion. 

College Night | Wednesday, November 26th vs. South Carolina – 7:10 PM

Rep your school’s colors at Gas South Arena when the Glads host the South Carolina Stingrays on College Night, with discounted tickets available for college students.

Jersey Frenzy | Saturday, November 29th vs. Greenville – 7:10 PM

Enjoy Gladiators hockey as Atlanta hosts Greenville, while having the opportunity to purchase a Gladiators replica jersey at a discounted rate.

DECEMBER

Max’s Holiday Party & Sing for Santa | Saturday, December 7th vs. Jacksonville – 7:10 PM

The holidays are in full swing, and Max has invited you to his holiday party. There’s no better place to spend the holidays than at Gas South Arena with Max and the Atlanta Gladiators, who will be wearing specialty jerseys for the night. Tis the season for hockey as the Gladiators battle the Jacksonville Icemen. 

Marvel Night | Friday, December 19th vs. Jacksonville – 7:10 PM

Marvel fans, assemble. The Glads will don special Marvel themed jerseys as they engage in an epic battle on the ice with the Jacksonville Icemen. 

Frosty Boots & Country Roots | Saturday, December 27th vs. Savannah – 7:10 PM

The Gladiators will get their boots dirty against the Savannah Ghost Pirates on this country themed promotional night. Grab your hat and boots and gallop on over to Gas South Arena for this edition of the Battle of Georgia. 

JANUARY

Star Wars Night | Saturday, January 3rd vs. Greensboro – 7:10 PM

The Gladiators and the rebel alliance host the ECHL’s newest team, the Greensboro Gargoyles and the Empire on Star Wars Night. May the force be with the Glads as they battle the Gargoyles in Star Wars themed specialty jerseys. 

Military Night | Friday, January 9th vs. Savannah – 7:10 PM

On Military Night, the Gladiators honor those who are serving in the U.S. armed forces and remember those who have fought and died for our freedom.

Sensory Friendly Game | Monday, January 19th vs. Greenville – 1:10 PM

The sensory friendly game is a great opportunity for fans with disabilities and sensitivity to loud noises and flashing lights to enjoy Gladiators hockey. 

FEBRUARY

College Night | Wednesday, February 4th vs. Florida – 7:10 PM

Rep your school’s colors at Gas South Arena when the Glads host the Florida Everblades on College Night, with discounted tickets available for college students.

Brick Bash | Friday, February 6th vs. Jacksonville – 7:10 PM

The Glads are building something special with our first ever Brick Bash. Enjoy creative brick art themed fun as the Glads host the Jacksonville Icemen.

Love on the Ice & Teddy Bear Toss | Saturday, February 14th vs. Adirondack – 7:10 PM

This Valentine’s Day, love is on the ice as the Glads match up against the Adirondack Thunder on our annual Teddy Bear Toss game. Atlanta will be wearing specialty jerseys for Valentine’s Day.

Heroes Night | Friday, February 27th vs. Jacksonville – 7:10 PM

On February 27th, we honor our nation’s heroes and recognize all those who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom. 

MARCH

School Day Game | Wednesday, March 11th vs. Florida – 10:30 AM

The school game is so nice, we’re doing it twice. The perfect field trip outing returns as kids from schools all over Atlanta pack Gas South Arena to cheer on the Gladiators as they host the Florida Everblades. 

St. Patrick’s Day Celebration | Sunday, March 15th vs. South Carolina

Join us in celebrating St. Patty’s Day as the Glads battle the South Carolina Stingrays. 

College Night | Wednesday, March 18th vs. Jacksonville – 7:10 PM

Rep your school’s colors at Gas South Arena when the Glads host the Florida Everblades on College Night, with discounted tickets available for college students. 

Hockey Heritage | Friday, March 27th vs. Orlando – 7:10 PM

Hockey Heritage | Saturday, March 28th vs. Jacksonville – 7:10 PM

The Gladiators will pay homage to Atlanta’s rich hockey history on TWO NIGHTS when the Orlando Solar Bears and Jacksonville Icemen come to town, throwing back to the days of previous pro hockey teams in Atlanta. 

APRIL

Golf Night | Friday, April 3rd vs. Savannah – 7:10 PM

Two sports collide on one night as golf and hockey come together at Gas South Arena. The Gladiators will dress in golf themed specialty jerseys as they host the Savannah Ghost Pirates on Golf Night. 

Hockey is for Everyone | Saturday, April 4th vs. Savannah – 7:10 PM

The Gladiators welcome all fans to Gas South Arena in celebration of the ECHL’s “Hockey is for Everyone” initiative.

Fan Appreciation Night | Friday, April 10th vs. Orlando – 7:10 PM

Atlanta’s regular season home schedule concludes with a contest vs the Orlando Solar Bears, as the Gladiators honor and say thank you to the best fans in the ECHL.

Hamilton College boasts eight recipients on the 2025 Empacher-Intercollegiate Rowing Coaches Association (IRCA) Scholar Athlete list, which was released on Wednesday, June 18.

In order to earn scholar athlete honors, rowers and coxswains must be from an IRCA-member school, be in their second year or more of eligibility, competed in their program’s top three boats during the current season, and have a 3.50 or better cumulative grade point average through the 2024 fall semester. 

Christophe Boivin ’25, Max Klivans ’25 and Ian Vogelsang ’25 were all three-year honorees. The complete list can be found below.

Christophe Boivin ’25 (Mount Laurel, N.J. / Bishop Eustace Preparatory School)

Hunter Howard ’27 (Frisco, Texas / Frisco HS)

Max Klivans ’25 (San Francisco, Calif. / Lowell HS)

Sam Lacy ’27 (Columbia, Md. / River Hill HS)

Robert Neithart ’26 (Montecito, Calif. / Loyola HS of Los Angeles)

Kai Polozie ’27 (Rochester, N.Y. / Allendale Columbia School)

Nicolai Tolstoy ’27 (Stockholm, Sweden / Norra Real Gymnasium)

Ian Vogelsang ’25 (New Hope, Pa. / New Hope-Solebury HS)

Hamilton’s varsity eight tied for ninth in the May 21 IRCA/Intercollegiate Rowing Association Division III Top 15 poll, which was the final ranking of the season.

 

This is the fourth installment among my Favorite 15 John’s Journal stories from my 15 years with the Minnesota State High School League. Watching one of the state’s oldest and best hockey rivalries in an historic arena had been on my bucket list for a long time and I was thrilled to spend time in Roseau. This story was originally posted on January 6, 2022.

ROSEAU – The chapel was quiet a couple hours before services began. A few older congregants had already gathered on a frigid January evening, sitting on wooden benches and chatting in a warm space above ice level, occasionally turning their heads to look through windows that offered a view of the frozen, reflective worship space.

As more and more folks arrived, a theme was clear. Some wore the green and white of the Roseau Rams, with others draped in Warroad Warriors black and gold. The towns are only 22 miles apart, within earshot of the Canadian border, and high school hockey is a binding agent, a cultural touchstone and darn near a religious experience.

On this Tuesday night, the most famous hockey rivalry in Minnesota was on center stage for the first time this season. Even though some fans live in one town and are employed in the other, hockey draws a clear line in the ice. That was evident as Warroad fans grimaced upon paying for admission and having a big green Roseau Ram stamped on the back of their hand.

“We’re small schools and we’ve had hockey forever,” said 81-year-old Bob Lund, father of Roseau head coach Greg Lund and assistant Bill Lund. “It’s our game.”

Bob was sitting on a folding chair that was placed against the boards near the entry, a high honor for someone who has seen it all through the years. Bob was a youngster when Roseau Memorial Arena was built in 1949; he remembers the days before plexiglass when the boards were topped with chicken wire, and when gravel, instead of concrete, provided the base for the bleachers.

The lobby areas of the arena are a Roseau hockey Hall of Fame. Walls are covered with framed photos of all the greats in Ram history who went on to play hockey in college, the NHL and the Olympics. Also displayed are team photos, state championship trophies and all manner of wonderful memorabilia.

The hockey rivalry between Warroad and Roseau is special. Boys in both towns have been smacking pucks with sticks for more than a century, and the first official high school game between the two was played in 1945, the same year as the inaugural MSHSL state tournament. On this glorious Tuesday evening in early 2022, the Rams and Warriors boys would meet for the 179^th time.

Both programs are familiar throughout Minnesota. Roseau has been to the state tournament a record 34 times, winning seven state titles between 1946 and 2007. Warroad has made 22 state appearances and has won four crowns, most recently in 2005.

In pregame discussions, one thing was clear: When Roseau and Warroad meet on the ice, you can throw out the records. Over the years, surprises have happened more times than anyone can remember.

“That’s the thing, every year it doesn’t matter what our records are,” said Warriors coach Jay Hardwick, a 1998 Warroad graduate. “It’s still going to be a great hockey game.”

This was one of the biggest games in the state this season, and certainly the biggest in Roseau County, home of both towns. Warroad came in with a record of 11-0 and holding the No. 2 ranking in Class A. Roseau was 11-1 and ranked eighth in Class 2A.

Warroad had recorded one-goal victories over Mounds View, Bemidji and Grand Rapids, with its other eight wins coming by margins between two and 12 goals. Roseau lost to Andover 4-3 in its second game of the season before starting a 10-game winning streak. Among the teams the Rams defeated were Minnetonka, Moorhead, Grand Rapids, Rogers, Bemidji and Mahtomedi.

A good-sized crowd watched the junior varsity teams play before the Zamboni groomed the ice for the night’s main attraction. Hometown radio crews sat at a table a few rows behind the penalty boxes, Jon Michael from Warroad’s KQ92 next to Jason Merritt and Tracy (Bobcat) Ostby on Roseau’s WILD 102. The exquisite Roseau High School pep band, under the direction of Chris Barnes, pumped out great music. Among the orchestra members were a few junior varsity hockey players, hair still wet from showering, dressed in game-day suits and ties.

Game No. 179 in the series stayed true to the predictions. Surprises can indeed happen, and on this night good things happened for the visiting Warriors. The teams played a fast and scoreless opening period, and the first massive roar from the overflow crowd of more than 3,000 came with Roseau on a power play in the second period.

When Warroad’s Ryan Lund swiped the puck, raced down the ice and scored a shorthanded goal, the Warriors student section waved black and gold pompoms and screamed, the sound reverberating off the ancient and arched and sacred wooden beams in the ceiling.

Matt Hard scored to make it 2-0 Warroad late in the second, and Murray Marvin-Cordes got two in the third period before Daimon Gardner closed out Warroad’s 5-0 victory. Warriors goaltender Hampton Slukynsky stopped 28 shots; Roseau goalie Carter Christianson had 22 saves.

The game showcased plenty of talent, including four of the state’s top scorers. Roseau’s Max Strand ranks third with 44 points, Warroad’s Gardner and Jayson Shaugabay are tied for seventh with 36, and the Rams’ Noah Urness (31) is tied for 10th.

Roseau had been shut out by Warroad only four times previously in all these years. Tuesday’s result made the all-time series standings look like this: 105 wins for Roseau and 69 for Warroad with five ties.

Despite the loss, Greg Lund appreciated the importance of the rivalry.

“This is what everybody looks forward to,” he said. “We saw what happened here, it was a huge, huge game for everybody and the fans love it.”

Before the teams took the ice, Hardwick had asked the Warriors if they were nervous. A few heads nodded affirmatively.

“I said, ‘You know what? It’s OK to be nervous.’ I told them I’ve played in these games, a couple of them for section championships, and I’ve coached in 20-some of these and I still get nervous. But that’s OK because it means you care and it means something to you.”

Roseau has an MSHSL enrollment of 348 high school students and Warroad has 295. With Roseau opting up from Class A to Class 2A, the two teams no longer play hammer-and-tong battles to decide which one wins the Section 8 title and goes to state; they faced off in Section 8 playoff games 23 times between 1947 and 1998.

“These are always great games, and there’s a lot of respect for each other,” Bob Lund said, sitting along the boards in the rink where he watched his kids and grandkids skate. “I wish we had 20 games like this every season.”

After graduating from Minnesota Duluth in 1966, Bob coached hockey in Silver Bay for two years before returning to his hometown. The family business is a furniture and carpet store … and hockey.

A newer rink, known as the North Rink, is attached to Roseau Memorial Arena. (There is a third rink in town, Roseau Sports Center.) Some of the locals joke about the North Rink being a de facto day care center, where kids can be dropped off at any time of day or night. Hockey is so big in Roseau that each youth team has its own locker room at the North Rink, meaning families don’t have to lug equipment back and forth from home. Kids also are allowed to run a tab at the well-stocked concession stand, with parental eyebrows sometimes rising when they stop in to pay off the balance.

During Tuesday night’s game, youth hockey players dressed in blue jerseys wandered through the crowd selling 50-50 raffle tickets. As is the custom, youth teams are not allowed to wear Roseau green and white … they earn that right when they reach high school hockey. A lot of cash was dropped into the 50-50 bucket, with the winner taking home more than a thousand dollars.

After the final horn, the Warroad fans celebrated and the Rams faithful shook their heads and reiterated that you just never know what might happen when these teams meet.

The 180^th game in the series is scheduled for Jan. 25 at the Warroad Gardens arena, built in 1993. There is talk of, at some point in time, having the teams from Roseau and Warroad schedule their two regular-season meetings on a back-to-back, home-and-home Friday and Saturday.

No matter the schedule, the Warriors and Rams will continue to skate under the historic wooden ceiling in Roseau, building memories and making history in one of Minnesota’s hockey cathedrals.

From his folding chair on the glass, Bob Lund looked around the arena and smiled at what has been built … architecturally, athletically and spiritually.

“It just might last forever,” he said.

–Feel free to contact me via email: [email protected]. You can follow me on Bluesky at @minnesotamillea.bsky.social and on Twitter/X @MinnesotaMillea