Gophers teammates reach fork in the road

Defenseman Derek Peltier and forward Evan Kaufmann are more than teammates on the Gophers hockey team. The two seniors are like brothers, with long, intertwined playing careers.

Home ice for them in early grade school was the pond between their homes. Their families lived in the Swan Lake neighborhood of Plymouth. The pond, in the middle of a circle of homes, had nets that older boys had made out of lumber and chicken wire. There were no boards.

There Peltier and Kaufmann skated with other buddies. Their parents signed them up for the same youth hockey teams, and they played together from Mites (ages 9 and 10) to Squirts to Peewees to Bantams.

Their families both had season tickets to Gophers games, and the boys fantasized about wearing maroon and gold one day.

Once in high school, they were on the same varsity team at Armstrong for two seasons. Peltier left early, skipping his senior season, and played two years for Cedar Rapids of the USHL. Kaufmann stayed and was captain of the Falcons as a senior, then played for River City against Peltier in his second USHL season.

Peltier committed to the Gophers first. Then Kaufmann called him, saying he was talking with Minnesota, too. "I was pretty excited," Peltier said, "knowing I could be playing with a good friend, coming in together as freshmen."

Now their fourth season of college hockey is almost over. Barring a long-shot trifecta of the right wins, losses and ties in three conference rinks, Minnesota will be on the road for the first round of the WCHA playoffs next weekend.

So this weekend is probably the final home series at Mariucci for Peltier and Kaufmann. They, along with the four other seniors -- forwards Ben Gordon, Mike Howe and Tom Pohl and goalie Brent Solei -- will be introduced before Saturday's game against Minnesota Duluth.

Once the Gophers season ends, Peltier, the team captain, and Kaufmann, one of the assistant captains, probably will never be teammates again. "Obviously, Derek was drafted; he has some good opportunities to keep playing," Kaufmann said.

The Colorado Avalanche picked the 6-foot, 190-pound Peltier in the sixth round of the 2004 NHL entry draft.

It was a good run, from start to finish.

"Going out there on the pond," Peltier said, "and playing with all your buddies and all your friends out in the fresh air, you could not beat it."

Often Peltier's mother, Teresa, had to flick the back house lights off and on to get Derek to come inside.

"The whole neighborhood was filled with tons of boys," said Karen Kaufmann, Evan's mother. "If they were not playing hockey, they were playing baseball or roller-blading."

Friendships made then and more recently, Kaufmann said, help keep hockey enjoyable. "You could be having the worst day ever and classes could be tough," he said. "And you can have any sort of problem outside hockey. But when you come to the rink and hang out with your teammates, you seem to forget about everything else that is going on. It is hard not to have fun when you are here."

Kaufmann said he used to tease Peltier about his hair as a youngster: "He used to shave these lines on the side of his head when that was in in its day. He used to make fun of me about my bike. I was the only kid in the neighborhood who could not do a bunny hop on a bike."

And the kidding keeps going on.

Kaufmann made a surprise marriage proposal to Danielle Liberman, another Swan Lake neighbor, at midnight on New Year's Eve before a group of friends with Peltier noticeably missing. "It was a little bit too late for him," Kaufmann said. "I tried to get him to stay out there. He is like an old man sometimes."

Actually at 23, Kaufmann is a year older. His major is accounting, Peltier's is business and marketing education. Both have received scholar-athlete awards from the university every year.

And this week their head coach also had kind words for both of them.

"Derek has certainly played his best hockey the last few weeks this year," Don Lucia said. "He has done a nice job as captain. It hasn't been easy with the type of year we have had."

And Kaufmann? "Evan is one of those guys you can almost throw him into any different role," Lucia said.

"We are going to miss both those guys and all our seniors after this year," Lucia said.