There is a scene in Hockeyland, the purely-Minnesotan documentary that released last Friday in theaters across the state, where Hermantown High School hockey coach Pat Andrews confesses that his first thought in the morning isn’t his wife or kids; instead, his first thought is the pressure he feels to lead his Hawks to a successful season.

During this scene, Andrews, who played for the Hawks in his youth, looks so gaunt with stress you might not see him if he stood sideways. This sums up our obsession with the game in the State of Hockey. Hockey is life.

The film, a Northland Films production (Andrew Sherburne, Tommy Haines and JT Haines) is the third in the hockey trilogy—along with “Pond Hockey”, which centered on the US Pond Hockey Championships, and “Forgotten Miracle” which told the story of the 1960 Olympic team that won gold in Squaw Valley. “Hockeyland” chronicles the journeys of two Minnesota high school hockey teams during the 2019-2020 season. The official trailer:

The Eveleth-Gilbert Golden Bears, the storied program fallen on hard times in recent years, are in their final season before a merger with rival Virginia will mothball their classic sweaters in favor of those featuring the “Rock Ridge Wolverines.”

The Hermantown Hawks, perennial Class A power, are looking at another season of bullying Arrowhead teams, including Iron Range Conference mainstays such as Eveleth, on their way to St. Paul for another run at a state title.

It’s a hockey story, to be sure, but it’s much more than that. Centering on a few key players from both teams, it tells the story of life in the North; a life of changing communities, of families and in no small part, the innocence of youth.

Eveleth’s Elliot Van Orsdel, mercurial and supremely talented, the Iron Range Conference scoring champion who is “a challenge to coach,” cannot wear a C patch as a senior due to unexplained transgressions during his sophomore year that continue to haunt him. His best friend and straight man, Will Troutwine, is a “very nice player” but also a serious student, looking at Dartmouth and Stanford, detailing his Trivial Pursuit successes over breakfast with his grandfather.

In the amped up Hawks locker room, eventual-Montreal Canadiens draftee Blake Biondi (who does wear the C patch) has rejected the National Development Team in Ann Arbor, Michigan—twice—to come back for his senior year and try to win a championship with his buddies, and perhaps the Mr. Hockey Award as the best high school hockey player in the state.

His teammates, Indio and Aydyn Dowd, try to deal with their mother Lori’s cancer and MS while striving to meet Andrews’ demands for elite play. Indio suffers debilitating back conditions that have given him a much older man’s body at a young age, and have derailed his dreams of ever playing beyond high school. Forced to be wise beyond his years through the emotional and physical pain, he is a compelling part of this film.

Lori herself is the picture of strength in the face of adversity—as she balances her hockey booster responsibilities with motherhood, her sickness and working opposite shifts from her husband. It is a poignant scene when her hockey-mom sisters hold her up by the arm as she walks to center ice in her Hawks jersey on senior night.

Then there is the landscape itself—which Sherburne, during Q&A at AMC Southdale after the movie, called “its own character” and the portrait of life in the north country—broad sweeping views of the pit mine lakes, the rivers, the endless stands of birch and popple. Snow falling on modest Iron Range homes, teenagers pulling cars out of ditches, four-wheeling down frozen roads, spinning out one-ton Chevys in the rink parking lot, and chasing tip-up flags ice fishing on a frozen lake. With folks shoveling snow off their roofs and worrying about ice dams—and even a wolf howling—the cinematography creates a visceral visual experience.

We get the locker rooms, the coach speeches (“I’m sick of talking about it—I love you guys”), and the tale of two teams, two hockey communities, that “crossed paths” sometime in the 1990’s, with Eveleth’s historical greatness worn like the leather palms of old hockey gloves, and Hermantown’s rise to dominance, as a community that—as Andrews puts it—everyone now associates with hockey prowess.

When the run to the section finals and the state tourney starts the hockey action kicks into high gear. Pretty goals bar-down, trash talk and chirping, and scrums. Lights-out goaltending and toe drags. Hockey hair and program-photo flash bulbs, and knotted ties under warm up jackets. Two-goal leads appearing… and disappearing. Local radio broadcasts, little kids holding the broken sticks of their varsity heroes and lining the tunnel, nervous cheerleaders and nervous parents, and hand-made signs and headbands.

At one point, before the final playoff clash between the two teams, an Eveleth player reminds his teammates that the mighty Hawks in the other locker room “are just kids.” And that they are as just as scared as the Golden Bear underdogs. With the interspersed scenes of school dances, classroom concentration, awkward dress-up and teenage banter among the players off the ice—maybe that’s one of the big takeaways here. They are just kids.

“Hockeyland” is a film that goes beyond the ice. “The Friday Night Lights” comparisons are inevitable—but this movie certainly is ours as Minnesotans. The grit, the grind, and the glory; the hope and the heartbreak, the dedication and the disappointment. Hockey, in this starkly beautiful north country, is life.

Hockeyland is playing in numerous local theaters, including Emagine, AMC and Marcus venues. According to the filmmakers, it will be streamed later this fall.