Star Tribune
Players mourn cancellation of U.S. Pond Hockey Championships — by playing hockey
“Cold as Ice” by Foreigner blared from a portable speaker as Steve Wilson took to the rink Friday. He and about a dozen other Frontier Airlines pilots were among the hundreds of athletes whose weekend plans were dashed by the unseasonable warmth that forced U.S. Pond Hockey Championships organizers to cancel the second weekend of this year’s event.
Wilson and his fellow jocks were undeterred. They had traveled from Pennsylvania, Iowa, Belgium and many points in between to play hockey. So a group of would-be pond hockey players rented the Bloomington Ice Garden for a few hours to play several pickup rounds instead. Nobody is taking home a Golden Shovel this weekend, so why not have fun, anyway?
“I’ve done a lot in my life but this thing here — 80 dudes coming out to play pickup — it’s just cool,” Wilson said.
The pond hockey tournament, which usually takes place on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, is one of multiple events that have been drastically altered or outright canceled by an unusually warm winter. Twin Cities-area lakes are usually frozen solid by early December. In 2023, the region logged a record high 54 degrees and more than an inch of rain that month instead.
Last weekend offered a reprieve from the relatively toasty temperatures. The pond hockey tournament’s first few days went off without a hitch. Then things warmed up again.
“This event sometimes teeters between a couple of degrees, and we’ve had good luck, and we’ve had bad luck,” tournament organizers wrote on Facebook. “Last weekend was good luck, this weekend is bad luck.”
The cancellation led to an influx of visitors at the Ice Garden, according to Manager Lenny Schmitz. This winter, he’s seen an uptick in the number of people booking open skate time due to the lack of ice available outside. He lamented the balmy weather Friday but gladly took the displaced hockey players’ reservations.
“That ice — it doesn’t pay any bills,” Schmitz said.
In all, about 300 pond hockey players and thousands of spectators scrambled for alternative plans. Many traveled hundreds and even thousands of miles.
Tournament organizers set up a Facebook page for the athletes to connect and find facilities to play pickup games. Practically every team that showed up to the Bloomington facility had booked an Airbnb — Sean McCann and his friends on Team Antwerp traveled 11 hours from Belgium to compete.
They discovered the pond hockey championships on Instagram last year. The men named the team after their hometown.
“At first it was an idea and then it became real by saving up some money and getting flights,” McCann said.
He and teammates designed custom jerseys sporting a signature blue “A” and refused to let their new threads go to waste. Not that you could tell anyone in the Ice Garden had landed a consolation prize.
Smiles and fist bumps were abundant Friday morning, as the men played short matches and bounced between three makeshift rinks created by draping netting around the full rink to portion it out. U.S. Pond Hockey Championships organizers even loaned equipment to players who organized the pickup games.
Like many of the other men at the rink, Troy DuBay plays hockey every Sunday, and his team already spent the money and made plans to play at the tournament. They figured why not have a little fun anyway.
“It’s kind of a drunken weekend sort of thing, at least for our team,” DuBay said. “We still want to play.”
Several players in Bloomington said they were impressed by how quickly the pickup games came together. They took sips from water bottles — and cans of beer — while they waited for a teammate to tag them into the game.
“I’ve never seen any sport be able to come together like a community,” Josh Lee said.
Star Tribune
Converting office buildings to housing could save downtowns, but at a cost
Transforming the heart of both downtowns, which have much larger buildings than old warehouses, is going to take a lot more money, creativity and time. Josh Talberg, managing director at downtown Minneapolis brokerage JLL, said with no major apartment buildings on the drawing board in either downtown, the fleet of empty office buildings present a golden opportunity to create more housing and lead both cities in a new direction.
“You can can certainly see the fundamentals improving, and you can feel that vibrancy, and that’s ultimately the foundation that’s needed to get investors to reinvest in the city,” he said. “But it’s not as if these 18-wheelers can turn on a dime.”
Star Tribune
Release of hazardous materials forces closing of highway in southeast Minnesota
The Minnesota Department of Transportation closed part of a state highway Wednesday evening near Austin because of a “major hazardous materials release” in the area.
Hwy. 56 from Hayfield to Waltham, a stretch covering about five miles, was closed in both directions and drivers were directed to follow a detour to Blooming Prairie on U.S. Hwy. 218.
No information on the hazardous materials released was immediately available.
Star Tribune
Civil suit against MN state trooper who shot Ricky Cobb II is dismissed
A federal judge dismissed a civil lawsuit against Minnesota state trooper Ryan Londregan in the shooting death of Ricky Cobb II during a 2023 traffic stop.
The decision is the latest development in a case that has drawn heated debate over excessive use of force by law enforcement. Criminal charges against Londregan were dismissed by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty in June, saying the prosecution didn’t have the evidence to proceed with a case.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Nancy E. Brasel granted Londregan’s motion to dismiss the civil suit, arguing he acted reasonably when he opened fire as Cobb’s vehicle lurched forward with another state trooper partly inside.
Londregan’s attorney Chris Madelsaid Wednesday that it’s been a “long, grueling journey to justice. Ryan Londregan has finally arrived.”
On July 31, 2023, the two troopers pulled over Cobb, 33, on Interstate 94 in north Minneapolis for driving without taillights and later learned he was wanted for violating a felony domestic no-contact order. Cobb refused commands to exit the car.
With Seide partly inside the car while trying to unbuckle Cobb’s seatbelt, the car moved forward. Londregan then opened fire, hitting Cobb twice.
In her decision, Brasel said the troopers were mandated by state law to make an arrest given Cobb’s domestic no-contact order violation. She said it was objectively reasonable for Londregan to believe Seide was in immediate danger as the car moved forward on a busy highway, which would make his use of force reasonable.