A half hour before game time, the Gardens is filling to capacity, with nearly half the crowd wearing the Rams’ green and white. That night, Jan. 10, the most notable spectators are the Minnesota Wild executive team, which has made the 35-minute flight from St. Paul in one of majority owner Craig Leipold’s jets. They’re the guests of Bob Marvin, Bill’s youngest son, Warroad mayor for the past two decades and a Wild minority owner. That’s the sort of draw this legendary rivalry has.

When told that Warroad is beating Roseau in a Tiny Mite game in the adjacent rink, Wild general manager Chuck Fletcher says without irony, “The kids get to dislike each other for a long time.”

* * *

Jay Hardwick waits until the clock counts down seven minutes to game time to enter the Warriors’ locker room. “I shouldn’t have to get you motivated, you should be excited,” he says, pacing the narrow space between the two rows of players facing each other. “Right from the first hop. Can’t take any shifts off.”

The boys whoop like giving amens and alleluias to a preacher. He leaves. They stand, bow their heads and say the Lord’s Prayer. Punctuated by more whoops and shouts of “Let’s go, boys!”

They cluster by the door, their helmets strapped on. Some chatter sparks the room then fades. The student manager pops his head in the door, “3:59 left.”

Justin King kneels to adjust a strap on his pads. The room falls silent. They can hear the Warroad student band above them. “Longest three minutes ever,” one boy says.

Suddenly the soundtrack changes, rock music pumped over the arena’s loud speakers—it’s time!

“Right away!”

“Let’s go, boys!”

“Let’s f---ing do this!”

Justin leads the charge onto the ice.

The Warroad band plays the school rouser.

The home crowd welcomes their boys.

One Roseau mom turns to another, “Are you nervous?” “Oh my god, I’m so nervous,” the other mom answers. “This is such a big game.”

* * *

These games are hell on Mary Anderson, Bob’s mom. She’s slender, the source of her son’s brown hair and has soulful brown eyes. It sometimes makes her physically ill to watch. She so desperately does not want her son to be the cause of a loss. Once she left the rink during the third period and got locked out. That was worse, not knowing if he had let in any goals. “Now I sit there and suffer through it,” she says. “It’s awful.”

Bob makes his first save almost a minute into the game, routinely redirecting a low shot with his stick, but it isn’t enough to settle his mom’s nerves. Warroad takes a penalty, and Justin faces his first test, stopping four shots. After one he smothered against his body, he skates out of the net to his left, spots a group of youth hockey players lined along the glass with signs and raises his catching glove in a wave.

The first period belongs to Roseau. Though Warroad manages almost 10 shots, only three are on goal, and Bob easily turns them away. The action’s mostly in Warroad’s end, with several scrambles around the net, but Justin’s always in position to stop them. After Justin thwarts a two-on-one, a Roseau mom says, “That goalie’s good.”

When the buzzer sounds, Justin has stopped 11 shots, Bob three, but Mary Anderson hasn’t made it through the first period. She nearly throws up in the ladies room.

Warroad skated tentatively in the first period. Hardwick tells his players they need to pick up their game. They come out harder, play more physically the second. When a Warrior trips Roseau’s leading scorer, Zach Yon, with no penalty call, a Roseau fan quips, “They’ve got refs from all over if they’re hometown refs.”

Sylvester, the boy from Little Falls, does get whistled for a tripping penalty when he takes down Yon with a slide. Thirty-four seconds into the power play, Roseau’s Alex Halstensgard fires a shot from the right circle. Justin has it lined up, clasps his left arm to his body, but gets only a piece of it, and the puck slips past him. The Roseau fans roar their approval. Brian King, standing in his customary spot by the Zamboni entrance, right behind the net where his son has let in the goal, gives no reaction. He’s been involved in hundreds of hockey games as a player, a coach, a referee and now a goalie dad. He’s trained himself not to let his emotions wander too high or too low.

Bob makes a save, leaves a rebound in front, but a defender swats it away. Earl Anderson wipes his hand across his brow; Mary clenches her jaw.

Play shifts to the Warroad end with less than five minutes to go in the second period. There’s a flurry in front. Justin drops to his knees. Roseau’s Alex Strand slides the puck back to the point. Tanner Okeson, the team captain and a D-I prospect, rifles a slapshot that stretches the twine at the back of the net. He raises his arm triumphantly, and the Roseau fans cheer mightily. Three teammates come back to tap Justin’s white pads encouragingly.

Warroad jumps right back. Less than a minute after Roseau’s second goal, Bob stops a shot from the blue line, but Kobe Roth, the kid from Iowa, pounces on the rebound to cut Roseau’s lead in half. The arena music blares. Bob stands in his crease. Justin skates up to his bench to complete the receiving line for Roth and his linemates who high-five their teammates on the bench.

Almost immediately, Roseau takes a holding penalty. Mary Anderson climbs the stairs and heads toward the lobby. Twenty seconds after scoring the Warriors’ first goal, while the announcer is informing the crowd of Roseau’s penalty, Roth strikes again. A Warroad fan blasts an air horn. The goal electrifies the home crowd. Just like that, the score’s even. It’s a new game, Justin thinks. A fresh start.

The period ends 2-2. Lundbohm has rarely put out his third line. Hardwick, as the home team coach, has been able to match up lines, not taking chances with his own third line.

Mary’s back in her seat for the third period. The hits keep coming. The refs whistle a tripping penalty on Warroad, then two seconds later call one on Okeson that nullifies the Rams’ man advantage. Jared Bethune, the kid from Fort Frances, flies in on a breakaway, tries to stuff the puck between Bob’s pads, but Bob shuts him down. Mary covers her face with her hands.

The action rushes back and forth. Nine minutes into the third the score remains tied. Both teams have ratcheted up the intensity. They seem to sense that the next goal will win it. The crowd does, too. It’s on edge, chastising the refs, cheering every rush. A Warrior fan in a black and yellow jersey and a Russian fur cap bangs a drumbeat on the boards with his fist.

Warroad charges into Roseau’s zone. Senior forward Matt Harrison rips a wrist shot over Bob’s catching glove. Goal! The Warroad fans immediately leap to their feet. They’ve taken the lead for the first time all night. The clock shows 7:47 remaining. Mary Anderson takes another walk.

Four tense minutes pass, then Blayke Nelson, Gordon Christian’s great-nephew, gets called for slashing with 3:44 to play. Less than 30 seconds into the power play, Roseau’s Okeson feeds a pass from the blue line across ice where Alex Strand one-times it. Justin slides to his right but not in time. Roseau has tied the game.

Brian King takes it in stride. That was a tough one. He’s just glad neither his son nor Earl’s has let in a bad goal. The two had run into each other beforehand in the lobby. Brian wished Earl luck. Someone asked if they put a wager on the game. “Goalie dads don’t bet,” Brian said.

Regulation time expires with the score tied 3-3. The two teams take a brief breather before the eight-minute sudden death overtime.

Play tilts toward the Warroad end. A Roseau player carries the puck behind the Warrior net. Justin slides over to stymie the wraparound. Almost simultaneously, he bangs the post with his pad, jarring the goal off its moorings, and the puck slams into the net. The Roseau fans jump up. The Rams celebrate on the ice. Justin fixes his eyes on the official, poised to protest—he knows the net moved before the puck entered. Down at the other end, Bob’s thinking, We’ve won! It’s over! Andy Lundbohm’s not sure. He’s seen this happen before.

The ref waves his hands in a washout sign—no goal! The crowd’s reaction reverses—applause from the black and yellow, groans from the green and white.

The game goes on. No one has left. Like the rest of the 1,700-plus in the arena, Deanna Comstock feels the pressure build. She’s a Pelowski, Mary Anderson’s sister, and grew up in Roseau, but she taught English in Warroad for 34 years. Her nephew Bob defends the Rams’ net, yet she knows all of the Warriors on the ice. With each sweep of action, she throws her hands in the air or clenches her fists. No matter the outcome she’ll win and lose, lose and win.

Roseau’s Strand dances around a defender. “Uh, oh,” Deanna says. “Here we go.”

Strand snaps a wrist shot. Justin blocks it.

Warroad comes back the other way. “Here it is,” Deanna says.

Bob makes the stop. Normally during breaks, he simply stands in his crease, knees slightly bent, shoulders slouched, but now he skates a little lap to his left. As close to a show of emotion as you’ll see from him.

Halstensgard, who has been all over the ice, making hits, setting up teammates, crashing the net and scoring Roseau’s first goal, gets whistled for tripping at 3:40. “He’s going to call it?” Deanna asks in disbelief.

Lundbohm is surprised, too. Sure, it was a trip, but he saw the refs let one go during overtime that should’ve been a penalty against Warroad.

Hardwick calls timeout to rest his players. Brian King sits calmly in the spot where he’s moved above the Zamboni entrance. Earl and Mary Anderson can hardly watch.

Warroad buzzes Bob’s net. Bethune, the Fort Frances kid, wrists a shot that Bob gloves. Each shot heightens the tension; each save prolongs it.

From the faceoff, the Warriors move the puck back to the blue line. Junior defenseman Nick Jaycox uncorks a slapshot. Bethune has wrestled himself into position in front. He nicks the puck with the shaft of his stick, deflecting it under Bob’s right arm. The home crowd cheers, all Warroad cheers; the Roseau fans sit stunned.

The Warriors spill over the bench and mob Bethune against the glass behind the Roseau net. Bob skates away.

Eventually, the two teams line up and shake hands. Bob’s the first player off the ice. He clomps into the dressing room followed by his teammates. Takes off his mask, strips off his chest protector and arm pads. His cheeks are flushed, his hair matted with sweat. Lundbohm paces between his sullen players. “This one stings,” he says staring at the floor. “You don’t ever want this feeling. That’s the reason you play your asses off.”

Across the rink on the flip side of defeat, the Warriors parade jubilantly into their locker room. They blast Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” on the stereo. Justin savors it, slowly taking off his wet gear, drying off and putting on his pre-game uniform. The music changes to a loud bass-thumping rhythm that fills the cinder block hallway outside the closed door.

Jay Hardwick listens outside with a smile through his beard, allowing the players to enjoy their time together.

When Justin finally comes out of the locker room, he’s not feeling sick any more. There’s no elixir like victory. He struggles to find words to describe the feeling that’s come over him, knowing that senior year they’ve beaten Roseau at home in a game he’ll never be able to repeat but will always remember. “Awesome?”

When they were down 2-0, he appreciated that his guys didn’t quit. “They always find a way to fight back,” he says. Maybe that’s what makes this moment so special, the way they are there for one another. “That’s what I love about our team.”

He walks down the hallway, climbs the stairs to where a group of high school girls waits for him. They scream in delight, and he surrenders to their hugs.

* * *

Meanwhile, the Roseau players walk outside into a steady rain, load their gear into the trailer hitched to the back of their bus and pull out of the parking lot at 9:57 p.m. A couple of players grumble softly about the overtime penalty call. Lundbohm won’t blame anyone, not the refs, not his player. They lost as a team, he figures.

Bob sits quietly by himself. In 19 days, they’ll play the rematch. Warroad will travel Route 11 to their house. The Rams will have the chance to avenge this loss. But that seems a long way off, farther even than the drive back home that night. Bob stares outside, the oncoming headlights stabbing the streaked windows. Later, the rain along Route 11 will freeze to ice. ★