These stories can also be heard on Sunday mornings around 10 am on WILD 102’s “Look Back in Time” program. Each week’s radio story will be posted here on our website.
Weekly radio stories are researched, compiled, and read by Sheila Winstead, RCHS Board Member.
March 1, 2026
Some years ago, Jim Stordahl donated a book to the Roseau County Museum called “Tourney Time” by
David LaVaque and L. R. Nelson. It’s full of 75 years of stories about the Minnesota State High School
hockey tournaments. I’ll read one chapter in the 1978 section that was titled “Fabled Family, Roseau’s
Broten brothers made mark on tournament despite dreaded Edina hex.”
Roseau’s Neal Broten was a freshman making his first trip to the state tournament when he lost the $20
in spending cash his dad had given him. Twenty bucks was a significant sum back in 1975.
“And I lost it the first day,” he said. “I was sick to my stomach.”
Younger brother Aaron remembers an unexpected climate change after making the six-hour trip south
from the Canadian border.
The St. Paul Civic Center “was warmer and hotter, and the ice wasn’t as good as you were used to,” he
said. “It’s not very often when you come off the ice after a period up north and it’s still wet.”
Paul, the youngest of Newell and Carol Broten’s five children, made a tidy profit as a middle schooler
selling Roseau hats in the Civic Center concourse.
“Everyone wanted to buy your hat, because it said ‘Roseau’ on it,” said Paul, six years younger than
Neal. “They cost like five bucks. Guys would offer me fifteen bucks or ten bucks, and I would say, ‘Sold!’.
Then I would go put on another one.”
The Brotens are one of the most fabled families in high school hockey history. Though they never won a
title in a combined six tries, thanks in large part to eternal roadblock Edina, they left their mark on the
event in a multitude of ways:
Neal’s four first-period assists in the 1978 third-place game – a 5-3 victory over Mounds View –
remains a tournament record for most assists in a period.
Aaron’s twelve points in the 1978 tournament were the most since John Mayasich had scored
eighteen in 1951.
Paul scored twice in Roseau’s 9-8 consolation championship victory over Burnsville in 1984. The
combined seventeen goals still stand as the most scored by two teams in a single game. Roseau
tied another state record by rallying from a four-goal deficit.
The Brotens’ appearances on the state’s grandest stage were all but inevitable. Neal was walking at eight
months (“He was always good on his feet,” Newell says) and playing in a Roseau third- and fourth-grade
league as a first-grader. He made headlines in the Minneapolis Tribune as an eleven-year-old, seventy-
two-pound Pee Wee described as having the qualities of, alternately, Boston Bruins legends Phil
Esposito and Bobby Orr. Ridiculous comparisons? Hardly.
“He was a little Gretzky is what he was,” said Gary Hokanson, Roseau’s head coach when all three
Broten brothers made state tournament appearances in the late 1970s and into the mid-‘80s.
Years before he hit middle school, the diminutive Neal was scoring one hundred-plus goals a season.
“Here would be this teeny guy out there, and all these big dudes, they would take runs at him,” Hokanson
said. “He would just zip right around them and keep on going.”
As a freshman, Neal was a third-line center on the Roseau team that reached the 1975 state tournament,
losing both games.
The Rams returned in 1977 as an undefeated juggernaut. This time, Neal, now a junior, had
sharpshooting brother Aaron, a sophomore, at his side. Junior forward Bryan “Butsy” Erickson, who
joined them in endless games of street hockey, was yet another scoring machine. All three were
byproducts of rare natural-born talent, an insatiable love for the game, and Roseau’s one-of-a-kind
hockey incubator known as the North Rink, a no-frills indoor ice sheet that allowed for pickup games for
all ages anytime, day or night.
“They would play in a Saturday-morning league that started at eight,” Newell said. “At seven o’clock at
night they wouldn’t have come home yet. If we happened to bring them home to have a bite to eat, they
would be gone. They were back at the rink.”
Roseau lost 2-0 to one-loss Edina East in the 1977 quarterfinals. The notoriously humble and soft-
spoken Neal was denied on numerous prime scoring chances by Hornets’ goaltender Steve Carroll.
“He scores on those 90 percent of the time, and this time it didn’t happen,” Aaron said. “It’s like, that’s just
the way it goes.”
In 1977-78, the Brotens and Erickson had one of the most dominating seasons in state history, racking up
point totals reminiscent of the great Roseau “Production Line” of Jim and Larry Stordahl and Don Ross in
the late 1950s. Neal had 115 points, Aaron 106, and Erickson 79 for a combined 300. Hokanson said in
eight of twenty regular-season games, the trio set out the third period of blowouts.
Roseau again reached the state tournament undefeated, this time knocking off defending champion
Rochester John Marshall 4-2 in the quarterfinals. But the Rams lost 5-3 to Edina East in the semifinals,
with one of the Hornets’ goals coming short-handed on a center-ice shot from Tom Kelly.
“It was a goal he would save 99.9 percent of the time,” Neal said about Rams goaltender Dean Grindahl.
“I don’t know about sitting on the bench going, ‘Frickin’ Edina is so damn lucky’ or whatever, but I mean,
come on, really?”’
Aaron returned as a senior in 1979, leading the Rams past previously unbeaten Grand Rapids in the
quarterfinals before losing the semi-finals in a stunning 12-4 thrashing to, of course, Edina East.
Paul, six years younger than Neal, played in the state tournament in 1983 and 1984. In both, the Rams
lost to – you guessed it – Edina.
Things might have turned out differently for the Brotens. Perhaps not coincidentally, Newell, a longtime
Roseau city employee, received job offers from multiple hockey hotbeds when it became obvious his
boys were special talents. Among those that came calling was Warroad. “They would have written a
paycheck from [Marvin Windows] and told Newell [to] put on there as many zeroes as he wanted,” said
Hokanson, a Warroad native. Newell was working for Solar Gas when he was offered a job at the
company’s home office. The lifelong Roseau resident declined. “I wasn’t made for office work” he says.
The location of that central office? Edina.
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for letting us share our county’s history with your listeners by donating air time, studio time, and production staff every week.