Back in the era when Minneapolis and St. Paul had strong high school hockey conferences, Minneapolis rose up and surpassed St. Paul as the premier league in the Twin Cities in the 1970s and ’80s. Southwest was outstanding every year, while Washburn, Roosevelt, West, Patrick Henry, South, and Edison rose and fell with their best challenges.
I remember going to the Minneapolis Auditorium - now the Convention Center - to watch four or five games in a row. Henry’s best team came along and had a big, lanky defenseman named Tom Hirsch, and an outstanding group of forwards that included a small but wiry centerman named Gary Shopek. Hirsch was recruited to the University of Minnesota by Brad Buetow, while Shopek went off to play hockey wherever he could.
Junior hockey was just in its infancy in Minnesota back then, and Shopek made it onto one of the first Junior Stars teams. He was impressive, and he could play center or defense equally well. He was one of those tenacious kids who could attack from defense, or he could come back and backcheck ferociously when he played center.
While writing about hockey at every level for the Minneapolis Tribune in those days, I also coached youth baseball and hockey, and I started coaching in the Roseville summer league. Coaches drafted players from tryouts in those days, and the teams were pretty well balanced. I coaxed Shopek to try out, but to not show up after one tryout. Then I picked him, eagerly. He was as good a player as there was in that league, and I got to know him as a humble, unassuming young man who weighed about 170 pounds but it was all muscle. He was quick, highly skilled, and extremely honest, both as a player and a person. He lived at home, with a single mom, and he slept on the couch.
I talked to Brad Buetow about Shopek, and I pleaded with him to come out to the summer league to watch him, just once. We had some skilled players, but Shopek was our quarterback, a free-thinking, free-spirited competitor, and I played him at defense with complete freedom to jump up on offense. In the league playoffs, we won, then we won again, and we were in the championship game. Finally, Buetow sent assistant coach Dean Talafous out to watch Shopek in that game.
It was one of those nights when fate did not smile on our team. On the opening faceoff, the puck squirted back toward Shopek, and he started to retreat, to lure a forechecker toward him, but he stumbled and fell on his backside, losing the puck as the forechecker grabbed it and skated in to score on a breakaway within the first 10 seconds of the game. It didn’t get better. We got hammered, and Shopek played what might have been his worst game ever.
When it was over, I was walking toward the dressing room and Talafous came down from the seats. “I see what you mean about Shopek,” he said to me. “We’ve got to get him.”
I was incredulous. But I concealed my surprise. I walked into the dressing room, and despite the dispirited group, I addressed the players, thanking them for a spirited season. Then I singled out Shopek. “Gary, how do you think you played tonight?” I asked. “Are you kidding?” he said, “That was the worst game of my life.”
“You’re right,” I said, but then added, “The Gophers were here scouting you tonight, and they’d never seen you. They thought you were so good they want to make you an offer - so just think how good you’ll be when they see the real Gary Shopek!”
It was funny, but the Gophers did get a chance to see the real Shopek. In the 1983-84 season, Shopek won the Frank Pond rookie of the year award. In his junior year, 1985-86, he won the Mike Crupi award as the most determined Gopher. He won the Crupi award again as a senior, in 1986-87. He was still about 175 pounds, but he was still lean and quick and incredibly smart and competitive.
When he finished, he had played 173 games - then a record for the Gophers. And he had 24 goals, 93 assists, for 117 points. After playing during Buetow’s last two coaching seasons, and the first two of Doug Woog, Shopek scored 12-31-43 in his senior year. On that team, Corey Millen led with 36-29--65, followed by Steve MacSwain 31-29--60, Dave Snuggerud 30-29--59, and Todd Richards 8-43--52 from defense. Shopek’s 12-31--43 ranked fifth, but notice that he had more assists than Millen, MacSwain or Snuggerud.
When I covered the North Stars, and the Fighting Saints, and the Gophers, and the high schools, it was gratifying to get to know a lot of outstanding young players. I knew and liked every single player on those Gopher teams, but Shopek was special to me. It was disappointing that with all the scholarship and partial aid packages being thrown around, Gary Shopek was still living at home in North Minneapolis, and still sleeping on his mom’s couch.
I lost track of Gary Shopek over the last 30 years, but I heard he had a lot of problems in his life. A couple months ago, I heard he was stricken with cancer. He died a few days ago, at age 51, and the picture they ran in the Minneapolis Star Tribune obituary column showed him in his Gopher uniform. It’s going to take a while to get over this one. He was a special person, no matter what he had gone through, and he is evidence that everybody - every single person you meet - deserves to get a break in this life. But sometimes it doesn’t happen.

St. Scholastica Rolling

It finally happened. St. Scholastica improved to 12-0 in the UMAC softball race, and 18-10 overall on Tuesday, but the big news is they did it while playing their first actual home games of the season on their home field.
Coach Jen Walters, who won her 400th coaching game earlier this season, is well into her next 100 by now. The Saints invited North Central and Northwestern College of Roseville to Duluth to play, and the teams rotated opponents. The Saints whipped North Central 22-1 in a game shortened to five innings, then they beat Northwestern 8-0, with Kara Warren’s line drive home run over the center-field fence ending that game in the last of the sixth.
It was the second home run of the day for Warren, a sophomore from Denfeld. Chrisi Mizera, a freshman from Frankfort, Ill., pitched a two-hit shutout against Northwestern.