Kids playing youth hockey create friends and networks of friends that goes far beyond what they realize as they grow up playing the support.  These supporters are created over the years spent at rinks.  On a successful day at the rink, their team gets surrounded by fans and the kids see a mired of faces that create a blur in their mind.  On less successful days, the youth hockey players may not even see the blurr of their supporter's faces.  They often feel stuck in the crowd and they want to head home.

What the kids don’t see on those win or lose days, they began to see as they mature and often re-connect with those same supporters.  But sometimes a personal tragedy will bring out that support sooner.  That has happened with Cole Borchardt.

The Burnsville Hockey Club peewee A tryouts in the fall of 2009 did not look good.  They had around sixty players trying out but few thought the Blaze could compete with the better teams.  There was talent in that group of peewees, but would it be enough.  The peewee A team lost two of their first four games in early November 2009.  One of the losses, a 9-4 loss to Prior Lake, hurt.

Edina’s peewee A team was in the Burnsville Thanksgiving Day tourney that year.  Edina was a strong as ever with Jack Walker, Ben Newhouse, Sam Fuss, and Ryan Zuhlsdorf leading the defense; Dylan Malmquist, Casey Dornbach, Chase Jungels, Matt Mastermann, Mark Kaske, Kieffer Bellows, and Henry Bowlby on the offense.  The Hornets came into the Burnsville Tourney beating two AAA teams (Madison Capitals 6-5 and the 97 Fire 9-4).  As expected, Edina won their pool easily and beat Andover (with Maddie Rooney in the nets) 5-1 in the semifinals.  The Blaze surprised and won their pool and then beat Eastview to setup a rink packed Sunday championship game between Edina and Burnsville.  Edina won 6-4, but what emerged from that tourney was a strong Blaze team led by the Borchardt brothers (Cole and Cade), Brock Boeser, Jack Ahcan, and goal tender Dyllan Lubbesmeyer.

In their 2009-2010 peewee season, the Blaze team posted a 40-9 record.  Five of the nine losses were to the Hornets.  Their last Edina lost, 5-2 in the peewee A East Regional at Dakota, cost the Blaze a state tourney ticket to Faribault.  The Hornets went on to win the 2010 Peewee State title.

Four years later, in the 2013-2014 season, those same Blaze peewees started for the Blaze varsity, posting a 19-7-1 record, placing second in the South Suburban Conference with a 14-3 record, and ranked in the top ten in the state at the end of the season.  They never met Edina in Section 2AA playoffs last March, Jefferson upset the Blaze 3-1 in the semifinals.

Cole graduated and had been drafted by the USHL's Chicago Steel.  The remaining Blaze players from the 2009 peewee A team readied for one last run at the two time Class AA champions Hornets.  But things change.  Players started to drift away.  At the end of July, Brock Boeser had a going away party.  Boeser will play the 2014-2015 season for the USHL’s Waterloo Black Hawks and not return to play for the Blaze.  He joined Blaze defenseman Sam Rossini who also left to play in the USHL.  A week after Boeser left, tragedy struck.  

On August 6, Cole Borchardt was returning from a swimming in the Cannon River.  He was in the back seat when the SUV lost control and rolled across Highway 52 ending up in the south lane.  Like Herb Brooks rolling his car, Cole and fellow back seat passanger Ty G. Alyea, did not have seat belts on and like Herb Brooks, both were thrown from the vehicle.

Alyea, like Brooks, died.  Cole didn’t.  He is now in critical condition in Regions Hospital in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit.  And he has received an outpouring of support from the hockey community as he fights to regain his life, to be able to travel on his own one more mile down that road.  The network of supporters he created at the rink has come forward.

It may be a Minnesota trait or the simply coming together of the Minnesota Hockey community, but approximately 30,000 visitors have been to Cole’s Caring Bridge site.  The names on the sentiments and cares posted are a list of who’s who in upcoming hockey.  The Misslings, Spinners, Hutsells, Bjorks, McDevitts, Lewis, Weigels, Trachels, Aamodts, Fidlers, the Farmington Hockey Community, Eastview Hockey Association, Delanys, Rosemount Hockey, Fellows, Bloomington Kennedy High School Hockey, Burnsville U8 Hockey Girls, Risteaus, Mucks, Lindgrens, Olsons, Munsons, Pughs, Dornbachs, Poehlings, Staums, Boesers, and Beers all have posted their support for Cole there.  All these players have been written about by YHH on this site since 2009.     

This network of hockey supporters wanted to share their thoughts and they did openly.  They feel the frustration of what has happened.  Sharing, they know is not enough, but it is what they can do.  Cole’s support network is large.  Those here at YHH were among those fans standing outside the locker rooms at the Burnsville rink and are proud to be a part of his network.  Cole, from those here at YHH, get better.  We want to see you back on the ice executing that sneaky drop pass behind the opponent’s net to fake the goalie and get the score; or we want to see you setting up a teammate from behind your own net and taking off to become the weak side forward on a surprise rush to the opponent’s net for the winning goal.  Or we want to simply see you at the rink, able to lace your skates, and have another good day.  God bless.