means "good health" or "cheers. Pronounced "Slanj-a-va". Gonna use this next time we do a toast.

3. Bedard & Celebrini. Probably coulda used ‘em.
4. Also…Hage, Boisvert, Wood, John Mustard. CAN has got to get past U.S. college player bias. Pretty sure those guys (and others) could have contributed.
5. Don’t blame the officials. Adjust.

Minnesota is my home now, Samurai.

Lorne Carr.

I can’t remember what his response was. The last thing I remember about that story was him riding away on his motorcycle from the WalkupSkydome. Never to heard from again. I often wonder who that guy was and what he was trying to accomplish. And whatever happened to him.

It was too funny. The guy had to have known the jig was up once every one saw him skating. Understandably, the players who took him out the night before weren’t happy & wanted to beat the shit out of him. Jimmy waved him over & said…”Ok, who are you? Did someone put you up to this. What’s going on?”

So, there was a lot of anticipation as the guy put the gear on. We were as standing along the boards, looking through the glass. Unbelievably the guy went through with it. He went out there and kinda shuffled along the ice pushing the puck like a guy applying a coat of epoxy to his garage floor.

The next morning, the players brought him back to the coaches offices. Jimmy asked him if he’d like to go for a skate. The guy said that he didn’t have his equipment with him. Jimmy said “we’ll get you some.”

Yeah, so it all seemed fishy. Then Jimmy Peters (the head coach) called the coach at Roseau HS. He said the it couldn’t be Paul Broten as he had seen him at school that day.

It was late in the day (midweek) & the guy had some questions about the program & asked if he could tour campus. I think there were a couple of players working out and the coaches asked them to take him out to eat & put him up in their dorm room (or maybe at their apartment) for the night.

His story was that he didn’t want to follow in his brother’s footsteps and was looking to carve out his own path. He was pretty convincing and knew his stuff. Broten family history, Minnesota HS hockey, pro hockey, college hockey, etc. But this was pre-internet, pre social media.

The license plates on his bike were from Minnesota and physically he looked like he could be one of the Brotens. The coaches were skeptical that it was actually Paul Broten. The youngest of the three Broten brothers. Neal and Aaron, who played at the University of Minnesota, were stars.

The Lumberjacks had a NCAA DI men’s hockey program where my brother Doug was an asst. coach. In the spring of 1983 or ‘84, a high school kid rode his motorcycle onto Flagstaff and visited the men’s hockey coaches while purporting to be graduating high school senior Paul Broten.