Red, White and Blue on Ice Minnesota’s Elite Teams and Players of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s Roger A. Godin

Minnesota, the State of Hockey, leads the nation in its devotion to Canada’s national game. Over 6400 players have played in the National Hockey League (NHL) since its inception with the 1917-1918 season. Minnesota outpaces Massachusetts and Michigan as the top producer of American talent of the NHL. while much of that player development has taken place since the mid-1970s, the origins of this American Hockey dominance can be traced to the 1890s. Minnesota was producing elite teams and players in the years before WWII.

Hockey historian Roger Godin tells this early story by taking readers through the seasons of five championship teams and one runner-up in both the minor league American Hockey Association (AHA) and the Central Hockey League (CHL). These teams were almost exclusively Minnesotan /American in the CHL and had a significant domestic content in the case of the AHA. Beyond the teams, Godin tells the stories of six elite Minnesota players, five of whom played in the NHL and who came out of this same time frame, 1926-42: Elwyn “Doc” Romnes, Mike Karakas, Carl “Cully” Dahlstrom, Hubert “Hub” Nelson, Frank Brimsek and John Mariucci. It is a story largely untold and fills a major void in the history of the great ice sport in the United States.

You may think you’re not religious because you see yourself as an agnostic or atheist, as a humanist or secularist, or as a skeptic or doubter, or as a person who is spiritual but not religious.  However you see yourself, you may find yourself feeling right at home among Christians who use the word “God” as Adams does in reference to certain kinds of experiences but who resist talking about “God” as a sort of being who occasionally intervenes in nature or in human history.