On the same Friday night when Chase Bjorgaard led Edina to its first state football title in 47 years with a Prep Bowl-record six total touchdowns — with 320 yards rushing on 31 carries — his absence was felt in the net at Plymouth Ice Center.

The Hornets ended their football season Nov. 21 with a 42-35 victory over Moorhead but started their hockey season with a 6-3 loss to the Spuds, the defending state champions. It wasn’t until a week later that Bjorgaard strapped on his goalie pads and mentally turned on “hockey mode.”

With the boys hockey state tournament a month away, the three-sport athlete has hockey fever — something he won’t fully let subside until spring ball comes around in March.

“Baseball and football, you don’t always have the ball, offense isn’t always on the field, you’re not always up to the plate,” said the senior running back, outfielder and goaltender at Edina High following his 51-save performance against rival Minnetonka in a 3-3 tie Jan. 29. “In terms of hockey, I’m always focused.”

Bjorgaard spent his November alternating between leading the state in carries in the Class 6A state football playoffs and slowly reintroducing his land legs to ice.

Unlike his teammates, when Bjorgaard sliced into Braemar Arena’s sheet of ice in the fall, it was his first time skating since losing to Moorhead in the Class 2A boys hockey state semifinals the previous season. He doesn’t play club hockey, and he didn’t choose junior hockey over high school.

Instead, Bjorgaard went the old-school student-athlete route: Three sports are better than one.

“My family never really played hockey,” he explained as he sat on a bench hugging the visiting team’s locker room corridor at Pagel Activity Center. “I just decided to pick it up after watching a Wild game.”

Edina’s leader in rushing yards wouldn’t seem like a good stationary brick wall. But at a young age, he realized he had to take one for the team.

“I remember, no one would play defense, [they would] always score,” Bjorgaard said. “So, I was like, someone’s gonna play defense if we’re gonna win, and I want to win. So, I just ended up playing back by the net.”

He slowly started to feel a glimmer of affection for the position: He would find his eyes constantly wandering to the net when he watched Wild games. Soon, it was a role he began not only identifying with but also defending.

“All of a sudden, I wanted to be a goalie,” Bjorgaard said, proudly sporting a black and green Hornets hockey beanie perched high on his head. A tuft of hockey flow peeked out. “The goalie is kind of the odd man out.”

Curt Giles, Edina’s head hockey coach, is an advocate for multisport athletes and has coached several. But he can’t recall a goalie who has played other sports. Neither could Bjorgaard. It’s also rare a goalie is captain.

Both agree playing baseball and football has made the senior captain better.

“You see the hand-eye coordination with baseball, with hitting and catching and those types of things that relate to him in goal,” Giles said of the 6-foot, 215-pounder. “He enjoys contact. Anytime you can push a goaltender back, you create more space. He’s strong enough and big enough that he can stand in there. He’s built like a truck.”

After allowing two pucks slip past him in the third period against Minnetonka, Bjorgaard carried an ease that is rare for a goalie. He credits his multisport athleticism, but it’s also a practiced skill after bouncing back from multiple injuries.

When Bjorgaard completed his sophomore football season, he brought a knee injury into his first varsity hockey game. It wasn’t long before he was put on the JV team for the remainder of the 2023-24 season.

When junior year tryouts came around, he was itching to get back on the ice.

“Last year, I had to prove myself,” Bjorgaard said. “We lost [on a] Thursday to Maple Grove in state football quarters — I hadn’t skated in the offseason — and I showed up Friday to captains practice and then we had tryouts on Monday.”

Said Edina athletic director and assistant principal Troy Stein: “To see a young man take a difficult moment from his sophomore year and turn it into the ‘redemption’ season he had as a senior speaks volumes about his character.”

Bjorgaard had a good start to the 2024-25 hockey season and finished it with 314 saves, but the 30-plus carries per football game in the fall began to catch up to him. A torn hamstring put him back on the bench, but he was still able to help all three of his teams win section championships in baseball, football and hockey.

In an age where young athletes are pressured to specialize in one sport, Bjorgaard is an exception. And fans across Minnesota paid attention.

After the senior and his hockey and football teammate Mason West carried the team to a state title win in November, the pair went viral. West’s choice to play his final season of high school football as the team’s quarterback despite being drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks and Bjorgaard’s three-sport success started a discussion online celebrating multisport athletes.

For Giles, the duo gaining the attention of thousands was a no-brainer: “Three hundred twenty yards and six touchdowns,” he recalled. “It might have been one of the single best athletic achievements that I’ve seen in a long period of time.”

This hockey season, Bjorgaard returned to his starting goalie position with the intention of starting slowly after a football season to remember, both in accomplishments and in wear and tear after he rushed for a school-record 1,834 yards.

“This year, it was back to kind of starting over,” Bjorgaard said. “The coaches let me take my time. I’d just be out there skating around, doing my own movement, taking light shots.”

Practices for Bjorgaard went from 15 minutes to 30 and then to a full scrimmage. A month after football season, he was primed for a full three periods.

Bjorgaard, donning the No. 1 in all three sports, now sits at a .910 save percentage and 2.50 goals against average. Last baseball season, as an outfielder, he had three home runs and recorded a .325 batting average, a .432 on-base percentage and a .506 slugging percentage. He finished in the top 10 in rushing touchdowns in Minnesota this past season.

“With a three-sport athlete, you think of an athlete who might be decent at one or two and really good at one,” Giles said. “But the kid is just really good at all three.”

Bjorgaard doesn’t know where he will end up next year. He knows that he wants to play baseball in college and that there are schools coming out to watch him this spring. The chances of playing football or hockey again after he puts on his cap and gown this spring is met with a shrug.

Right now, his sights are set on one thing.

“Just thinking about the puck,” Bjorgaard said.

....

Hockey Across Minnesota

Minnesotans in the NHL

Bobby Brink is in his fourth season with the Philadelphia Flyers, but one of Brink’s latest assists was for Minnesota.

Brink, a former Minnetonka star, along with the NHL Players’ Association Goals & Dreams program, donated 20 sets of new hockey equipment last month to DinoMights, which works with youth from kindergarten to 12th grade to combine hockey with support services including tutoring, leadership development, community service and job-readiness training.

As a teenager, Brink volunteered with DinoMights after it began in 1995 with 12 kids playing roller hockey in Minneapolis. Brink’s Philadelphia teammate and fellow Minnesotan Nick Seeler, who played at Eden Prairie High School and with the Gophers before breaking into the NHL with the Wild, is also involved with DinoMights as a professional hockey ambassador.

On the ice, Brink, Seeler and Stillwater’s Noah Cates are on a revamped Flyers team that had a competitive start to the season before Philadelphia struggled in January to fall down the Eastern Conference standings. The Flyers will have their work cut out for them to catch up to a wild-card berth when the NHL season resumes after the Olympics.

The 24-year-old Brink, a right wing, has already surpassed the 12 goals he posted last season, which were a career high.

He was a second-round draft pick by the Flyers in 2019 and left the University of Denver after three seasons — an impressive college career that culminated in Denver winning the national championship in 2022 after Brink led all NCAA skaters with 57 points.

Philadelphia will make its only trip of the regular season to St. Paul to face off against the Wild at Grand Casino Arena on March 12.

— Sarah McLellan

College Spotlight: Fancy stickhandling, then and now

Brodie Ziemer had jaws dropping Saturday, Jan. 31, at 3M Arena at Mariucci when the Gophers sophomore forward gave his team a 3-1 first-period lead on the way to an 8-4 win over Wisconsin that secured a series sweep.

On the play that had fans raving, Gophers forward Tanner Ludtke corralled the puck at the Badgers blue line and fed center Brody Lamb, who found Ziemer charging into the zone. Ziemer cut in front of the net and flipped a shot between his legs that beat Badgers goalie Daniel Hauser top-shelf for a power-play marker that brought roars from the sold-out crowd of 10,652. The goal was Ziemer’s second of the game after his snapshot earlier in the period gave the Gophers a 2-0 lead.

Ziemer’s between-the-legs tally caught the attention of former Gopher Kyle Okposo (@bookerT2116), who responded to a post of Ziemer’s goal on the X platform with a pair of shocked eyes. Back in December of 2006, Okposo pulled off a similar move for a goal against Minnesota State Mankato. The highlight of that clip is former Gophers coach Doug Woog, then a TV analyst, reacting to Okposo’s goal on replay by exclaiming, “Oh my gosh, I think he put the puck between his skates, between his legs.’’

On Saturday, teammates reacted similarly to Ziemer’s gem.

“I had my back turned, and then I looked over. I was like, ‘He went through the legs?’” defenseman Luke Mittelstadt said.

“Both of his goals were just absolutely nasty,” forward Erik Pahlsson added.

— Randy Johnson

Top 25:

Girls: Hill-Murray reclaims its No. 1 standing after a win over Centennial/Spring Lake Park.

Boys: Minnetonka kept ahold of its top spot after rallying to tie Edina in an overtime repeat game.

This week’s apple

Three Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference alums are suiting up as officials at the 2026 Winter Olympics women’s hockey competition. Melissa Doyle (2014 Gustavus alum) is one of 12 referees, and Sarah Buckner (2016 Augsburg alum) and Alex Clarke (2015 St. Scholastica alum) are two of 10 linespersons.

Thank you for reading Hockey Across Minnesota (HAM). Email me at olivia.hicks@startribune.com with story tips or message me on X or Instagram. See you at the rink!