A Look Inside Minnesota’s Greatest Hockey Rivalry

Editor’s Note: This column features accounts of longstanding and interesting high school sports rivalries. If your school has a special game or event of historical significance, and you would like to have it considered for publication, please send information to Nate Perry at nperry@nfhs.org.

“It’s like Indiana basketball or football in Texas.” – Mike Ross, Roseau High School hockey player, 1983 and 1984 state tournament qualifier

For those unfamiliar with the sport of ice hockey, the quote above is the most efficient way to equate its cultural significance in Minnesota. The Land of 10,000 Lakes is known as “The Land of 10,000 Rinks” in hockey slang, and with more than 220 community arenas – double that of any other state – it’s a reputation well-earned. (And once frozen over, many of those lakes become pick-up hockey battlegrounds, too.)

It’s a fanaticism that spans every competitive level, from “mites” and “squirts” all the way up to supporting the National Hockey League’s (NHL) Minnesota Wild. But as for high school hockey hysteria, most Minnesotans will tell you that it peaks just south of the Canadian border, in two tiny towns separated by 22 miles along Highway 11, Roseau (pop. 2,730) and Warroad (pop. 1,820).

Although it was likely unintentional, the roots of the hockey rivalry between Roseau High School (RHS) and Warroad High School (WHS) were sewn by the towns’ respective puck patriarchs, Warroad’s Cal Marvin and Roseau’s Oscar Almquist. Following their playing careers, both men dedicated their lives to growing the game among their local youth and establishing a winning tradition to go with it.

Known as “Mr. Hockey” in Warroad, Marvin ran the youth hockey association for decades and was instrumental in the fundraising efforts to construct the first community ice rink. He also gave the kids something to strive for as founder of the Warroad Lakers senior hockey club, and, as coach and general manager, turned it into the most successful senior amateur hockey team in the United States, according to his U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame profile.

A fellow U.S. Hockey Hall of Famer, Almquist’s influence in Roseau has been described as similar to that of Marvin’s, but more high school-centric. Born in Eveleth, Minnesota, Almquist came to Roseau in 1938 and took over the RHS program in 1941, embarking on a coaching career that would earn him the nickname “Dean of Minnesota High School Hockey Coaches” for his contributions. In 28 seasons at the helm, Almquist led Roseau to four Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) state championships – including the League’s second sanctioned title in 1946 and three crowns in four years from 1958 to 1961 – and finished with a sterling career record of 403 wins, 148 losses and 21 ties.

Their efforts – both in culture and instruction – made playing hockey ‘the thing to do’ in Roseau and Warroad, and their legacy is no more apparent than when the high school teams renew acquaintances. The Rams have locked horns with the Warriors on 186 documented occasions since 1945, with Roseau holding the advantage in both the all-time ledger (107-73-5) and the 23 meetings that took place during Section 8 tournament play (18-5), which until 1991 decided the area’s lone delegate to the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament.

Together, the programs have accounted for 11 state championships and 13 runner-up finishes in their 58 state tournament appearances, with Roseau’s 34 trips to the “The Tourney” being a state record. They have produced six U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame inductees (excluding Marvin and Almquist) and 16 Olympians, including Dave Christian (Warroad) and Neal Broten (Roseau), who lived the ‘Miracle on Ice’ as members of the 1980 Gold Medal team. Current pros T.J. Oshie of the Washington Capitals and Brock Nelson of the New York Islanders highlight the 16 NHL players who have skated in the Roseau-Warroad series, which has also seen more than 150 alumni go on to play NCAA Division I hockey – a truly unbelievable resume for two towns that have never eclipsed 5,000 combined residents.

Warroad won the first three matchups in the series before it was defeated twice by Almquist’s 1946 state championship team and star forward Rube “The Masked Marvel” Bjorkman, who earned the name for the goggles he wore during hockey’s helmetless age. Bjorkman netted a hat trick in the 6-0 state final victory over Rochester High School and would later compete for Team USA in the 1948 and 1952 Olympic Games. He eventually launched a coaching career that spanned 20-plus seasons and concluded with a surprising final stop – Warroad High School from 1980 to 1983.

Roseau went right back to the state finals the following year but came up just short of back-to-back titles with a 2-1 defeat at the hands of St. Paul Johnson High School. Not to be outdone, Warroad matched Roseau’s runner-up result in 1948 and took back control of the rivalry as well, prevailing in nine consecutive games through the first meeting of the 1952 season. Roseau then took two of three the next year, but Warroad would get the last laugh again, as brothers Bill and Roger Christian, two eventual members of the 1960 Olympic Gold Medal team, led Warroad to yet another state runner-up finish.

The 1956 campaign brought the rise of the Almquist dynasty at Roseau that continued through the end of the 1960s. The Rams went 34-4 in the rivalry over a 13-year stretch with 14 shutout victories and became an all but unstoppable force, claiming the three aforementioned MSHSL titles and nearly coming away with three more in 1957, 1962 and 1966.

Arguably the most exciting year was 1969, which remains the only season the teams faced each other four times. After splitting the regular-season meetings, Roseau edged No. 1-ranked Warroad, 3-2, in the Section 8 championship to advance to the state tournament. But thanks to the MSHSL’s ‘back door rule’ of the time, which allowed Warroad to square off with Section 7 runner-up Eveleth High School for the final spot in the tournament, the Warriors made the field, and eventually found themselves matched up with their familiar foes again in the state semifinals.

In that game, legendary Warroad defenseman Henry Boucha scored the game-winning goal in the third period to beat Roseau, 3-2, making the Warriors’ third state championship berth that much sweeter. And had it not been for a serious eye injury that knocked Boucha out of the title game in the second period, 1969 could have brought the ultimate prize to Warroad for the very first time. Instead, the Warriors fell in a heartbreaker to Edina High School, 5-4, in overtime.

The teams would play a mostly even series in the early 1970s before Roseau tipped the scale again, winning 22 of 24 head-tohead battles from 1974 to 1984. Powered by sensational forwards Neal Broten, Aaron Broten and Bryan “Butsy” Erickson, whose jersey Nos. 7, 10, and 15, respectively, all hang in the rafters inside Roseau’s Memorial Arena, the Rams made back-to-back-to-back trips to the state tournament from 1977 to 1979 and finished third in the state the latter two years.

Neal Broten would then set the freshman scoring record at the University of Minnesota and punctuate that season by guiding the Golden Gophers to a national championship victory over the University of North Dakota, led by Warroad’s Dave Christian. Two years after that, and one year after Broten and Christian topped the podium in Lake Placid, Broten won the first-ever Hobey Baker Award – college hockey’s Heisman Trophy equivalent – before going on to a 17-year NHL career.

Overall, this period was a ‘golden era’ for NHL players from Roseau, as Neal and Aaron Broten, along with their younger brother, Paul, and Erickson played a total of 46 seasons and 2,520 games in the league. Christian had a spectacular professional career on his own, tallying 340 goals and 433 assists in 1,009 career games, along with a 1991 NHL All-Star distinction.

Warroad seized the reins again in 1985, compiling a 9-1-1 record in the rivalry through the end of the 1989 season. While the Warriors did make three consecutive state tournaments from 1987 to 1989 and were an overtime goal away from making the 1988 state finals, perhaps the bigger highlight was Eric Olimb winning the 1988 “Mr. Hockey” award, given annually to the top senior-year high school hockey player in the state. Olimb was the first player from Warroad or Roseau to claim the honor and did so after co-leading all scorers in the state tournament.

A gut-wrenching 2-0 loss to Warroad in the 1989 Section 8 title game served as the motivation for Roseau’s next season of glory, a year it not only dominated their regular-season rivalry dates (3-0, 9-0), but also hoisted the 1990 state championship trophy, the program’s first in almost 30 years. Roseau’s Chris Gotziaman was the hero in the state championship, scoring two goals in a 3-1 triumph over Grand Rapids High School.

In 1994, under first-year head coach Cary Eades, Warroad won its first state title in program history, limiting a Hibbing High School team that had scored 18 goals in its first two tournament games to just three in the finale. Delivering Warroad’s long-awaited first championship was just the beginning for Eades, as he would guide the Warriors to two more Class A crowns, two second-place finishes and seven Section 8A championships over his 11-year tenure. His 1996 championship team, which included current Warroad head coach Jay Hardwick, was one of, if not the most dominant team in MSHSL tournament history, outscoring its opponents 21-3 over three games.

Some people believe the rivalry took a hit when the League expanded the state tournament to a two-class format and the schools opted to play in different classes in the late 1990s. And while that may be true in some respects, as Roseau and Warroad have played for separate trophies ever since, the shakeup has only amplified their state-level success.

After a semifinal loss in the 1998 state tournament, Roseau swept Warroad in 1999 on its way to a sixth state title. Roseau was led by its four all-tournament selections: Jake Brandt, Jesse Modahl, Derrick Byfuglien – brother of hulking NHL defenseman and fellow Roseau alum Dustin Byfuglien – and Mike Klema, the most productive player in the tournament with seven goals and nine points.

T.J. Oshie burst onto the scene in Warroad in 2003 and brought with him a string of three straight state tournament appearances for the Warriors, as well as six consecutive victories over Roseau. Oshie made the all-tournament team all three years and led Warroad to state championships as a sophomore in 2003 and as a senior in 2005, a year that saw him record 100 points (37 goals and 63 assists) in 31 games. Team USA’s shootout hero at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Oshie is now in the 16th season of his NHL career, which has been headlined by his 2018 Stanley Cup championship with the Capitals.

Oshie’s monster season was obviously a major storyline, but the most memorable moment of Warroad’s 2005 campaign was undoubtedly the final one, as Aaron Marvin, Cal’s grandson, scored the championship-clinching goal in triple overtime to beat Totino- Grace High School, 4-3, completing WHS’ perfect 31-0 season.

Both teams got into their respective state tournaments in 2007, but it was Roseau’s regular-season sweep of Warroad that would turn out to be the indicator of postseason success. Thanks to junior defenseman Aaron Ness, who won Roseau’s first “Mr. Hockey” award in 2008, as well as two third-period goals from Tyler Landman in the state final, the Rams scored a 5-1 victory over Grand Rapids in a rematch of the 1990 Class AA title game to add their seventh state championship trophy to the case.

While Warroad’s runner-up finish in 2009 would prove to be the last major state tournament headline for either school until 2022, the 16-year period from 2009 through present day has become one of the most competitive in series history. Roseau still owns the slight edge in those 32 matchups with 16 victories to Warroad’s 15 (one tie) and has scored 111 goals to the Warriors’ 109, but Warroad’s rise in recent years has made them winners of four of the last seven and has closed the gap considerably.

And just because there wasn’t much hardware being handed out from 2009 to 2021, doesn’t mean it was void of great rivalry moments.

As an example, in an intense back-and-forth 2011 showdown, Warroad scored to break a 3-3 tie with just 1:52 remaining in the third period, only to have Roseau tie the game again, 4-4, with 40 seconds left. The game went to overtime, where Warroad’s Austin Streiff took advantage of a pair of Roseau penalties to score the game-winner on a 5-on-3 powerplay.

In a 2014 game at Roseau, Warroad forward Kobe Roth scored three of his game-high four goals with his team short-handed, an unheard-of feat that proved to be the difference in a 6-4 Warriors victory.

Roseau recorded its 100th win of the series in 2018, when freshman Paul Huglen scored the deciding goal – undoubtedly the biggest of his career to that point – in front of the home crowd.

In 2020, a season that Warroad won the Section 8A championship and progressed to the state semifinals, the Warriors suffered just two losses during their 23-2 regular season, both at the hands of Roseau.

And although WHS did take the next step to a second-place state tournament finish in 2022 on the strength a 26-4-1 record, Roseau was once again a thorn in the Warriors’ side, denying them the regular-season sweep with two third-period goals in a 4-3 win at The Gardens Arena in Warroad. Roseau’s Max Strand had an assist in that game as part of a season-long body of work that won him the “Mr. Hockey” award.

Outscoring Roseau 12-6 over two games amounted to a decisive series victory for Warroad last year, but 2023 “Mr. Hockey” winner Jayson Shaugabay and the Warriors were left painfully short of an undefeated season after Mahtomedi High School turned a 5-3 deficit into a 6-5 double overtime triumph in the state championship.

The excitement of recent years showed up again this season with a 3-2 overtime thriller on January 9 – decided by an electrifying goal from Roseau’s Jake Halvorson – that served as the precursor for another rivalry renewal for the ages on January 27.

Warroad’s Taven James notched a hattrick as the Warriors avenged their earlier loss by a count of 6-2, but the story of the day was the setting. For the first time, the Roseau-Warroad game was played outdoors in Warroad as part of the Minnesota Wild’s yearly “Hockey Day Minnesota” event, a three-day festival featuring six total games and an entire “village” – a lodge, merchandise kiosks, food trucks, firepits, multiple public skating areas and more – celebrating the love affair between state and sport.

And if the history above is any indication, you couldn’t have asked for a better place to host it.