On Frozen Blog

Two Minnesotans, Joe Finley and Trevor Bruess, are camping with the Capitals this week, and they skated on a line together in Wednesday’s Duchesne Cup concluding scrimmage. Minneapolis native Bruess was signed by the Caps last spring after completing his junior season at Minnesota State; he’s a modest 6 ’0, 209, but he plays bigger than his size, and can he skate! It’d be downright scary to imagine Edina native Joe Finley playing bigger than his 6 ’7, 245 frame. As I watched them antagonize the opposition on just about every shift in their scrimmages this week I thought of Bruess as the Pest and Finley as the Exterminator. They’re about the same age, and I don’t think it’s inconceivable to imagine them as part of a Capitals’ antagonism outfit in a couple of years.

As Minnesota-raised hockey players, Bruess and Finley share a profound appreciation for playing hockey outdoors, on the State of Hockey’s abundant frozen playgrounds for puck.   

“That’s where it all started, four or five years old, going out and skating the lakes, not necessarily the ponds and lakes but also the local [outdoor] rinks around Edina,” Finley told me.

“I was fortunate enough growing up because my father Ray builds tennis courts, basketball courts, in-line rinks, all that recreational stuff, [and] we had a great in-link rink in the backyard, and we’d flood it every winter for pond hockey. It made for a good two-on-two, or three-on-three game when we were pee-wees.”

I asked Finley if he’d seen the documentary ‘Pond Hockey,’ made by Minnesotans Andrew Sherburne and Tommy Haines. He hadn’t, but he did have a great appreciation for another film that celebrates hockey’s outdoor roots — ‘Mystery, Alaska.’ Did he see any of himself in the character Tree in that film, I asked?

“I don’t know about identifying with him on an intellectual level, cause he doesn’t seem to be the brightest guy in the movie,” Finley replied with a smile. “But I like to play a physical style, and what does Mike Myers say in that movie, ‘You gotta play with a big sack of knuckles in front of the net’ — that works for me.”  

A triple team of trouble T siblings in the Bruess home — Trevor, Tyler, and Tara — prevailed upon their father to turn their backyard into an ice rink, according to sister Tara.

“They did some research to figure out the best way to do it,” Tara said of her brothers. “And we had to use the front door that entire winter so we wouldn’t slip on the ice.”

“I think they shot a few pucks into the side of our garage, and their friends came over to skate a lot too. I do remember that it was really hard to get that ice smooth — we didn’t have the backyard Zamboni, just hot water,” said Sis.