The schedule is out

Here's hoping that the college hockey season starts and goes on as normal. No guarantees, at this point. Nonetheless, Minnesota State (and the WCHA) released its 2020-21 schedule on Wednesday. Here's how it looks (with a few editorial comments):

Home series in bold

Oct. 10-11 — Icebreaker tourney at Duluth, Providence, UMD/Minnesota ... Fun way to start the season. I'll be a lot of Mankato folks will make the trip to Duluth — if they're able.

Oct. 16-17 — St. Cloud State ... Too bad this isn't a home and home, considering the heavy road swing to start the year for the Mavericks.

Oct. 23-24 — Alaska ... The WCHA schedule begins in Fairbanks. Better in October than February, though.

Oct. 30-31 — Minnesota Duluth ... Gotta wait until Halloween weekend, but kicking off the home schedule against UMD is good. Mythical 2020 national championship on the line?

Nov. 6-7 — Northern Michigan ... The first home conference series is a good one with the Wildcats in town.

Nov. 13-14 — Bemidji State ... The Beavers should be one of the league favorites next year. By the time MSU rolls into town in mid-November we'll know for sure.

Nov. 20-21 — Lake Superior State ... Lakers could be sneaky good next season. They don't lose much.

Nov. 27-28 — Alaska Anchorage ... Will this be MSU's last trip ever to Alaska?

Dec. 4-5 — Bowling Green ... Enjoy the only meeting of the season between MSU and BG. The Falcons should be a league favorite next year.

Dec. 11-12 — Michigan Tech ... And now they can breathe after 10 straight weeks of play. What a grind of a first-half schedule.

Jan. 1-2 — Alaska ... The first repeat customer of the season (unless they end up playing UMD in the Icebreaker)

Jan 8-9 — Alabama Huntsville ... Another last hurrah before the conference change up?

Jan 22-23 — Ferris State ... Could this be the Hockey Day Minnesota opponent? Will it be played outside? Or will the weekend before, currently an idle on the schedule, be Hockey Day? Stay tuned.

Jan. 29-30 — Michigan Tech ... When we last left the Mavericks they were preparing to play the Huskies in the WCHA semifinals.

Feb. 5-6 — Lake Superior State ... I never made the trip to the Soo. Tough trip in February.

Feb. 19-20 — Ferris State ... Good thing there's an off weekend between two long treks to Michigan. 

Feb. 26-27 — Bemidji State ... Here's betting this series decides the MacNaughton — again.

The 'State of Hockey' story

This is from today's Star-Tribune and made this "genius" think about
his story regarding this phrase everyone in Minnesota knows so well.

Prior to coming to Mankato in 2000, I was the editor of Let’s Play Hockey for five years. In the late 1990s I had created a column in LPH called “State of Hockey." It was part of a full-page feature on Minnesota high school hockey that ran weekly.

I liked the play on words — "state" referring to both Minnesota and the condition of the sport — and I created a simple, little logo with an outline of Minnesota and those words across the map. 

Around the same time, the Wild was gearing up for its inaugural season and putting together promotional materials for season tickets, etc. Let's Play Hockey's then-owner/publisher Doug Johnson got a call from a Wild official asking if it would be all right for the team to use “State of Hockey” for some of those materials. 

Doug came to me and asked if I'd consider giving the Wild permission to use it. Although it was my creation, I told him it was his call, as he was the owner of the paper. 

Although I don’t know if any official deal was actually struck between the Wild and LPH (certainly, nothing extra came my way), the publisher gave the Wild his blessing to go-ahead to use the phrase as it wished.

The Wild did and, well, you know the rest.

Maybe it was an inevitable idea. Someone else surely would have come up with it, right? Maybe someone at the Wild had thought of it themselves, only to call LPH after doing their due diligence and jumping through the proper legal hoops. I don't know. 

But little did I realize that "State of Hockey" would become the Wild’s theme and motto and catch-phrase, that they would have a fight song/anthem composed around the concept, that it would be co-opted by seemingly every hockey entity in Minnesota and appear on T-shirts and sweatshirts and hats, or that it would still be going strong 20 years later.

Oh, well. My loss. So it goes.