Come meet NHL Hock­ey Leg­end & for­mer Min­neso­ta North Starn Neal Broten on Sun­day March 15 at noon in the Sun­set Lodge booth #510

Neal Broten attend­ed Roseau High School, a peren­ni­al hock­ey con­tender in the state of Min­neso­ta, where he appeared with the Rams in the state tour­na­ment in three con­sec­u­tive years (1977–79). His 1978 achieve­ment of four assists in a sin­gle peri­od still stands as a Roseau Rams’ record today.

As a col­lege fresh­man play­ing for Herb Brooks and the Min­neso­ta Gold­en Gophers, Broten scored 21 goals, had 50 assists, and was named WCHA Rook­ie of the Year. His final goal of that sea­son was the game win­ner that clinched the 1979 NCAA Cham­pi­onship in which the Gophers defeat­ed the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Dako­ta by a score of 4–3. Broten would lat­er win the inau­gur­al Hobey Bak­er award in 1981, which hon­ors the US col­le­giate hock­ey’s best player.

Broten is one of a few play­ers to have played on teams that won the NCAA hock­ey cham­pi­onship (Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta in 1979), the Olympic Gold Medal (Team USA, 1980), and the Stan­ley Cup (New Jer­sey Dev­ils, 1995). He is the only play­er to have won the Hobey Bak­er, the Olympic Gold Medal and the Stan­ley Cup. In addi­tion, Neal Broten and Ed Belfour are the only play­ers to have won an NCAA cham­pi­onship, an Olympic Gold medal and the Stan­ley Cup.

Broten was mem­ber of the Unit­ed States Olympic team that won a gold medal at the 1980 Win­ter Olympics in an event known as the “Mir­a­cle on Ice”. He was also a mem­ber of Team USA at the 1981 Cana­da Cup and 1984 Cana­da Cup tour­na­ments as well as the 1990 Ice Hock­ey World Cham­pi­onship.

Broten played 17 sea­sons in the Nation­al Hock­ey League. High­lights of his long NHL career include the first Amer­i­can to score more than 100 points in a sin­gle sea­son (1985–86) as well as two NHL All-Star Game appear­ances in 1983 and 1986.

He won a Stan­ley Cup with the New Jer­sey Dev­ils in 1995, scor­ing the game-win­ning goal in Game Four against the Detroit Red Wings to clinch the title. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, his 1980 Sovi­et coun­ter­part Viach­eslav Feti­sov was on the ice for the heav­i­ly favored Red Wings when Broten scored the clinch­er. Broten became the first Amer­i­can to score a Cup-win­ning goal.

Broten briefly came out of retire­ment in 1999 to once again play for the US nation­al team in the 1999 Ice Hock­ey World Cham­pi­onship qual­i­fy­ing tour­na­ment (the U.S. team fea­tur­ing sev­er­al NHL play­ers had sur­pris­ing­ly fin­ished among the bot­tom four in the pre­vi­ous 1998 world cham­pi­onship tour­na­ment) when no active NHL play­ers were avail­able. He scored six points in three games as the U.S. won the tour­na­ment, before retir­ing from hock­ey for good. He lives in Riv­er Falls, WI.