It is fair to say that I have been around hockey and journalism for the majority of my life. I started playing hockey as a third-grader in St. Paul before we moved to St. Cloud. I was able to play through my senior year of high school and got a chance to play in a varsity game for St. Cloud Apollo as a senior, the pinnacle of my playing career.
I began working for St. Cloud State University’s newspaper in the fall of 1985 and then got a job working as a part-time reporter for the St. Cloud Times in the summer of 1986. From 1986-91, I covered a wide range of sports, including covering a lot of high school hockey and St. John’s University hockey.
I moved to Portland, Ore., in 1991 and got back into journalism in 1994. In the 1995-96 season, I got the opportunity to cover the Portland Winterhawks junior hockey team. I moved back to Minnesota in 1996 and then got back into journalism again in 1998. Working for the Mason City Globe-Gazette, I covered the North Iowa Huskies of the United States Hockey League in 1998-99.
In 1998-99, I got a full-time job as the prep coordinator for the St. Cloud Times and covered boys and girls hockey. At the Times, I eventually took over as the beat reporter for St. Cloud State men’s and women’s hockey in 2010 and I have covered the Huskies ever since. I have covered the St. Cloud State men’s team winning four regular season conference titles, an NCHC Frozen Faceoff championship, five Frozen Faceoff title games, two Frozen Four appearances and Drew LeBlanc being named the program’s first Hobey Baker Award winner.
One of the highlights of my career was covering the 2012-13 season for the Huskies when they won their first WCHA title, reached their first Frozen Four and LeBlanc won the Hobey Baker Award. It was fun to chronicle so many firsts. Along those lines, one of the highlights of my time working for The Rink Live was covering the Frozen Four last year and chronicling the Huskies making it to their first national championship game.
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What I love about working for The Rink Live is the variety of things we do, from game coverage to feature stories, being at things like Hockey Day Minnesota, the North Dakota and Minnesota state hockey tournaments, podcasts and the variety of people in the game that I get to talk to. The thing I enjoy most about my job is getting to know the people that I write about and telling readers things about them besides what they do in the game.
During my time away from my job covering the Huskies and helping manage The Rink Live, I help coach the youth hockey teams for my two sons and my wife is also a youth hockey team volunteer.
