World Championship Tournament of Junior Hockey.....
(( This will be my next new board when the tournament begins on Dec. 25. ))
- - - - - The Little Rink on the Prairie in North Dakota - - - - -
Mike Mohaupt for The New York Times
The Ralph Engelstad Arena is a $100 million hockey rink that is the home
of the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux.
NYTimes
November 5, 2004
GRAND FORKS, N.D. - When the Red River rose and flowed across the flat land seven years ago, people fled and viewed the flood damage on television from miles away. They saw rooftops surrounded by rising water and downtown buildings burning. "Come hell or high water," said the headline. Who knew what would replace the devastation?
Today, among the new buildings and the new dikes, there stands an incongruous jewel of an ice box called the Ralph Engelstad Arena, a three-year-old hockey rink that is the home of the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux, a perennial power of American college hockey.
When the world championship tournament of junior hockey begins here on Christmas Day, The Ralph, as it is known, will temporarily become the center of the sport's universe in this season of the National Hockey League lockout.
It could dazzle the international tourists and television audience.
"This is the Taj Mahal," said Thomas Clifford, the university's former president, who helped secure a donation of more than $100 million from the arena's namesake, a former North Dakota player, to build it. "They don't come any better."
The building, the college team, the prestigious international tournament and the hockey-rich environment suggest hockey's robust underpinning, despite its disarray at the major professional level. Children, middle-aged adults and even senior citizens play the game in this city of about 49,000. High school hockey thrives and a top junior league has its headquarters here, with teams spread across the Midwest.
The Engelstad Arena is one of 9 indoor and 14 outdoor rinks in the metropolitan area, which includes East Grand Forks, Minn., a town of about 8,000 that is across the Red River. North Dakota, which has won seven National Collegiate Athletic Association championships, regularly sends players to the N.H.L. The current roster of 25 players includes 10 N.H.L. draft choices, including two from the first round, two from the second and one from the third.
The Fighting Sioux - the name has been vocally criticized by American Indians and others as insensitive - are recruiting local players like Jake Marto, a senior defenseman for Grand Forks Central High School, whose father, Perry Marto, has played for 20 years in a recreational league.
"Hockey is the No. 1 winter sport here by far," Perry Marto said. "The kids all look up to those guys at U.N.D." Marto started flooding his yard when his son was 4 years old. "Him and his little buddies would skate every day," he said. "We even put a sign up: 'Marto Arena.' ''
Marto watched from a balcony on a recent Sunday afternoon as his son scrimmaged with friends who had rented the indoor ice at the Eagles Arena, one of the other indoor rinks in town. He said Jake might delay college to play for a season in the United States Hockey League, a Tier I junior circuit whose headquarters is in Grand Forks.
The junior league includes teams in cities like Sioux City, Iowa, and Sioux Falls, S.D. It was once a professional minor league; Gordie Howe played in the league for Omaha in 1945-46 when he was 17. Like many hockey elements here, the league is intertwined in the region's culture.
Gino Gasparini, the league's president, is a former North Dakota coach; several current Fighting Sioux players came from the league. "Junior hockey is a lot more prevalent in the Midwest than it is in the East," Gasparini said. "We'll do over 100 Division I scholarships a year. We average close to 3,000 fans per game."
The league's Prospects All-Star Game will be held on Feb. 8 at The Ralph. Both the junior league and the college league offer alternatives to Canada's major junior leagues, which have been the traditional feeder systems for the N.H.L.
North Dakota, which won the N.C.A.A. championship most recently in 2000, has sent to the N.H.L. players like goalie Ed Belfour of Toronto. High over one of the nets in The Ralph are banners from N.H.L. teams with former Fighting Sioux players.
The university has had a hockey team since 1946. One of its early goalies was Engelstad, a native of Thief River Falls, Minn., which is 45 miles east of Grand Forks. Ten of the 31 games of the world junior tournament will be played there in a building also named the Ralph Engelstad Arena, a smaller version of the Grand Forks rink. It, too, was built with Engelstad's philanthropy.
Engelstad, who died two years ago, played two seasons for the Fighting Sioux, the last of which was in 1949-50, before starting a construction business and moving to Las Vegas, where he eventually owned a casino, the Imperial Palace. He is remembered by friends and foes as generous and imperious.
After pledging the money to build the arena in Grand Forks, Engelstad became upset when American Indians and others tried to change the team's nickname. In a letter to Charles E. Kupchella, the university president, Engelstad threatened to stop construction and let the harsh weather of North Dakota destroy the partly built arena.
"I will take my lumps and walk away," Engelstad wrote to Kupchella. "It is a good thing that you are an educator because you are a man of indecision and if you were a businessman, you would not succeed.''
Engelstad also wrote that his letter should not be considered a threat. "It is only notification to you of exactly what I am going to do if you change this logo and this slogan," he wrote.
Engelstad had already been known for his eccentricities. In Las Vegas, he was host to parties on Hitler's birthday and collected Nazi memorabilia. Engelstad won the nickname struggle, and the building went up according to his wishes.
It has perfect sight lines, marble floors, 48 luxury boxes and 11,400 leather chairs. In a town surrounded by farmland, about 150 miles south of Winnipeg, Manitoba, The Ralph offers amenities to impress the most spoiled sports sophisticates from New York or Los Angeles.
Among decorative touches is a monument out front honoring Chief Sitting Bull and 4,000 Indian-head emblems on the floors, walls and furniture. These are among the things that bother the arena's critics, who discussed their feelings in late October at the American Indian Center, which is in an old house less than a half-mile south of the arena.
Gary LaPointe, a senior majoring in entrepreneurship and a member of the Rosebud tribe from South Dakota, called the building "a slap in the face to Sitting Bull," who opposed the United States late in the 19th century.
"If he were here, he'd probably burn it down," LaPointe said.
Merry Ketterling, a Lakota who works as a secretary for the university's Indian Studies department, said it was insensitive to use the Sioux people as a nickname. "We don't want to be dehumanized," she said. "People think Indians are in the past. They think we are all gone. We're still here."
Jim Antes, a professor of psychology, said he was embarrassed to find in his closet apparel with the name Sioux and the Indian logo, which he will no longer wear.
He does not boycott the games, but he walks around the Sioux logo on the floor of the arena and declines to use the word when shouting encouragement to the players. "It's hard to cheer for the team," he said. "You don't know what to yell."
Roger Thomas, North Dakota's athletic director, acknowledged the sentiment against the nickname. But he said change would probably not come from within the university, although St. John's, Stanford and other universities have dispensed with Indian nicknames and logos.
"This would be one of the strongholds," Thomas said with a shrug while standing outside the alumni suite on the arena's luxury box level. "The N.C.A.A. is concerned. Political correctness is part of our world. It might take something at the national level."
Little of this affects the North Dakota players, who come not only from the United States but also from Canada and Europe. Rastislav Spirko, a freshman from Vrutky, Slovakia, said Grand Forks suited him.
"It's a hockey town, a hockey university, hockey is the most important thing here," Spirko said.
Travis Zajac, another Fighting Sioux forward, grew up in Winnipeg. He said he had chosen North Dakota over Canadian junior hockey because "I thought it was the best way to get an education and play hockey at the same time."
He wants to represent Canada in the junior tournament, which is for players under 20 years old. Zajac was chosen last June by the Devils in the first round of the N.H.L. draft. Another Sioux player, Zach Parise, was chosen in the first round the previous year by the Devils.
Parise helped lead the American team to its first world junior championship last winter in Helsinki, Finland. One of his teammates on both the American team and at North Dakota was Drew Stafford, a first-round draft choice of the Buffalo Sabres who is back with the Fighting Sioux this season and will play again for the American junior team.
When Stafford played at Shattuck-St. Mary's, an elite prep school in Minnesota, one of his teammates was Sidney Crosby, a Canadian considered to be the world's best junior player. Crosby, now with Rimouski in the Quebec Major Junior league, will represent Canada in the world tournament at The Ralph in December.
He could be the star of the show. The anticipation over Crosby in hockey has been like that for Bobby Orr in the 1960's, Wayne Gretzky in the 1970's, Mario Lemieux in the 1980's and Eric Lindros in the 1990's. "Canada has been waiting for something like Sid," Stafford said. "He's got that unteachable skill of knowing where to be and how to be there."
Also expected in the tournament is Alexander Ovechkin of Russia, who was chosen first over all in the 2004 N.H.L. draft by Washington and is considered the best European prospect. Because the Americans are the defending champions, and because the N.H.L. is shut down, there is more interest than usual in the junior tournament. Jim Johannson, senior director of hockey operations for USA Hockey, said that some game times had been moved to accommodate ESPN2.
The N.H.L. lockout has also meant that tournament teams have a better choice of talent than in most years. "It helps us," Johannson said of the lockout. "For USA Hockey, it's going to be the best exposure we've ever had at this tournament."
Johannson was among several hockey notables who attended a two-game series between the Fighting Sioux and the Minnesota Golden Gophers on Oct. 22 and 23. Also there were Andy Murray, the coach of the Los Angeles Kings; Darryl Sutter, the Calgary general manager and coach; and Jason Blake, the Islanders forward who is a former Sioux player.
Johannson played for the United States team in the world junior tournaments of the early 1980's in Sweden and the Soviet Union, at a time when, he said, "it was only mom and dad and a bunch of scouts watching." Now, he said, the tournament has become a spectacle and The Ralph represents "the standard for what the under-20 championship has become.''
Smiling and looking out at the capacity crowd in The Ralph, Johannson said, "Who would have thought the world would come to Grand Forks?"
(( This will be my next new board when the tournament begins on Dec. 25. ))
- - - - - The Little Rink on the Prairie in North Dakota - - - - -
Mike Mohaupt for The New York Times
The Ralph Engelstad Arena is a $100 million hockey rink that is the home
of the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux.
NYTimes
November 5, 2004
GRAND FORKS, N.D. - When the Red River rose and flowed across the flat land seven years ago, people fled and viewed the flood damage on television from miles away. They saw rooftops surrounded by rising water and downtown buildings burning. "Come hell or high water," said the headline. Who knew what would replace the devastation?
Today, among the new buildings and the new dikes, there stands an incongruous jewel of an ice box called the Ralph Engelstad Arena, a three-year-old hockey rink that is the home of the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux, a perennial power of American college hockey.
When the world championship tournament of junior hockey begins here on Christmas Day, The Ralph, as it is known, will temporarily become the center of the sport's universe in this season of the National Hockey League lockout.
It could dazzle the international tourists and television audience.
"This is the Taj Mahal," said Thomas Clifford, the university's former president, who helped secure a donation of more than $100 million from the arena's namesake, a former North Dakota player, to build it. "They don't come any better."
The building, the college team, the prestigious international tournament and the hockey-rich environment suggest hockey's robust underpinning, despite its disarray at the major professional level. Children, middle-aged adults and even senior citizens play the game in this city of about 49,000. High school hockey thrives and a top junior league has its headquarters here, with teams spread across the Midwest.
The Engelstad Arena is one of 9 indoor and 14 outdoor rinks in the metropolitan area, which includes East Grand Forks, Minn., a town of about 8,000 that is across the Red River. North Dakota, which has won seven National Collegiate Athletic Association championships, regularly sends players to the N.H.L. The current roster of 25 players includes 10 N.H.L. draft choices, including two from the first round, two from the second and one from the third.
The Fighting Sioux - the name has been vocally criticized by American Indians and others as insensitive - are recruiting local players like Jake Marto, a senior defenseman for Grand Forks Central High School, whose father, Perry Marto, has played for 20 years in a recreational league.
"Hockey is the No. 1 winter sport here by far," Perry Marto said. "The kids all look up to those guys at U.N.D." Marto started flooding his yard when his son was 4 years old. "Him and his little buddies would skate every day," he said. "We even put a sign up: 'Marto Arena.' ''
Marto watched from a balcony on a recent Sunday afternoon as his son scrimmaged with friends who had rented the indoor ice at the Eagles Arena, one of the other indoor rinks in town. He said Jake might delay college to play for a season in the United States Hockey League, a Tier I junior circuit whose headquarters is in Grand Forks.
The junior league includes teams in cities like Sioux City, Iowa, and Sioux Falls, S.D. It was once a professional minor league; Gordie Howe played in the league for Omaha in 1945-46 when he was 17. Like many hockey elements here, the league is intertwined in the region's culture.
Gino Gasparini, the league's president, is a former North Dakota coach; several current Fighting Sioux players came from the league. "Junior hockey is a lot more prevalent in the Midwest than it is in the East," Gasparini said. "We'll do over 100 Division I scholarships a year. We average close to 3,000 fans per game."
The league's Prospects All-Star Game will be held on Feb. 8 at The Ralph. Both the junior league and the college league offer alternatives to Canada's major junior leagues, which have been the traditional feeder systems for the N.H.L.
North Dakota, which won the N.C.A.A. championship most recently in 2000, has sent to the N.H.L. players like goalie Ed Belfour of Toronto. High over one of the nets in The Ralph are banners from N.H.L. teams with former Fighting Sioux players.
The university has had a hockey team since 1946. One of its early goalies was Engelstad, a native of Thief River Falls, Minn., which is 45 miles east of Grand Forks. Ten of the 31 games of the world junior tournament will be played there in a building also named the Ralph Engelstad Arena, a smaller version of the Grand Forks rink. It, too, was built with Engelstad's philanthropy.
Engelstad, who died two years ago, played two seasons for the Fighting Sioux, the last of which was in 1949-50, before starting a construction business and moving to Las Vegas, where he eventually owned a casino, the Imperial Palace. He is remembered by friends and foes as generous and imperious.
After pledging the money to build the arena in Grand Forks, Engelstad became upset when American Indians and others tried to change the team's nickname. In a letter to Charles E. Kupchella, the university president, Engelstad threatened to stop construction and let the harsh weather of North Dakota destroy the partly built arena.
"I will take my lumps and walk away," Engelstad wrote to Kupchella. "It is a good thing that you are an educator because you are a man of indecision and if you were a businessman, you would not succeed.''
Engelstad also wrote that his letter should not be considered a threat. "It is only notification to you of exactly what I am going to do if you change this logo and this slogan," he wrote.
Engelstad had already been known for his eccentricities. In Las Vegas, he was host to parties on Hitler's birthday and collected Nazi memorabilia. Engelstad won the nickname struggle, and the building went up according to his wishes.
It has perfect sight lines, marble floors, 48 luxury boxes and 11,400 leather chairs. In a town surrounded by farmland, about 150 miles south of Winnipeg, Manitoba, The Ralph offers amenities to impress the most spoiled sports sophisticates from New York or Los Angeles.
Among decorative touches is a monument out front honoring Chief Sitting Bull and 4,000 Indian-head emblems on the floors, walls and furniture. These are among the things that bother the arena's critics, who discussed their feelings in late October at the American Indian Center, which is in an old house less than a half-mile south of the arena.
Gary LaPointe, a senior majoring in entrepreneurship and a member of the Rosebud tribe from South Dakota, called the building "a slap in the face to Sitting Bull," who opposed the United States late in the 19th century.
"If he were here, he'd probably burn it down," LaPointe said.
Merry Ketterling, a Lakota who works as a secretary for the university's Indian Studies department, said it was insensitive to use the Sioux people as a nickname. "We don't want to be dehumanized," she said. "People think Indians are in the past. They think we are all gone. We're still here."
Jim Antes, a professor of psychology, said he was embarrassed to find in his closet apparel with the name Sioux and the Indian logo, which he will no longer wear.
He does not boycott the games, but he walks around the Sioux logo on the floor of the arena and declines to use the word when shouting encouragement to the players. "It's hard to cheer for the team," he said. "You don't know what to yell."
Roger Thomas, North Dakota's athletic director, acknowledged the sentiment against the nickname. But he said change would probably not come from within the university, although St. John's, Stanford and other universities have dispensed with Indian nicknames and logos.
"This would be one of the strongholds," Thomas said with a shrug while standing outside the alumni suite on the arena's luxury box level. "The N.C.A.A. is concerned. Political correctness is part of our world. It might take something at the national level."
Little of this affects the North Dakota players, who come not only from the United States but also from Canada and Europe. Rastislav Spirko, a freshman from Vrutky, Slovakia, said Grand Forks suited him.
"It's a hockey town, a hockey university, hockey is the most important thing here," Spirko said.
Travis Zajac, another Fighting Sioux forward, grew up in Winnipeg. He said he had chosen North Dakota over Canadian junior hockey because "I thought it was the best way to get an education and play hockey at the same time."
He wants to represent Canada in the junior tournament, which is for players under 20 years old. Zajac was chosen last June by the Devils in the first round of the N.H.L. draft. Another Sioux player, Zach Parise, was chosen in the first round the previous year by the Devils.
Parise helped lead the American team to its first world junior championship last winter in Helsinki, Finland. One of his teammates on both the American team and at North Dakota was Drew Stafford, a first-round draft choice of the Buffalo Sabres who is back with the Fighting Sioux this season and will play again for the American junior team.
When Stafford played at Shattuck-St. Mary's, an elite prep school in Minnesota, one of his teammates was Sidney Crosby, a Canadian considered to be the world's best junior player. Crosby, now with Rimouski in the Quebec Major Junior league, will represent Canada in the world tournament at The Ralph in December.
He could be the star of the show. The anticipation over Crosby in hockey has been like that for Bobby Orr in the 1960's, Wayne Gretzky in the 1970's, Mario Lemieux in the 1980's and Eric Lindros in the 1990's. "Canada has been waiting for something like Sid," Stafford said. "He's got that unteachable skill of knowing where to be and how to be there."
Also expected in the tournament is Alexander Ovechkin of Russia, who was chosen first over all in the 2004 N.H.L. draft by Washington and is considered the best European prospect. Because the Americans are the defending champions, and because the N.H.L. is shut down, there is more interest than usual in the junior tournament. Jim Johannson, senior director of hockey operations for USA Hockey, said that some game times had been moved to accommodate ESPN2.
The N.H.L. lockout has also meant that tournament teams have a better choice of talent than in most years. "It helps us," Johannson said of the lockout. "For USA Hockey, it's going to be the best exposure we've ever had at this tournament."
Johannson was among several hockey notables who attended a two-game series between the Fighting Sioux and the Minnesota Golden Gophers on Oct. 22 and 23. Also there were Andy Murray, the coach of the Los Angeles Kings; Darryl Sutter, the Calgary general manager and coach; and Jason Blake, the Islanders forward who is a former Sioux player.
Johannson played for the United States team in the world junior tournaments of the early 1980's in Sweden and the Soviet Union, at a time when, he said, "it was only mom and dad and a bunch of scouts watching." Now, he said, the tournament has become a spectacle and The Ralph represents "the standard for what the under-20 championship has become.''
Smiling and looking out at the capacity crowd in The Ralph, Johannson said, "Who would have thought the world would come to Grand Forks?"
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