Congratulations to the Minnesota Oldtimers

Excerpts from a recent article in USA Hockey:

The team wrapped up its second consecutive national championship, winning the 75+ Open division...

The Oldtimers have been attending Nationals for over a decade and have won titles in the 70-and-over division in 2014, ’15, ’17 and ’21. This year, a four-team 75+ Open division was added...

The Oldtimers program is comprised of about 60 players ranging in age from 63-85. It’s a dedicated group of guys from the Twin Cities and surrounding suburbs that skate three days per week — Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays — during the season.

Not just anyone can play for the Oldtimers; the team has high standards on who it allows into its hockey fraternity.

“I think the key to all of this is, and I was part of it, we’re selective on who can play with us,” said Melnychuk, who captained the University of Minnesota Golden Gophers in 1959-60. “In other words, many of these leagues around the Twin Cities, there’s all kinds of them and they let a lot of guys in who are 30, 40, 50, and they dominate and the older guys never get to touch the puck. So the first rule we made was to join our group, you have to be at least 63, 64. … We control the age group.

“The second thing that we control is we don’t want to deal with amateurs. In other words, just because a guy wants to play, that’s not qualification. In order to join our group, you will have to have at least played high school hockey, but that’s just the minimum. The majority of our guys are all college guys or pro, so on our team, that’s the deal. Most of us have played college.”

“We’ll keep at it until our legs don’t work anymore or we have other ailments,” said Rossini, who is 75 years old. “It’s not guaranteed. Every day’s a blessing at our age and we’ve lost a couple teammates just in the last year here due to different ailments, and it’s an eye-opener. When that happens, you kind of look in the mirror sometimes and say, how long can I still do this? When we do get on the ice, afterward we have a beer and raise a glass to the guys that are gone now and say, ‘Hey, we’re really lucky to still be doing this.’”

One of my high school classmates - Peter Markle - is the second from the right on the back row.  I distinctly remember him deking around me with the puck back in 7th grade when our school had mandatory hockey that put incompetents like me onto the ice.  I'd like to think that he parlayed that experience into his later production of Youngblood.