The White Bear Lake player appears to be wearing just leather gloves with no protective padding. Also, didn't expect to see helmets....Eveleth was ahead of the curve.
Looking at the pics and reading the numbers on the roster, I wonder if some of the schools used the same jerseys for football and hockey. The Rochester jersey numbers were basically all in the 50's, 60's and 70's.
And 'Prowlers' is definitely an improvement on 'Thieves".
Last edited by Mitch Hawker on Fri Apr 17, 2015 11:46 am, edited 2 times in total.
Who would have known White Bear Lake started their early exit strategy so early on. I once spent time at the library going through microfiche of Pioneer Press articles on the tournament. Someday that will all be online-free and easily linkable.
Granted only 20% of you will have ever heard of microfiche.
That 1980 tournament preview was quite a walk down memory lane. I recall tournament previews being a half hour long. An hour gave time for a good in depth look at each section. One thing lost in going to two classes is that the media can't devote that much coverage to 16 teams.
The Section 7 arena may be the only one left with an ice sheet (Hibbing Coliseum). I'm not sure of that Thief River Falls arena is still standing, but the Met Center is long gone and the St Paul Auditorium no longer has ice. Not 100% sure on the DECC but I don't believe that it has an ice sheet any longer either.
I noticed that there was a Budweiser ad on the dasher boards at the Met games (Sec. 5 & 6). I'm sure all of the students that saw those games immediately got drunk on Bud after they saw those ads. Good thing we don't allow that sort of thing today.
I was at the Hill - Mariner game. I didn't recall how the scoring went, that Mariner was up 3-1. I do recall it was a pitched battle and the house was absolutely rockin'. I was in 8th grade at the time, and a guy that went to my grade school and then to Hill (was a year ahead of me) fell off the balcony down to the seats below. His euphoria was so great he never stopped cheering. There would be two more Section 3 finals in that building, but that was the last for Hill. I've lamented the loss of that ice sheet on this forum before, and with the loss of the Coliseum ice sheet it's more true than ever. An 8,000 seat arena in the Metro would be great to have.
It only showed a brief portion of the GR section final after the final horn, but it looked fairly business like. Just a few helmets and gloves on the floor. That team had lost in the first round in '79 and started poorly that season. They had a seniors only meeting, decided they'd blown it the year before and were on mission after that. Just after the US won the gold medal, a guy named Bill Baker showed up in the locker room at a Rapids practice. "Mind if I skate with you guys?" he asked.
I wonder if that was much of an upset when Edina West beat East in the section semis? And did West think they finally had a tournament birth in hand and took Lindbergh for granted?
