The Global Warming League

Neil Broten, legendary figure of North Stars Hockey

The year was 1993. For hockey fans, it was the beginning of the end. The state sport of Minnesota and the national sport of Canada would never be the same.

Only two years earlier, the Minnesota North Stars had shocked the hockey world by upsetting the defending champion Edmonton Oilers on their way to the Stanley Cup finals. Hockey was a way of life in Minnesota at that time. The University of Minnesota's Golden Gophers were perennial contenders, and everybody knew that the "Miracle on Ice" team was coached by local guru Herb Brooks, who found most of his talent playing pickup games on the 10,000 lakes of Minnesota--which are frozen six months out of the year.

If any state deserves an NHL team, it's Minnesota. That's why every peewee puckchaser on the frozen tundra was in a state of slackjawed disbelief when owner Norm Green sold the team to a cadre of Dallas businessmen. More Ice Country extinctions followed. First it was Winnipeg, then Quebec, and then Hartford, and each franchise relocated in a part of the world where ice doesn't naturally occur. Now I'm not saying that someone living in Florida doesn't have a right to appreciate hockey, but for goodness' sake, why do you need two teams there when you have palm trees and millions of miles of sandy beaches?

Florida, Nashville, Phoenix, and every other hot-weather hockey outpost should be forced to subsidize the northern teams, and their owners should be conscripted into tree planting brigades on the African savanna during the offseason in an attempt to forstall desertification. In addition, every Canadian or Minnesotan hockey player on a team south of Indiana should have their Tim Horton's double-double privilges revoked.

Eventually, due to the devistation wrought by global warming, the possiblity of playing hockey on an outdoor rink may become a thing of the past, in no small part due to the excessive use of cooling equipment to keep ice rinks open in Phoenix, L.A., and Dallas.

It would be poetic justice, I think, if Floridians found themselves in a desert wasteland and vacationed on the sandy tropical beaches of Winnipeg and St. Paul.