I didn't want to get into that one at all.
I saw Parise with UND vs Princeton he was amazing. I think it was the December before his draft year...I went to see Hale...Parise had 5 or 6 assist that night. He set up every single goal that was scored that night. No one could even come close to him he looked like he was hovering above the ice, smooth as silk.
I remember leaning over to the person I was with and asking "what do you think the chances the Devils could draft that kid"
The person said, "No chance. That kid is going top 5, certainly top 10"
It certainly looked that way after his massive freshman season in which he was
ROBBED of a Hobey by Junior friggin Lessard. Like the 2003 conn smythe, I'll never get over the Hobey that year. Robbed.
At any rate, the entire Minneapolis area nearly burned to the ground when Parise chose the Sioux over the Gophs. He had everybody around him pushing him toward the home town team - and he selects the bitter rival 5 hours away. If you dig enough you can find some things that happened that led to this decision. Dean Blais was one of the big reasons he went to UND. But there also stories out there floating around about what Herb Brooks may or may not have said to Parise and his dad (brooks and JP Parise have the north stars connection from back in the day). Brooks once said to them before Parise made his decision: if you want to go into business, go to Harvard. If you want to be a hockey player, go to North Dakota. There's also some things about there about meals paid for by Gophers boosters that may or may not have happened which would've been a violation. Ironic that we took their stud and our home grown guy Ryan Potulny wound up choosing the Gophers over the Sioux. But I'm fairly certain that the Sioux didn't recruit his older brother Grant a few years before and he wound up a gopher as well - which is why Ryan went to UofM. I played a lot of hockey growing up with Ryan and that was a hell of a player. He never was able to stick in the nhl much, but he did have a solid season with the Oilers a few years ago.
Parise and I lived in the same dorm freshman year at UND. He has always been a very humble and genuine nice guy. Always smiling and taking time out of his day to talk to people. He stepped onto campus in the fall of '02 as a complete rockstar. There was a lot of buzz around getting him to come to UND over UM - hockey in grand forks is basically like college football in Texas. That's about all I can compare it to. They changed the system for how they distributed student season hockey tickets that year...it was first come first serve and they set the time for a Wednesday at noon I believe it was. A friend calls me the Friday before and says there's already a line forming....6 days before you could even buy the tickets
so we grabbed our **** and rushed over to the Ralph. Ended up about 20th in line or so. We all took turns rotating going to classes and sleeping. Haha predictably, it turned into a drunken disaster which is probably why they haven't done it since. People staying up all night and drinking. The parking lot of the Ralph was littered with beer bottles. Matt Greene drove by with some players in his 1980s dodge caravan one night and a gopher fan threw a beer bottle at his van. Greene ended up getting out and threatening to snap the dude in half
At any rate, when they opened the doors you got to pay $75 for an entire season ticket and got to run in and pick your seat in the lower level. I wound up getting to be 3 seats from the visitors penalty box in the 6th row. That was unreal.
I remember the first time Parise stepped on the ice as a freshman. You could see where all the hype came from. He was nothing short of dominant. His work ethic and motor was there from day 1. His "that's my puck and you're not going to take it from me" attitude was always there. And he wasn't a massive partier like so many other star forwards who have come through there (cough Toews, Oshie , frattin, cough). He got a minor on premises ticket at the el roco - a club near campus, but other than that he was pretty clean. I saw him a lot around campus and then you saw him and his wife together a lot. She's from Hoople, ND and one of my best friends was dating his wife's good friend so I got to know her a bit. Pretty impressive they've managed to stay together through his rise to fame. You knew he was going to be a player, just not THAT good. But He absolutely owned the ice. His main winger was Brandon bochenski (who's now in the KHL) who was a mediocre skater at best but had an all-world release. Parise's ridiculous play helped Bo score 35 in 43 games as a sophomore. Hell, he spent some time with Quinn Fylling and turned that dude into a near PPG player....dude was playing club hockey with us 2 years later and wasn't very good.
That's how good Parise was
He was one of those players that the whole crowd basically held their breath when he had the puck in the offensive zone because you must didn't know what was going to happen. I wish phones were more advanced back then because I don't have many pictures of Parise in a Sioux jersey laying around. I suppose having the memories is just as good. His skating, work ethic and hockey iq have never changed since his freshman year at UND. We used to sit outside the rock and just talk Sioux hockey for a bit when I'd stay after - he loved it and is the player he is today partly due to Blais. I was absolutely gutted the day he left NJ because he's everything I want in a hockey player and you'll never see someone quite like him again. You just can't replace a player like that. Ever. And someone like that may never come around again. I still get **** from my friends back in MPLS and I ****ing hate it.
Sorry for the long post haha
