Kings of the Hill
The Minnesota State High School League boys’ hockey tournament came to a successful conclusion Saturday night and the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul with Eden Prairie and the Breck School, Golden Valley, crowned champions of their respective divisions.
Eden Prairie claimed its first hockey championship with a 3-0 win over luckless Moorhead in the Class 2A championship while Breck overcame an upstart Warroad team, 7-3, for the Class A title. Total event attendance (including consolation rounds) was 116,789.
The boys’ state hockey tournament is the dominant high school event in Minnesota and, due to the fact that there is nothing else like it, draws the attention of a nationwide audience. The tournament originated in St. Paul in 1945, with Eveleth, current home to the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, winning the title with a 4-3 win over Thief River Falls. Eveleth went on to win four more state championships in the years from 1948 through 1951.
The tournament itself didn’t capture the public’s fancy until more than 20 years after its debut. The previous top high school tournament attraction was the annual boys’ basketball tournament which held sway as the top single sporting event in Minnesota. That tournament easily outdrew the hockey event by more than two-to-one.
High school hockey was regarded as a Winter cult sport destined to remain in the shadows of basketball. It was the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) in 1971 who inadvertently promoted the growth in hockey interest when, it went to a two-class system for basketball. Prior to 1971, only eight teams qualified for the state basketball tournament. That year, 16 teams were split into two classes, and the basketball tournament was never the same. Meanwhile, high school hockey continued its merry way with only eight qualifiers.
From the start, attendance slipped at the basketball tournament. Meanwhile, the hockey tourney gained in popularity. Total attendance for the hockey tournament in 1973 hit 84,039 (compared to 45,369 in 1964).
By 1979, the hockey tournament was outdrawing the basketball tournament. This despite the fact, that hockey still had only eight finalists, while the basketball tourney brought in 16 from communities throughout the state. The hockey tournament reached such levels of popularity that Minneapolis television stations got into bidding wars for the right to televise the event. WCCO-TV, the longtime CBS outlet in the Twin Cities, was the most successful bidder and, for the duration of the tournament, dropped its regular CBS programming.
Never ones to prolong a good thing, the masterminds at the MSHSL decided to try to kill the goose laying golden eggs and created a 16-team tournament for hockey in 1992. Among other things, this resulted in WCCO abandoning interest in the tourney, costing the league lucrative television dollars.
At first it was Tier I and Tier II hockey, followed by the more conventional Class AA and Class A The MSHSL, in the meantime, hastened the downward drift in public interest in basketball with the creation of four tourney classes.
Interest in the big school half of the hockey tournament was revived moving it to the Xcel Energy Center, perhaps the finest hockey venue in the world. Fans flock to see the 2A portion of the tournament where sellout crowds are the norm. As for the IA event, the high school league doesn’t even bother to allow the opening to the public of the upper deck of the arena.
For those high school basketball purists who grumble about the lack of public interest in their sport (when compared to hockey), they have only the MSHSL to blame for starting it all.
2009 State Boys’ Hockey Tournament results:
2A Championship: Eden Prairie 3, Moorhead 0. (Note: this marked the seventh time Moorhead has lost in the finals. The school has never won the title.)
1A Championship: Breck 7, Warroad 3 (Note: this was the sixth appearance and third championship for Breck.)
2A Semi-Finals: Eden Prairie 4, Blaine 2
Moorhead 2, Cretin-Durham Hall 1
1A Semi-Finals: Breck 6, Little Falls 1
Warroad 5, St. Cloud Cathedral 3
2A Quarterfinals: Eden Prairie 3, Hill-Murray 2, OT
Moorhead 5, Edina 2
Blaine 5, Rochester Century 0
Cretin-Durham Hall 5, Duluth East 2
1A Quarterfinals: Breck 3, Rochester Lourdes 0
Warroad 7, Hutchinson 1
Little Falls 6, Virginia-Mountain Iron-Buhl 2
St. Cloud Cathedral 5, Mahtomedi 2