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Detroit Free Press January 22, 2004 Thursday 0 EDITION WHERE HOCKEY IS KING: Keweenaw Peninsula embraces skates, sticks and pucks BY SHAWN WINDSOR that is, in many ways, defined ample, the home of Tom Izzo FREE PRESS by the game. and Steve Mariucci, basketball STAFF WRITER and football rule. "What do you do here in the Four-foot icicles hung high winter otherwise?" said the But from Houghton north to and dangerous from the out- stoic snowplow driver from the tip of the Keweenaw, it's side corners of the old rink, Mohawk, a few dozen homes all hockey. Consider that next stalactites crystallized during bunched together further up year is the 100-year anniver- the brutal winters in the most into Keweenaw. sary of the Portage Lakes, the remote region of the state. first professional hockey team It was the kind of moment in the world. The Lakes Inside the Armory, an anti- played out thousands of times played in the five-team Inter- quated, gun-metal shrine with in the snow-drenched national Hockey League. The a quarter-moon-shaped roof reaches of the Upper Penin- other teams were based in that pokes through the white- sula. From Houghton to Cop- Calumet, Pittsburgh, Sault out horizon in Calumet, young per Harbor, from Eagle River Ste. Marie, Mich., and Sault teenage boys swooped to Ahmeek, somewhere, Ste. Marie, Ontario. around the ice, crashing their someone, is lacing up a pair of 100-pound frames into the skates, grabbing a stick and The league lasted three boards, scrambling for the chasing a puck. years. A few years later, two elusive puck, moving with a more leagues were created. kind of gangly grace. It's been this way ever since The best team in each played the Canadians brought their a championship series. The Marty Bessolo leaned against game to the copper mining winner got Lord Stanley's the glass to watch, his breath region more than 100 years Cup. After World War I, a visible in the 10-degree chill. ago. The sport suited the whole new league was His son, Dave, 13, was out in harsh winters and mining formed. It was called the NHL. the scrum, gliding away on a ethos of the Finnish, Italians Hometown hockey history recent early Saturday after- and French miners. noon in Calumet, an old min- Not long after, Michigan ing town cut in the center of "Tough guys looking for Tech's club-level hockey the Keweenaw Peninsula. something to do," said Bill team became varsity. The Sproule, a civil engineering Huskies have been the soul Occasionally, one of the professor at Michigan Tech of the northern tip of Michigan teams scored, and a dozen or who also teaches a course in ever since, even though the so mothers and grandmoth- hockey history. team has had one winning ers, huddled in pairs and season in the past 20 years, in threes under blankets on Maybe it had something to do 1992-93. The Huskies are 4- wooden bleachers, let out with sticks, he said. 14-4 this season. cheers. The area has been a kind of Sproule, 55, blames it on aca- Bessolo, 41, nodded, a sub- hockey island since -- contrary demics. tle acknowledgement from a to downstate stereotypes, man who has been around hockey doesn't dominate the "You have to take engineer- hockey all his life in a place U.P. In Iron Mountain, for ex- ing and there are no girls CompetitivEdge 1-888-881-EDGE www.clipresearch.com Electronic Clipping here," he said. "You have to and families come from all over yellow-and-black striped over- have a pretty fancy recruiter to the peninsula. alls. get around that." Bessolo's son's team had a At the Dee, a local senior Still, he said, "there is a lot of two-goal lead when the sec- hockey club, made of former optimism here." ond period ended. As the college players and former scrawny players headed to European professionals A young coach, 37-year-old the basement locker rooms, a played before a small crowd. Jamie Russell, took over this garage-sized door lifted at the season. He came from Cor- end of the arena, and an old Down the road at Tech, Mark nell. His arrival was like the Zamboni rumbled out to cut Maroste, an assistant coach 200-plus inches of snow that and flood the ice. who played for MacInnes in falls every year, leaving the the early 1980s, sat in a dark landscape pure and white. One of the coaches wan- office getting ready to face dered over to chat with Bes- the No. 1-ranked team in the In the early years, the Huskies solo. Ray Jervais, 53, a soil country. played at Dee Stadium, a frigid sampler for a local engineer- metal structure built in 1928 ing company, spends his Naturally, he talked hockey. on the shore of Portage Lake spare time at the rink with kids. in Houghton. In 1972, they Like most, he grew up playing "It's a unique pocket in Michi- moved to the Student Ice hockey. gan," he said. "(Hockey) is the Arena, renamed the MacInnes topic of a lot of conversa- Student Ice Arena in 1991 "My mother used to send me tions." named after the late John the local paper when I was in MacInnes, the coach who won Vietnam," he said. By sunset, maybe an hour three NCAA championships in before the 7 p.m. start, the the 1960s and 1970s, guided Even in the jungle, he had to wind picked up, blowing the 21 All-Americas and sent sev- follow the play on the ice. Go tops of drifts, creating a low eral players to the NHL. He Huskies! visibility, eye-stinging white- retired in 1982. wash. When the game was over, the The Dee exists today. lobby, flush with the scent of Down the hill from the arena, sweat and rubber flooring and in front of the dorms, students On weekends, players from 6 hot chocolate, filled with par- slid around makeshift rinks to 60 arrive early and late at ents coming in from the snow with duct-taped broom han- the old rink. Some sport local for the next round. Half the dles and a holeless whiffeball. business-sponsored jerseys community seem to jam the They call it broom hockey. and $150 sticks and lug only warm place in the cav- equipment bags as large as ernous building. At Tech, it's an intramural they are tall. Others saunter in sport. There were refs, score- with off-brand skates slung It was mid-afternoon, and boards and a few fans, most of over their shoulders. though games were un- them girlfriends. spooling around the region, a The scene is the same at the few hundred people dropped Back at MacInnes, a couple Armory. by the Finnish festival on the thousand filed into the 3,500- shores of Portage Lake in seat box to watch the only Calumet, once home to downtown Hancock. A line of Division I sport in town. Tech 60,000 and great copper young men and women, stayed with North Dakota for wealth, shrunk to 879 people dressed only in bathing suits, the first period. after the mines closed. It sur- snaked back from a hole cut in vives on memories and the ice for a polar bear swim. Chris Conner, a slick, speedy hockey. sophomore center from A few members of the Michi- Westland, and one of the Last Saturday, trucks wedged gan Tech pep band, looking country's leading scorers, cut between the snow drifts in the to cool off before the night's his way through the larger Armory parking lot, filling it by big game against North Da- Sioux several times, once hit- early afternoon. The players kota, took turns diving into the ting the crossbar. water, wearing their trademark CompetitivEdge 1-888-881-EDGE www.clipresearch.com Electronic Clipping Old-timers lined the glass be- is young. The coach is young. hind each goal. Young boys And when he hits the town, Rock 'n' roll blared down from pretended to check each everyone knows who he is. the wooden rafters. The other behind the old-timers, young men moved with an sprinting up and down the "I love the coziness," he said. easy grace, slapping shots floor. into an empty net, pretending A few hours later, the bars to be Gretzky, to be Yzerman. Students chanted mockingly, were full and the game was but cleanly -- eschewing the dissected and another snow- It was eight degrees. popular vulgarities shouted at storm blew in from Lake Supe- places like Yost Arena at the rior. A few miles west of Eric Jukkala laced up his University of Michigan. Houghton, down the shore of skates. Early Sunday morn- Portage Lake Channel, a light ing, he walked onto the ice "We do it with innuendo," said cut through the black horizon. once more. Matt Black, a junior computer engineering student and pep Oskar, an old Finnish town of He graduated from Houghton band member. "We walk the a few dozen, mostly slept. It High School last year. He line." was after midnight. plans to go to Tech next year. This night, so do the Huskies. At the Oskar dome, a half- He's been playing hockey For a while. Eventually, the dozen teenagers played in since he could walk. Sioux's size and speed are bitter cold on gray ice. too much, and in the end, "What else can you play at 2 they win, 4-0.