'The Back Door' was a wonderful quirk in hockey tournament's history

Gene Aldrich was the athletic director for the St. Paul high schools when he started pushing the idea of a state hockey tournament. It came about as an eight-team invitational in mid-February 1945.

The state was then divided into 32 districts and eight regions for the state basketball tournament. Aldrich and his organizers tried to approximate those regions in rounding up teams.

One problem: Six of the 32 districts had no hockey teams. There were no teams in Region 2 (Districts 5 through 8) in south central and the southwestern corner of Minnesota.

For some reason, Minneapolis did not send a team to St. Paul for the first tournament.

Aldrich found Granite Falls to represent Region 3, St. Cloud to represent Region 5 (later Minneapolis), Staples to represent Region 6 and deemed White Bear Lake to be the Region 2 representative.

The Granite Falls lads did not have real uniforms and only a modest understanding of the rules of hockey. They also had the misfortune and being pitted against Eveleth – Minnesota's earliest high school power – in the first round.

The score was 16-0. And, according to historians, the game was stopped several times for the referee to explain to Granite Falls such intricacies as what it meant to be offside.

There remained some mismatches and it was determined in 1949 that an attempt had to be made to create deeper fields for the eight-team tournament. It was then that it was decided to create space for three teams from the two northern regions (7 and 8) and three teams from the Minneapolis and St. Paul regions (4 and 5).

The third team from the north would represent Region 3 and the third team from the Twin Cities would represent Region 1. In hockey parlance, this became known as the "back door'' for entry into the tournament.

The Region 1 back door was in effect from 1949 to 1967. Immediately, there was a playoff game between the runners-up in the Minneapolis and St. Paul regions to determine the Region 1 representative.

Starting in 1960, it became a four-team playoff between the runners-up in Regions 2, 4, 5 and 6 to decide the Region 1 entry. I had forgotten all about the four-team "back door'' playoff that took place from 1960 to 1967.

And it remains my perception that the difference between determining the Region 1 and Region 3 entries was this:

Up there in hockey land, The Back Door came with caps, particularly on the Iron Range and in the Northwest strongholds of hockey such as Roseau, Warroad and Thief River Falls.

There was something else I had not realized, until talking with Doug Johnson at Let's Play Hockey and taking advantage of the impeccable history provided by Vintage Minnesota Hockey's website:

For the first 16 years (1949-1964) of the northern Back Door, there wasn't a game between the Region 7 and 8 runners-up. The regions alternated sending a runner-up to the state tournament.

No kidding. Williams went from Region 8 in 1949, International Falls from Region 7 in 1950, Williams again in 1951, then Eveleth, Warroad, Duluth Central, Thief River Falls, International Falls, Hallock, Duluth East, Thief River Falls, Duluth East, Hallock, Greenway, Warroad and International Falls, in that order from 1952 through 1964.

In 1960, Duluth East lost to Eveleth in the Region 7 final, but it was an even-numbered year and that gave The Back Door to the Greyhounds. They used it to become Duluth's only state champion in the one-class tournament era [1945-91].

So, there was actually only 10 years of The Back Door game in the North. The winners: 1965-Thief River Falls. 1966-Greenway. 1967-Hibbing. 1968-Greenway. 1969-Warroad. 1970-Greenway. 1971-East Grand Forks. 1972-Grand Rapids. 1973-Hibbing. 1974-Hibbing.

Greenway came through The Back Door in 1968 and won the state title with a 6-1 victory over South St. Paul. Hibbing came through The Back Door in 1973 and won the title with a 4-1 victory over Alexander Ramsey.

Private schools were admitted to the Minnesota State High School League for the 1974-75 school year. The influx of hockey schools in the metro closed the North's Back Door. Hill-Murray was the new Region 3 champion in 1975.

Years later, I see The Back Door as having been a great thing, if for no other reason than it enabled Henry Boucha and the Warroad Warriors to reach the state tournament in 1969.