The Beer League Has No Beer.

A tongue-in-cheek open letter to Governor Walz (just relax, everyone):

Dear Governor Wes. . .err Tim Walz, 

I’ve been playing beer league hockey for twenty-five years. But it took a global pandemic for me to play beer league hockey without post-game beers. You see, us old guys in the beer leagues usually have fairly rugged late-night ice times. As for me, I’m part of a group of knuckleheads who proudly occupy the 9:50 to 10:50pm skate at the White Bear Lake Hippodrome each Tuesday night.

Beer league is a special society, and it’s as Minnesotan as it gets. Case in point, each week I share the ice with the following cast of characters: GUZ—REG—RAT—JIMBO—LALLS—NAGS—MATTY—DUCK—TIMMY—EFFIE—MUELLS—DICKIE—WIP—OLLIE—SCHWAGS—YAVA—ROBBY—KLEINER—BOVEE—BOSSY, and “the twins” TODD and TROY. 

It would not be an exaggeration that most Minnesotans play beer league hockey. And true to our Scandinavian roots, it’s not uncommon to skate with a guy once a week for decades and never know his real name. It’s more likely you’d just stutter and say, “Well, we just call him Rat.” 

And that’s the wonder of the beer league, nothing has ever been such an exquisite cocktail of anonymous and togetherness. Swing by a rink some time and just watch the standard five minute beer league warmup. You’ll see the guys putting each leg up on the boards to stretch for four seconds each, maybe a “cup check” or two, and a lot of catching up while slow-playing a few laps around the rink. 

Yep, beer league is beautiful. 

But the pandemic has put new, and dare I say, unprecedented pressures on the beer leagues—because we can’t go to the bar after we play. When your ice time ends at 10:50pm, and the bars close at 11pm, the beer league truly has no beer. 

And if I’m being honest, the only reason I play beer league hockey is for the drinks afterwards. And I am not alone. Tuesday night regular Bossy put it simply, “We don’t play at 10 o’clock at night for the exercise.” 

Like the beer leagues all over the State of Hockey, we’ve been doing our best to adjust to the new bar curfew, and have tried a few things:

We tried drinking before. 

The easy first reaction to the 10pm (now 11pm) bar curfew was to look in the mirror and state the obvious: “Well, I guess we’ll just have to drink before hockey.” 

Now to be clear, every beer league skate has a handful of guys who always drink before the skate. But these gentlemen are seasoned vets, and they’re grown accustomed to gasoline breath fogging up their half-shields. But the new bar curfew had our entire team showing up at the bar before our skate like the carpetbaggers who fill the health clubs for a few weeks each January. That’s right, guys that never drink before hockey have been trying it. It’s been a real mess.  

Pre-skate drinks aren’t for rookies.

“I’m not one of the professional drinkers that can drink before I skate.  So, the two times I tried, I ended up suffering a mild concussion and a broken rib after a couple of collisions on the ice,” said Guz. This had one of the pre-drink regulars shaking his head, “You need to practice before you come out to the real show, you can’t just come to the professional levels,” explained Rat.  

We tried drinking outside afterwards. 

With the Tuesday night skate increasingly looking like an infirmary, we decided to shift to post game beers outside after hockey. But Governor Walz, you may have noticed it’s been pretty darn cold out here this winter. It’s been so cold I had a White Claw turn into seltzer slush one Tuesday night while I was drinking it. Not to mention, with all of our pickup trucks running, the exhaust can’t be healthy.   

And while parking lot beers are also a Minnesota hockey tradition, it’s just not the same. It’s been too cold, we have coolers that leak, and our hearts just haven’t been in it. 

Parking lot post-game isn’t cutting it.

We considered getting creative. 

I’m willing to admit it, things got weird for a while as we dealt with the 11p bar time. We considered putting cardboard cutouts of our entire Tuesday night beer league team into our regular post game watering hole, the White Bear Bar. We also discussed drinking before the game in all of our gear, and maybe investing in some of those new rolling skate guards so we could wheel right out of the bar over to the Hippodrome. We debated creating a post-game speakeasy at a house close to the rink. Needless to say, none of these ideas fully materialized.  

From cardboard cutouts to rolling skate guards, we considered many ways to cope with the new bar curfew.

Mostly we just miss the White Bear Bar. 

Stale popcorn and Heggies pizza . . .we can smell White Bear Bar from here!

Hockey players are creatures of habit. And the 9:50pm Hippodrome skate goes to the White Bear Bar afterwards. It’s what we do. We push tables together, sit together up front, and take a good hard shift that’s usually slightly longer than forty-five seconds.  

More than one Tuesday night regular misses the post game camaraderie of the White Bear Bar. “Stale popcorn, the Heggies pizzas coming out at 11:05pm, Brittney’s Captain Coke pours, and spending time with our cast of characters is what I miss most,” said Guz.  White Bear Bar server Brittney is also feeling the void, “I miss the happy men that come in smiling and I enjoy seeing,” she said. 

We miss Brittney, and Brittney misses us.

There’s no other way to say it, beer league hockey without beer just isn’t the same. “It’s everything. It’s the reason I play. I’m going to have to quit hockey,” said Bossy. And not having the post-game pit stop is taking its toll in more ways than one, “I can’t sleep when I get home. I have nothing to do, and I’ve already watched all the reruns. I would rather drive around town than go home. I miss greasy pizza and beer, and not getting home until 1 o’clock in the morning,” said Tuesday night veteran Muells. 

Governor Walz, I hope for the sake of the beer league you strongly consider pushing bar time back to its normal curfew. Heck, right now we’d settle for midnight. Because when you think about it, beer league is, and has always been about the beer. 

There’s just something about putting that wet hair up in a hat after a good skate and eating stale popcorn with stinky hockey glove hands. And knowing that Reg just ordered a couple Heggies pizzas, and Brittney knows to keep the “heavy elbow” tequila and sodas coming. 

That’s what it’s all about. They call it beer league for a reason. You see, the bar is where guys our age become a team. A buddy of mine used to always say back when our kids were at the height of youth hockey filled with politics and tryout drama, “We all end up in the beer league someday. From your kid to Crosby. We all end up in the beer league someday.” 

It’s true, which is why we need your help Governor Walz to get beer back to the beer leagues. Thanks for listening.