Oral history: Former Elk River players recall, reflect on 2014 Hockey Day Minnesota

In 2014, Elk River hosted Hockey Day Minnesota.

On the five-year anniversary of it being held at the fabled Handke Pit, we spoke with several Elk River players who participated in that game and also still happen to be playing hockey at the collegiate level.

Below is an oral history of the event as remembered by those players. All comments were taken from phone interviews and arranged in an order which makes sense for the telling of the story.



The participants:

-- Jake Jaremko. Then: Junior forward. Now: Sophomore at Minnesota State.

-- Matt Kiersted. Then: Sophomore defenseman. Now: Sophomore at North Dakota.

-- Nick Perbix. Then: Freshman defenseman. Now: Freshman at St. Cloud State.

-- Chase Springman. Then: Senior forward. Now: Sophomore at St. Scholastica.

View the box score from the Elk River game in 2014 here.

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Perbix: It's a place where pretty much everyone that's played has skated at least once. I mean, you have to, it's The Pit. To actually play a real game and have a lot of the town there supporting us, it was just a cool experience. It hasn't happened since then.

Kiersted: They did a really good job with the ice surface down there. It was better than what all of us expected. We expected it to be a normal outdoor rink, like bumpy and slushy and stuff. It wasn't as good as indoor ice, but I think it was as good as gets for outside.

Springman: We play there all the time, even growing up. You say to your buddies, hey, want to go to The Pit? It's just the thing to do in the winter. Go down there, hang out, play hockey all night … so to do it in a game that actually meant something was pretty much the coolest thing ever.

Kiersted: Seeing all of the support from the city, all the people that came down to it, and all the students. The big student section in the corner was awesome to see. It turned out to be a good day for it, too. It was really nice out, which made the ice a little slushy but (it turned out OK).

Elk River would take a 3-0 lead on goals by Grant Bunker, Andrew Zerban and Springman and eventually beat Stillwater 4-1.

Kiersted: What stands out to me about that game is, I believe it was out first goal of the game, Grant Bunker came into the zone and took a slapshot from pretty far out and it went in. And he was not one of the main goal scorers on the team. So to have him to jumpstart things that day, and the crowd erupted, that was probably my best memory of the day was seeing that, how the crowd reacted and how it got everybody in the game.

Jaremko: The atmosphere was awesome. I think we had around 5,000 people. It was kind of like a little bowl, so it was getting loud. I remember when we scored the first goal, it was really loud.

Springman: My linemate passed it to me right in the slot -- Jake Jaremko, I'm sure you know who that is -- just shot it upper-right and I scored. It was a pretty cool moment, yeah. That's definitely up there, top-five [career highlight] for sure.

Jaremko: Just came around the net, found him in the slot and he made a really nice shot.

Perbix: I don't even know, when you're playing, you can't really … like between whistles I'd take it all in, kind of look around. Obviously they had extra fans that weren't there when I skated before. That's tough to put one moment on it. I don't know. Obviously we won and it topped the day off perfectly. I guess I wouldn't be able to put one exact moment.

Jaremko: Mac Berglove, he had a really good day. I think he had something around 30, 40 saves, played excellent. Probably one of the better games I've seen him play. It was pretty cool for him being on that kind of a bigger stage that day.

Perbix: I'm just kind of realizing how long ago it was. I guess I forgot a few things you brought up to me [about the game] but the day as a whole was pretty cool.

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 A faceoff during Hockey Day Minnesota 2014 at Handke Pit between Elk River and Stillwater.