By Frank Rajkowski, SJU Writer/Video Producer

COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - When the Saint John's University hockey team plays host to St. Thomas at 7 p.m. tonight, it will likely mark the final on-ice meeting between the archrivals. At the very least, it will mark the last time the two teams meet as conference rivals in the MIAC.

St. Thomas is moving to the Division I level starting next fall. In men's hockey, that means the Tommies will be joining the reconstituted Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA), where they will face off against Bemidji State, Minnesota State-Mankato, Bowling Green, Ferris State, Lake Superior State, Michigan Tech and Northern Michigan.

As in other sports, that will bring an end to the longstanding and colorful rivalry with the Johnnies, a rivalry that in hockey dates back to 1933.

Some of the most memorable moments came in the early 2000s when both schools were consistently ranked in the top 10 nationally at the NCAA Division III level.



"We had some great games against each other," recalls John Harrington, who won a gold medal as a member of the "Miracle on Ice" 1980 U.S. Olympic Team and coached at Saint John's from 1993-2008, earning five MIAC regular-season titles, 13 berths in the conference playoffs and five trips to the NCAA Division III Tournament. He is now the head women's coach at Minnesota State-Mankato.

"It was like Johnnie-Tommie in any sport really," he continued. "Those two schools could be playing cards and a big crowd would still show up to cheer their side on."

That was certainly the case 16 years ago, during the 2004-05 campaign, when the two teams met four times in the final month of the season.

It started with a regular-season series on Feb. 11-12, 2005 which the Johnnies entered ranked No. 3 in the county and St. Thomas entered ranked No. 10. Harrington also needed just two victories to reach the 200 mark in his time at SJU.

"There was a lot of buzz around both teams that season," recalls goalie Adam Hanna '06, who earned MIAC player-of-the-year honors as a junior that year. "We were kind of on a collision course."

Hanna and company had been ranked No. 1 nationally before a 5-3 loss at Bethel the weekend before, a loss that ended SJU's regular-season unbeaten streak at 35 games, including 26 in the MIAC. 

Saint John's came out on top during the initial meeting, beating the Tommies 3-2 in the first game of the series Feb. 11 in Mendota Heights thanks to goals from Blake Williams '07, Pat Eagles '08 and Aaron Getchell '06.

That set the stage for the next night at the National Hockey Center, when a school-record crowd of 4,410 showed up (left) to see the Johnnies come from behind to win 5-4 on power-play goals from Darryl Smoleroff '06 and Ian Ross '07 down the stretch in the third period. The full game is available above.

The win meant Harrington reached his milestone on a night that featured a Division I-style light show in the pre-game introductions and a big-time hockey vibe overall.

"That one had all the pomp and circumstance you could ever want," recalls Hanna, whose 20 wins in net that season remains a program record. 

"We were pretty clearly the top two teams in the conference in those years and we all knew each other. One of the guys I'd played junior hockey with played for St. Thomas at the time.

"He actually scored on me a few times," he added with a chuckle and sigh. "So there was a lot of familiarity there. And that made those games feel more like events."

Hanna had a total of 57 saves in those two victories over the Tommies, wins that spring-boarded SJU to that year's MIAC regular-season title. 

But a familiar pattern would soon repeat itself. Just as in the two prior seasons, when the Johnnies won both regular-season meetings only to fall to St. Thomas in the MIAC playoffs, the Tommies again had the last laugh – winning 2-1 in the MIAC championship game March 5 at NHC and again 4-1 when the two teams met in the first round of the Division III playoffs March 9 at the same venue.

"That's just how it seemed to go in those days," Harrington said. "We had their number in the regular season and they had ours in the playoffs.

"But St. Thomas was always the measuring stick, and I think they'd hopefully say the same thing about us. We'd each find out the kind of team we had when we played against each other because both programs were so strong."

2 years ago (2019) – Guard David Stokman '19 earned his third consecutive College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All-America honor and was named to the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) All-West District first team March 13. Stokman ended his career as the program's all-time leader in three-pointers (266), fourth in scoring (1,492 points) and fifth in assists (321). He is second in school history in three-point percentage (.457, 266-for-582) and fourth from the free-throw line (.864, 310-for-359).

5 years ago (2016) – Thomas Feichtinger '16 finished ninth in the mile run at the Division III indoor track and field national meet in Grinnell, Iowa. He finished in a time of 4:15.37, earning All-America honors.

10 years ago (2011) – Wrestler Minga Batsukh '11 brought home his third consecutive NCAA Division III national championship on March 12 in La Crosse, Wis. He was also awarded the tournament's outstanding wrestler honor as SJU recorded its best NCAA finish (sixth) and a program-best five All-Americans.

25 years ago (1996) – Mick Mullen '96 batted .435 through the season's first 11 games for the SJU baseball team, which went 6-3 on a spring trip to Florida – winning its last four games by a combined score of 64-15. That included an 18-3 bashing of nationally-ranked Benedictine (Ill.).

50 years ago (1961) – The Record's Gary Hackenmueller '64 reported that "Saint John's University is under consideration by the Vikings, Minnesota's new professional football club, as a possible site for a summer training camp.

"Norman Van Brocklin, former Philadelphia Eagles passing phenomenon, now head coach of the Vikings, and Bert Rose, the team's general manager, toured the SJU campus last Sunday (March 19)."

In the end, the Vikings chose Bemidji State, where they held training camp through 1965. From 1966 to 2017, training camp was held in Mankato. But for the past three seasons, it has been held at the team's new practice facility (Twin Cities Orthopedics Performance Center) in Eagan.

95 years ago (1926) – Several members of the Saint John's gymnastics team, coached by Ed Flynn, received individual awards for proficiency in the Class C competition at the state tournament held at the University of Minnesota Armory in Minneapolis.

The Record described some of the pageantry of the event, at which gymnasts competed on the horizontal and vertical bars, the mats and the rings among other events:

"The personnel of the group of 11 who represented Saint John's at this tournament, as chosen by Coach Flynn, the director, and members of the faculty were: Leo Kelly, Ed Wirtz, Ray Heisler, Mat Ethen, Joe Weber, Leo Schmidt, Michael Warzecha, Henry Pottebaum, George Pierce, Alois Stutebeck and R. Niedzielski.

"The team left for Minneapolis in the morning. At 7 p.m., the members clad in neatly pressed white trousers, topped with a flaming red sash around the waist, formed with the other teams, a drill formation in the foreroom of the State U Armory. The orchestra intoned a two-step, to which all participants quickened their pace in the Grand Review March about the sprawling gym."