Herb Brooks (left) and Paul Giel (right) helped promote hockey in southern Minnesota after the 1980 Winter Olympics.
Last Updated on Thursday, 17 December 2015 11:06
By Kevin Hartzell
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
Not long ago, Paul Giel became part of the final chapter to my long thought-about commentary I have written and rewritten many times, but only in my head, entitled, “What Has Happened to Gopher Hockey?” It has four and maybe five chapters now to it and would be one of the better and more provocative commentaries I have ever written. I have never been able to allow myself to write it for a variety of reasons.
I am going to assume many of you do not know who Paul Giel was. Paul passed from our physical world in 2002. He was a great student-athlete at the University of Minnesota. He was a two-time All-American tailback in football and a Heisman Trophy runner-up. Just as impressively, he was a pitcher in baseball and played Major League Baseball for several teams, including the Minnesota Twins. He also served as the athletic director at the University of Minnesota for almost all of the 1970s and 80s.
I had the good fortune of playing Gopher hockey and becoming a captain during Mr. Giel’s tenure as athletic director and met him on several occasions. After my playing days, in my St. Paul Vulcans coaching tenure, I had several more occasions to sit with him privately. Once we talked at length about my future in coaching or outside of coaching. He was “our” advocate as Gopher alums. There was a time way back that I aspired to coach at my alma mater. That all changed over time.
There were two very memorable times I met with Mr. Giel, for what were serious issues, one very serious. I had called his office with these serious to more serious issues and he made time for me immediately. He was sincere in his interest to understand the issues I brought forward and responded in ways he felt best for the University. To me, he was the heart, the soul and the direction of everything Maroon and Gold.
I was looking at the world back then and for years to come from a different perspective than most. Early in my career coaching, junior hockey and the USHL was more the alternative path for many elite players. Over time however, the USHL became “the” path for most elite players in America, certainly for those elite players outside the state of Minnesota. As junior hockey became the more popular path, I was afforded the opportunity to work with virtually every Division I college in America and eventually scouting staffs from every team in the NHL. I had a unique view on the evolving hockey culture in America. I saw how the good hockey programs operated and how the not-so-good operated. I saw how different areas of the country developed players. Being in a position to share these perspectives is what motivated me to begin writing forLet’s Play Hockey.
From the view on my unique perch in junior hockey, I was becoming more concerned with the direction of Gopher hockey. Some of these “issues” were outside the control of the program, but many were not. Interesting that in recent years, more and more of those in my Gopher alumni circles, both professionally and personally, were privately voicing various levels of apprehension and dissatisfaction with the direction of the program as well. These voices became numerous and still are. You might think Gopher alums carry a lot of weight. You would be wrong.
I think as a group of alums, to some degree we have become apathetic. I know many feel their voices are not and would not be heard. That said however, we alums are a big part of the problem. We don’t speak up to the level that is needed.
At one point not that long ago, a couple of esteemed alums did speak up. These are men I look up to. The response from our program to their speaking up, in my opinion, was closer to “vindictiveness” than it was to trying to understand and move forward in more positive directions. The telling of that story would definitely make up a chapter.
In the final chapter, my commentary ends with bigger questions about who truly cares at the University level about much of anything other than the ever insatiable desire for revenue. Not long ago, the Athletic department gave a substantial salary extension, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to a young Gopher men’s basketball coach who, in my opinion, has yet to justify his first salary. Just this week, our Gopher football team accepted a bid to a bowl game. A 5-7 season record now gets a team to a bowl game. The invitation seems to me more like a trophy for participation. Welcome to our new world.
Certainly in part, the University accepting the bowl bid was motivated by money. In my opinion, the offer should have been declined. I think it would have served as one of the greater statements and recruiting tools in modern college sport. Oh, have I mentioned the $166 million “needed” for the student-athlete center? Keeping up with the competition remains spendy.
After giving much thought to writing an in-depth commentary for Let’s Play Hockey, I thought about writing the full opinion piece and not publishing it all, but sharing it and my thoughts with that person at the University who is the moral compass and lifeblood of Gopher sports. Until recently, that person would have been now-former athletic director Norwood Teague, which speaks at least some to my bigger point. There appears to be no person holding the compass. From the outside, it appears to be another bureaucracy gone wild.
We really miss you, Paul Giel. Golden Gopher sports and Golden Gopher hockey misses you!
Kevin Hartzell is the director of player development for the NA3HL’s Twin City Steel. A St. Paul native and forward for the University of Minnesota from 1978-82, Hartzell coached in the USHL from 1983-89 with the St. Paul Vulcans and from 2005-12 with the Sioux Falls Stampede. He was the head coach of Lillehammer in Norway’s GET-Ligaen from 2012-14. His columns have appeared in Let’s Play Hockey since the late 1980s. His book “Leading From the Ice” is available at amazon.com.
