The thing that jumps out at me is the mouthguard. Immediately dates the photo. Also accentuates the eyes, his focus, the creative gaze, seeking possibilities. Then the leather gloves and wooden stick, the scuffed skates with steel blades, the flimsy helmet–no more than a shell, really, over a thin layer of foam.
Look closer, and you spot the Indian head logo–another relic yet here worn proudly over the heart of the young man with an Ojibwe bloodline. That’s Henry Boucha, Paul Bunyan with a hockey stick. They say he’s dented goalposts with his shot. Skates faster than the wind. See how the Edina player has trouble keeping pace with him?
It’s February 22, 1969, the championship game of the first boys state high school tournament played at the Met Center. In the quarterfinal game on Thursday, the Warroad defenseman played every minute but one, set up a goal, and scored the game-winner. The next night, he again played nearly the entire game, set up a goal, and scored the game-winner. That gave him 60 goals on the season in fewer than 20 games.
In the final, Boucha has already assisted on a goal to put Warroad ahead. Yet Edina, a talented team, has answered with two early goals in the second to surge ahead. And then–not long after this photo was taken–the game ascended into immortality in our collective memory. Boucha rushed the length of the ice and fired a shot. The goalie deflected it. Boucha chased the puck into the corner–where an Edina defenseman slammed his head into the glass.
Boucha slumped. The crowd hushed. The blow had crushed his eardrum. When he finally stood, the ice looked lopsided. An ambulance took He ended the game in the hospital. Stoked by emotion and backed by the crowd, the Warriors rallied to tie the score and stretch Edina to double overtime, but, after losing their star, they ultimately lost the game.
Six years later, after Boucha had swapped the Cooper helmet for his trademark headband to play for the North Stars, Dave Forbes infamously jabbed the butt end of his stick into his eye, shattered his orbital bone, and stained the same Met Center ice with his blood. Troubled by double vision, Boucha was forced to quit hockey.
I go back to the photo of him looking up the ice with those eyes that could see what others couldn’t and wonder what visions had vanished for him on that rink.
© John Rosengren