Check out this good article on Chicago Black Hawks growing star and Roseau native, Dustin Byfuglien. It starts out talking about his role on the team during the playoffs but then goes into a nice story about the people that surrounded his life in Roseau.
Blackhawks' Dustin Byfuglien kicks it up a notch
By Jim O'Donnelljodonnell@suntimes.com
The easy ebony eyes of Dustin Byfuglien belie an intriguing wheat-field mosaic. They reflect a growing professional confidence, a Minnesota-nice manner without the ''Fargo'' overtones and a fervent wish that the next interviewer will want to talk about Blackhawks playoff hockey and not his childhood around the lakes, skates and trucker laments of Roseau, Minn.
''There have been a whole lot of questions about that,'' Byfuglien, 24, said. ''I understand, but the whole focus right now is about what's happening with the team. I like talking about that.''That's understandable. Because what's happening with the team right now is that your Blackhawks -- after seasons in the NHL shadows -- have picked up where Derrick Rose and his Bulls crew left off and continue the remarkable theater of an energized spring in local sports.
The Hawks will open play this afternoon in Detroit in the Western Conference finals, and there appear to be only two certainties on the threshold of the series:
• • There is no reason to believe the talent, speed and upscaling youth of victories against the Calgary Flames and Vancouver Canucks won't remain in evidence against the big, bad Red Wings.
• • There is ample reason to believe the big, imposing presence of Byfuglien will haunt the Red Wings' crease and their defenders as surely as it did against the Flames and the Canucks.
'''Buff' has been a tank in the playoffs,'' ace teammate Patrick Kane said. ''He has created havoc inside. He is playing his best hockey at the best possible time.''
Added coach Joel Quenneville: ''Honestly, I thought his regular season was ordinary. But he has picked up his game so much, picked up his focus. He's a big body, and he is understanding more and more what he can do with his skills and that body. His overall awareness has been so much better in the playoffs. And I think there remains so much upside to his game.''
But through good times and more challenging ones, Byfuglien always has had Roseau -- and the remarkable family rootedness that set him on his way.
• • • ''It's all Norwegians and Swedes up here,'' grandfather Kenny Byfuglien said. ''The Norwegians like us wanted the woods and the swamp, don't ask me why. And the lakes, of course. And the Swedes are always going to follow the Norwegians.''
Please read the rest of the article on the Chicago Sun-Times website.
Roseau, population 2,756, is in far northwestern Minnesota -- Canada begins 10 miles north -- five hours north of Minneapolis- St. Paul by car.
It also lays claim to the Roseau High School Rams, a perpetuating hockey ensemble that has won seven state titles since 1946, most recently in 2008. Some in faceoff-mad Minnesota say the Rams are hockey's equivalent of ''Hoosiers'' -- if old Hickory had come back to win six more state titles.
The most famous player to come out of Roseau was Neal Broten, still the only man to play on championship teams in the NCAA (Minnesota, 1979), the Olympics (USA, 1980) and the NHL (New Jersey Devils, 1995). He also won three state crowns at Roseau High.
''The town itself is about a mile long and 12 blocks wide,'' said Dick Johnson, the primary coach for Broten and Byfuglien in pee-wee and squirt leagues. ''Everybody knows everybody, and sometimes I think there was a Byfuglien or a Broten in every part of the town.''
Grandpa Kenny took over his father Knute's trucking company in the early 1950s and expanded it into a regional concern. He and grandma Crystal had nine children; then she worked at the Roseau American Legion Hall.
''I sold pull-tabs for six years and then worked in the kitchen,'' she said. ''I'm retired now.''
Child No. 7 was daughter Cheryl, an adventurous sort. After high school, she set off for the bright lights of St. Cloud to attend beauty school. There she met and was romanced by a fellow named Rick Spencer, an African American who played football and baseball at St. Cloud State.
Together, they had a son named Dustin. The relationship didn't last. Mother and son returned to Roseau.
''I've got 23 grandchildren now, and to tell you the truth, I can't remember what number Dustin is,'' Grandpa Kenny said. ''All I know is that when it was time for Cheryl to come home with him, they came home.''
Home was not far from her parents' house, on an 11-acre lot five miles outside of town. She took a full-time job as a forklift driver at the local Polaris plant, then the world's leading manufacturer of ATVs and snowmobiles. Home was sometimes a trailer on her parents' property.
''We took Dustin down to the arena [Memorial Arena, the grandest of three ice rinks in town] when he was 3, and I remember he wouldn't put on the skates,'' Grandpa Kenny said. ''But he would go out and shuffle around the ice. By the next winter, he put on the skates and took off like a natural, and what you're seeing now down in Chicago is the result.''
• • •
What Hawks fans are seeing now isn't Byfuglien's first tour of duty around Chicago. That happened seven years ago -- during the winter of 2001-02 -- in a tale that fully capsulizes the spirit of Robert Frost and ''The Road Not Taken.''
''I had no interest in school,'' Byfuglien said. ''And I mean none. And then the opportunity came to play midget hockey down in Chicago.''
The program was the Chicago Mission, then based in Addison and now in Woodridge. A scout in Canada was impressed by Byfuglien's potential and aware of his academic ineligibility to play for Roseau High. He knew a coach with the Mission. A possible link was set in motion, but the key question loomed: Would the tight-knit Byfugliens allow Dustin to leave town to work on his dream 750 miles away?
''We sat down with Dustin, and I told him it was time to fish or cut bait,'' mother Cheryl said. ''He was not cut out for school, but it was obvious that he could hold his own with the boys who were playing for the high school. I told him it was his decision, but I thought he should go for it.''
He did. With the help of Mission administrators, Dustin relocated and moved in with the Szupura family -- parents Bill and Laurie and their son Matt, who also played for the Mission. In the end, it was a decision that has made all the difference.
''It's impossible to say how nice the Szupuras and others were to me,'' Byfuglien said. ''There were nights when I was homesick, but as soon as I got back on the ice, everything was all right again. The ice has always been my refuge.''
• • •
That embryonic west-suburban refuge led to Byfuglien's emergence on major hockey radars. After one year with the Mission and two seasons with the Brandon Wheat Kings of the Western Hockey League, the Hawks chose him in the eighth round of the 2003 entry draft.
While there were few questions about his pure hockey potential, Byfuglien always has been shadowed by matters of conditioning. During his four-year run-up to the Hawks, he reportedly carried as much as 280 pounds on his 6-3 frame.
This season, the team said he played in the 240- or 250-pound range. By NHL standards, that's still Bunyanesque.
''And,'' TV analyst Eddie Olczyk said, ''what is amazing for a fellow of Buff's size are his soft hands and his skating skills. That's why people continue to speak of his upside. When his instincts and talent fully come together, the sky is the limit.''
For now, back in Roseau, the town has become a mini-center of Hawks mania.
Dustin bought Grandpa Kenny a wide-screen TV a few years ago.
''And I've got the Dish [Network] and NHL Center Ice, too, so I've got it all,'' the retired trucker said. ''Nights when he's playing, it's on all the TVs -- at the Legion, at the Eagles, at the Pizza Ranch, everywhere.''
Mother Cheryl is retired and lives on an island northeast of Roseau in a community named Lake of the Woods. Her paramour is Dale Smedsmo, a former World Hockey Association grinder who also played briefly with the Toronto Maple Leafs in the early 1970s.
She has made the 11-hour drive to Chicago four times this season, most recently for Games 3 and 4 of the series against the Canucks. Speaking like the daughter of a trucker, she said: ''We left at 1:09 a.m. and got to Chicago at 12:25 p.m., just as Dustin was getting off the ice after practice. We made three stops -- two for gas and one for McDonald's.''
Byfuglien himself lives with longtime girlfriend Emily within walking distance of Wrigley Field. Tucked behind the easy ebony eyes and the Minnesota-nice manner, there is no doubt he is working on a dream.
''One day the playoffs are starting, and the next thing you know, here we are about to play in the conference finals,'' he said. ''Of course, the goal is the Stanley Cup for us. But my personal goal has been every summer to go back to Roseau with a better story than the summer before.''
It seems assured he already has one.
