List of best U.S. cities for hockey doesn't have any from Minnesota in the top 10
Add up the players on the U.S. national team at the Four Nations Face-Off (silver), World Junior Championship (gold), Men's World Championship (gold), and Women's World Championships (gold), and Minnesota has far more players on those rosters than any other state. The Minnesota Frost won their second straight Walter Cup championship this week. The Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament speaks for itself.
So, when WalletHub released its "Best Cities for Hockey" list on Wednesday, the State of Hockey was obviously well represented. Right?
Well... gird yourself, because that's not what happened.
St. Paul finished best at 13th. Other Minnesota cities include Bemidji at 42nd, Minneapolis at 48th, St. Cloud at 56th, Duluth at 58th, and Mankato at 64th.
No mention, either, of Eveleth, home of the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.
It's a bitter pill to swallow, seeing a top 10 devoid of Minnesota representation. Here's what that top 10 looks like.
Boston
Detroit
Pittsburgh
New York City
Newark
Denver
Sunrise
Tampa
Buffalo
St. Louis
Before anyone lights their phone on fire in an attempt to erase this list from history, a little explanation is necessary.
WalletHub created the list by comparing 76 cities in two parent categories: NHL hockey and NCAA DI hockey. Inside each category, 21 metrics were considered. Additionally, the NHL category was weighted more heavily than the college hockey category.It is, in many ways, set up for Minnesota to fail. The number of NHL teams is considered (advantage to New York) as is the performance of those teams, Stanley Cup wins, and division championship wins, among other metrics. These are metrics where, to be kind, the Minnesota Wild do not come out on top.
Things would look a lot better if women's pro hockey was considered, given the success of the Frost and the Whitecaps before them.
College hockey makes a positive impact for Minnesota cities, but it only accounts for 20% of the score and only includes men's hockey.
The absence of women's hockey hurts Minnesota (and is generally absurd) since there are so many good teams in the state, including a handful of championships for the Gophers and the Bulldogs.
High school hockey and youth hockey participation aren't factored in at all. USA Hockey's most recent data shows Minnesota hockey as having far more youth hockey participation than any other state, with Massachusetts, Michigan, and New York showing well too.
Though, it's worth noting that those rankings aren't per capita but raw numbers, and Minnesota's population of 5.7 million is quite a bit lower than those other states. Additionally, that's a statewide metric and not boiled down to individual cities.
In other words, it's not a great study. C'est la vie. Given the methodology, it's hard to argue with the success of the teams like the Panthers, Lightning, Avalanche, Penguins, and all the other teams that have managed to do well enough that they don't wind up as a punchline in an NFL schedule announcement video.
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New York Times
27 minutes ago
- New York Times
Pacers' Tyrese Haliburton owns Game 5 clunker in New York: ‘I'll be better in Game 6'
NEW YORK — Tyrese Haliburton and Andrew Nembhard share a former coach who was concerned about Game 5 for the Indiana Pacers. Haliburton played the last two summers for USA Basketball, which had the all-star coaching staff of Steve Kerr, Erik Spoelstra, Tyronn Lue and Mark Few — who was Nembhard's coach in college at Gonzaga. Advertisement Few is from a small town on the western coast of Oregon, population today of about 5,000, and he is both famous and kidded by his players for the colloquial language he uses to make a point. So Thursday, ahead of Indiana's potential closeout game in the Eastern Conference finals at Madison Square Garden, Few texted Haliburton and Nembhard to say: 'Don't tiptoe into a bar fight.' Which, as it turns out, is basically what the Pacers ended up doing in a 111-94 loss to the New York Knicks in Game 5. 'It was a rough showing for us tonight,' Haliburton acknowledged. Look, losses after playoff games are too often explained by clichés that have to do with: A. Boxing; B. Getting punched in the face, chest or stomach (which can happen in MMA, taekwondo or outside of Jimmy's Corner Bar on Sixth and 46th); C. Being less aggressive than the team that won (not as sexy, but 'aggressive' is as time-worn as all the punching metaphors in the NBA playoffs). The Knicks didn't hit anyone Thursday night, but they played desperate. They noticeably turned up the pressure defensively, they jumped passing lanes, they refused to be denied on drives to the hoop. They had to be that way, one more false step by the New Yorkers, and their playoffs are over. That's what Few knew was coming for his two former players, both from the Knicks' side and also from a raucous, borderline frothy MSG crowd that was, by the end of things, chanting 'Knicks in seven, Knicks in seven.' The, ahem, sober, clinical diagnosis of what happened in Game 5 is that the Pacers, generally, didn't play well (which will be dissected elsewhere at The Athletic), and specifically Haliburton turned in a stinker — which happens from time to time with him. In 32 minutes of game action on Thursday, Haliburton scored eight points on seven shots. If you just know him generally as a pretty good player, maybe as an All-Star, perhaps as a third-team All-NBA selection, you might raise an eyebrow over a player of his caliber producing so little with a trip to the NBA Finals on the line. Advertisement If you have been following the conference finals, and you know all about Haliburton's heroics in Game 1, with the 31 points, the score-tying shot at the buzzer and the Reggie Miller flex, as well as the historic, never-been-equaled, 32-point, 12-rebound, 15-assist, zero-turnover performance he dropped in Game 4, then maybe Game 5 is a real head-scratcher, to the point where you might ask, why the tiptoeing, bruh? 'A rough day for me,' Haliburton said. 'I got to be better, set the tone, get downhill. I feel like I can do a great job of that, but I'll watch the film. There's some different things they did defensively. But for the most part, I think their base stuff was the same. They picked up the pressure a little bit more, tried to apply more as the game went on. But yeah, I gotta be better, and I'll be better in Game 6.' I covered the Pacers' series against the Cleveland Cavaliers, and I recall him making huge plays in the first two games to win both of them and then score 4 points in a 22-point loss in Game 3 of that series. What I was less aware of, because I only saw the Pacers from time to time during the regular season, is these occasional disappearances happen. For instance, in Game 2 of the entire season, all the way back in October, Haliburton went scoreless against the Knicks. In 26 minutes. He was held under 10 points 11 times this season (by lofty comparison, LeBron James hasn't scored fewer than 10 points in a regular-season game since Jan. 5, 2007), and shut out twice. Haliburton now has two clunkers to his name in these playoffs. The reason to go to such great lengths pointing this out is, if the Pacers win Game 6, he would almost certainly be the series MVP because he had been so consistent and so clutch in the closing moments of the close games. 'As a team, we have to be aggressive and have a level of balance,' Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said. 'I mean, I'll look at it. There's more things I'm gonna have to do to help him. I'll take responsibility for that, and we'll see what we can improve.' Advertisement The Knicks borrowed a page from the Pacers by pressuring the ball earlier in the Pacers' possessions, preventing Haliburton from throwing skip passes and otherwise slowing him down from getting Indiana into its offense. That is the precise formula the Pacers had used defensively to eradicate the Milwaukee Bucks and Cavs and push the Knicks to the brink of elimination. Haliburton said 'when you get here at this point, there's no such thing as surprises,' which, if we are to take him at his word, means the Pacers knew the Knicks were going to crank up the pressure and simply failed to handle it. The Pacers remain on the brink of their first NBA Finals since 2000, and the first ever for many of their players — including Haliburton. They haven't lost two straight since March. Haliburton said as much; he knows he needs to, and vowed to be, better in Game 6. If you're stepping into a swimming pool full of sharks (why would you do that, ever?) or perhaps walking into a rough-and-tumble bar in Hell's Kitchen, with every patron over 6-1 and 220 pounds (again, why, but I digress), perhaps you would tread lightly. It seemed to be the case for Haliburton and the Pacers, despite Few's warning to the contrary. But downtown Indianapolis has good bars, too. And the Pacers will have the benefit of standing behind the saloon doors, with empty bottles and sawed-off stools in hand, waiting for the visitors to approach. 'We felt like our preparation was right, as a group I felt like we approached the day the right way, but I feel like I could have been a lot better,' Haliburton said. 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Yahoo
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Pacers vs. Knicks: 'Do or die' mentality fuels Karl-Anthony Towns, Jalen Brunson as New York lives to fight another day
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New York held an Indiana team that had been shooting 50% from the floor in the playoffs as a team and scoring a scorching 121.1 points per 100 possessions through four conference finals games to 40.5% from the field and just 96.9 points-per-100 in Game 5. That's the first time the Pacers have failed to score at least one point per possession in the 2025 NBA playoffs, and just the eighth time in 97 combined regular- and postseason contests. The Pacers made a couple of runs at it, getting within 12 on a 3-pointer by little-used reserve Jarace Walker with just over eight minutes to go in the fourth quarter, and cutting the Knick lead to 14 on a driving Haliburton layup with 3:18 to go in regulation. If that combination of time and score made you start to sweat a little, you might be a Knicks fan who's still working through the trauma of the team squandering a 14-point lead with 2:51 to go in Game 1. Advertisement On Thursday, though, Aaron Nesmith wasn't coming out of the bullpen to start chucking lightning bolts. The Pacers forward, still battling through a sprained right ankle, played just 16 ineffective minutes in Game 5, missing seven of his eight shots and checking out for good with five and a half minutes to go in the fourth. On Thursday, Pascal Siakam wasn't ending every good possession of New York defense with a backbreaking fadeaway, or sprinting the length of the court off of every Knick make or miss for deflating transition buckets. Six days after scoring what Indiana head coach Rick Carlisle called 'a quiet 39 points,' the Pacers All-Star forward finished with an actually quiet 15 points on 5-for-13 shooting. And on Thursday, Haliburton wasn't getting loose to torture New York with impossible haymakers. In fact, he wasn't really going anywhere. 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That extends to the other end of the floor, too. Thibodeau insisted after the game that New York didn't necessarily make a concerted effort to hunt Haliburton the same way that Indiana's been hunting Brunson all series long. When opportunities presented themselves, though — a Bridges post touch here, a Bridges-Mitchell Robinson pick-and-roll in secondary action there, some double high ball screens that forced Haliburton to navigate traffic — well, let's just say New York didn't turn them down: Through four games, the Pacers had outscored New York by 28 points in 152 minutes with Haliburton on the court; in Game 5, Indiana lost his minutes by 23. Advertisement 'I feel like we picked up our intensity a little bit, obviously,' Brunson said after the game about the defensive improvements, on Haliburton and in general. 'I think we paid attention to detail better as a team. The little things go a long way. If we pay attention to the minute things, the things that just don't seem like a huge deal, they really do help.' The devil's in the details, the magic's in the work, and the Knicks, still, are in the fight. They've staved off elimination once. Do it again on Saturday in Indianapolis, and they come home for Game 7 at Madison Square Garden. It's a tall task. But Hart's never known this Knicks team to quit, and on Thursday, they sure didn't look like they were ready to start any time soon.
New York Times
36 minutes ago
- New York Times
Under Trump, a Native American Mascot Debate Is Turned Upside Down
A New York school district was mired in a pitched battle over its Native American mascot. The school board in Lancaster, a small district near Buffalo, had voted to banish its 'Redskins' imagery and nickname. But parents protested that the mascot was a source of pride. Teachers arrived to class sporting outfits with the logo. And students regularly ran into reminders of the old mascot in classrooms, gyms and locker rooms. The year was 2015. The school district was accused of violating students' civil rights when it persisted in showcasing the mascot, and the U.S. Education Department opened an investigation. The imbroglio eventually ended with an accord between the district and the federal government to halt the use of the mascot. A decade since the battle began in Lancaster, the elimination of Native American mascots from public schools has re-emerged as a contentious political issue, and New York again finds itself at the center of a firestorm. The state has required districts to abandon mascots that appropriate Native culture, or risk losing funding. But this time, the federal government's stance is very different. The Education Department recently began a civil rights investigation into the state's mandate to banish certain mascots after the Massapequa district on Long Island refused to forgo its decades-old 'Chief' mascot, a Native American man wearing a feathered headdress. On Friday, the federal education secretary, Linda McMahon, is expected to visit the district to announce whether by restricting the use of Native mascots, the state violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funds from engaging in discriminatory behavior based on race, color or national origin. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
