On a tombstone in Bala Cynwyd PA the following is written: “You who seemed winged, even as a lad, with that swift look of those who know the sky.  It was no blundering fate that stooped and bade, you break your wings, and fall to earth and die.  I think some day you may have flown too high, so that immortals saw you and were glad.  Watching the beauty of your spirits flame, until they loved and called you, and you came.”  That is where this story starts.

Four days before Christmas in 1918, on a rainy day at the Gengault Aerodrome at Toul-Croix De Metz Airfield in France, the commander of the USA’s 141st Aero Squadron (26 fighter airplanes), surveyed the fighters under his command.  A Princeton graduate, the commander had learned the new skill of flying fighter planes flying in the 103d Aero Squadron with USA pilots that flew earlier in the war as part of the Lafayette Escadrille and Lafayette Flying Corps.  New to the 141st squadron's command, the commander had the planes painted black and orange and added insignia, a tiger.  World War I was over.  The cessation of hostilities on the Western Front took effect the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918.  Armistice Day would forever be celebrated on November 11th.  Still pocket of hostilities remained.  The squadron commander had shot down four airplanes and had just received orders to return to the USA.  A fifth airplane would make him an ace.  One of the planes in his squadron had just been repaired and the commander felt it was his duty to test fly the plane.  A quarter mile into the test flight, the engine died and the plane crashed.  The commander died in an ambulance a few minutes later.  Eventually, he was returned to the USA and buried in Bala Cynwyd PA.

On a trip to Los Angeles in 1978, Charles Bard, then CEO of the now defunct Decathlon Athletic Club of Bloomington MN, got the idea of an award to be handed out to the top college hockey player.  He posed the idea to several Twin Cities businesses over the next year and got the go ahead for the Decathlon Athletic Club to create and hand out an award to the top college hockey player.  He set about to pick a name for the award, to develop a format, and finally to design a trophy to hand out.  For the trophy name, he chose four names, three Minnesota hockey greats and the commander of the 141st Airborne Squadron.  The names were presented to the board, but Bard openly admits he favored the commander.

 Bard liked the commander for he was not just a fallen war hero.  At Princeton, the commander played three sports initially until told he could only play two sports.  He settled for football and hockey.  He was a football star and a hockey star and most noted for a hockey game his team lost in 1914.  In the 1913-1914 season, hockey rules were far different from today’s game.  The first NHL championship game would not be played until 1917 though the Stanley Cup had existed for years before.  A year after the 1913-1914 season, the hockey leagues in Canada adopted new rules that had lines separating the playing surface into three zones for off-side purposes.  There still was no penalty box and the two Canadian pro leagues could not agree on six men on the ice or seven.   

Under new rules, players drawing penalties were fined anywhere from $2-$15 ($15 for a major-which was defined as checking into the boards).  Faceoff circles were yet to be drawn so each face off had a distance players had to be from the drop of the puck based on how close the faceoff was to a goal.  A puck played off a rebounding shot was considered “an offsides”.  The puck carrier always had to be the first skater to attack the net.  Finally, the game had been clocked at two 30 minute periods but that was changed to three 20 minute periods.  One of the big college games in 1914 was the hockey game played between the Harvard and Princeton.  Except for the 20 minute periods, those new rules didn’t exist when the commander’s Princeton team played Harvard at the Boston Arena in mid-January 1914.

Boston Arena was the first multisport arena built.  It opened in 1910 with artificial ice.  The Boston Bruins played there until 1928.  The arena has been renovated, renamed to Mathews Arena and is now the home of the Northeastern Huskies men’s and women’s college teams.  The commander’s team Princeton team played Harvard in the Boston Arena in January 1914 and lost 2-1; but the game created quite a stir because it went into double overtime before Harvard scored the winning goal.  The commander skated with two substitute players (his regular line mates had been injured) and he drew additional attention from the Crimson players.  Still the commander kept his team in the game.  Already a popular sports figure, the losing game made him and hockey even more popular.  Princeton would later that season win the American college title beating Ottawa, but the Harvard game captured the sporting world attention and the commander by his subsequent behavior defined the sport as something more than hockey.  He brought sportsmanship, character, academic achievement, and excellence to the sport by the way he conducted himself in the public spotlight after that game.  That is what Bard and the Decathlon Club wanted for their new award.  In 1981, they named their award after the commander.

Neal Broten was the first award winner in 1981.  The Decathlon Club could not have made a better choice.  Winning the award capped a remarkable two year run for Broten.  In March, 1978 Broten led an unbeaten Roseau Rams to the state tourney that lost to Edina East in the semifinals.  That fall Broten enrolled in the University of Minnesota, played for Herb Brooks’ Gophers, played in the World Junior Cup, and played on the Gophers’ national championship team in March of 1979.   In the fall of 1979, he joined the 1980 USA Olympic team and was part of their run for the Olympic gold following Herb Brooks, Bill Baker, and Steve Christoff among others.  After the Olympics, Broten returned to the Gophers, posting 71 points/17 goals in the season as the Gophers made their second appearance in the NCAA championship finals losing to Wisconsin.  

Broten ended the 1980-1981 season with a bang.  After playing in the NCAA championship in March, in early April he was awarded the first ever Hobey Baker Award, recognizing the top college hockey player for the 1980-1981 season.  He joined the Minnesota North Stars and ended the season playing playing in the Stanley Cup finals.  It was the stuff every hockey player dreams.  In 26 months, from March 1978 to May 1981, he played in the Minnesota State High School Tourney, two NCAA championship games, won Olympic gold, played in the NHL’s Stanley Cup finals.  In those 26 months, Broten was awarded the WCHA Rookie of the Year (1979), All-WCHA (1981), AHCA West All-American (1981), plus the Hobey Baker trophy.  In a bit of irony, Gopher and Olympic teammate, Steve Christoff, was the model for the Hobey Baker trophy.

In early April this year, the 2015 Hobey Baker trophy was awarded to Jack Eichel, the 34th trophy handed out.  The Decathlon Club is gone, but the award remains.  Eichel played for Boston University this past season and for the USA team at the World Junior Cup in Canada over the Christmas Holidays.  Eichel was chosen over Harvard’s Jimmy Vesey.  Both Harvard and Princeton played Northeastern this past season.  The 2015 Hobey Baker was awarded to Eichel at Northeastern’s Mathews Arena (the old Boston Arena where Hobey Baker’s Princeton team lost to Harvard in 1914).    

Some are saying this year that Americans don’t know why they are celebrating the July 4th  Some refuse to recognize that America has a culture and that American culture is epitomized in the stars and stripes on our national flag.  They also refuse to recognize that culture was formed over 200 years ago.  Long before Italy was Italy, Germany was Germany, and Sweden was Sweden; the United States was the United States.  The threads of hockey runs through that American culture.  It is part of who we are.  All Americans who look at that flag may not articulate the “why” we are what we are.  They don’t have to.  Americans feel it.