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February 8, 2010

Outdoor hockey catching on at college level

By Shane Frederick Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO — Growing up in the St. Louis area, Tyler Elbrecht didn’t play a lot of outdoor hockey.

It was never really cold enough in the winter months to have winter-long ice on the lakes and ponds of Missouri and southern Illinois.

But ask him if he’d be interested in playing an outdoor hockey game with his Minnesota State teammates, and he’d be all for it.

“It would be sweet,” the freshman defenseman said.

On Saturday, the University of Wisconsin played its second outdoor game in five years. The first time around, the Badgers played Ohio State at Green Bay’s Lambeau Field, the home of the Packers. This time, they played under the lights of their home turf, Camp Randall Stadium, against Michigan.

The event, called the Culver’s Camp Randall Classic, drew a crowd of 55,031 fans to the Wisconsin football field in Madison, the second-largest crowd ever to see a college-hockey game.

The third-ranked Badgers won the nonconference game 3-2, getting two late power-play goals from Brendan Smith, the highest-scoring defenseman in the country and someone whom the Mavericks must be thinking about this week as they prepare for this week’s trip to Madison.

It’s too bad that the Mavericks and the Badgers will be playing inside the Kohl Center Friday and Saturday nights and not on the outdoor rink constructed just a few blocks away.

Outdoor hockey has given hockey a nice publicity boost of late, whether it’s from the NHL Winter Classic played the last three New Years Days or the college games.

In the days that followed the outdoor game between the Boston Bruins and Philadelphia Flyers at Boston’s historic Fenway Park, college rivals Boston University and Boston College played there. BU even donned a hockey jersey modeled after that worn by the ballpark’s main tenant, the Red Sox.

“It brings a little exposure to the game of college hockey,” Mavericks captain Geoff Irwin said.

Saturday’s event was a doubleheader, with the Wisconsin women’s team playing Bemidji State in the afternoon.

One report from Camp Randall stated that officials from the University of Minnesota were taking notes on the event. According to Inside College Hockey, Minnesota associate athletic director Marc Ryan said the Gophers are “in the advanced planning stages” of hosting outdoor hockey at the new 50,000-seat TCF Bank Stadium next season.

Here’s hoping that the Gophers make it an event involving other Minnesota teams in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association. It would be the perfect venue to bring back the WCHA Minnesota Showcase that MSU and Minnesota Duluth tried out at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul last season. An outdoor doubleheader featuring Minnesota, Minnesota State, St. Cloud State and Minnesota Duluth (next time, Bemidji State) sounds just about perfect for a cold winter’s day.

“It would great to experience that, for sure,” Elbrecht said. “It would be unreal to play in front of 50,000 people.”



Shane Frederick is a Free Press staff writer. Read his blog at www.mankatofreepress.com/hockeyblog.

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Shane Frederick