The Homegrown Hockey Project

West St. Paul | Mend-Eagan | Sibley Area Youth Hockey

Welcome

Our vision

We are developing a display to honor the history and legacy of the youth hockey programs that have called the John V. Hoene West St. Paul Ice Arena and local skating rinks home. We hope to raise funds to build this inspiring history display and ensure kids in our area can afford to play and have the best equipment when they do.

Key features

  • List and feature those who went from kids on their hometown ice to being college hockey players and beyond
  • Tell the history of hockey in the area
    • The associations
    • The West St. Paul-Richmond Kings international exchange weekends
    • Sibley High School and local player State Tournament teams
    • Arena history

How you can help

Initial concept

Designed to match existing trophy case footprint

The walls will be updated to look like hockey boards on the bottom where leadership and founding sponsor will be recognized (not shown). The upper left and right walls will tell the story of local youth hockey from WSP/Mend-Eagan days to present (not shown, red areas). The dynamic display content and display case will be on the back wall. We’ll add nice benches in the area to replace the shabby, legless chairs.

Preferred installation footprint

Section Monitor Width (scaled) Height Depth
Panel 1 — TV (left) 55″ LG 4K TV ≈36.0″ (3′0″) 96″ (8′) 18″
Panel 2 — TV (center-left) 55″ LG 4K TV ≈36.0″ (3′0″) 96″ 18″
Panel 3 — TV (center-right) 55″ LG 4K TV ≈36.0″ (3′0″) 96″ 18″
Panel 4 — community/display (left) 24″ PC Monitor ≈32″ (2′8″) 96″ 20″
Total ≈140″ (11.67′) 96″ 18–20″

Design aesthetic

The visual design language will draw from the heritage of the youth hockey programs that have called this arena home since it opened in 1973: the red and black of the original West St. Paul association; the blue and yellow of the Mend-Eagan association; and adding gold to the red and black as Sibley Area and the new West St. Paul associations have. The overall aesthetic is professional, bold, and deeply local—unmistakably Minnesota community hockey.

Initial concept is for the area below viewing position to look and feel like hockey boards. The boards themselves would provide the link to the legacy Mend-Eagan blue, white, and yellow with the area above (possibly with panels framed in stations like the glass around the rink treated with the red, black, white, and gold of the other legacy programs and current Two Rivers High School.

Additional content

In addition to alumni profiles and lists, screens will display:

  • Sponsor/donor acknowledgment slides and advertising content
  • Fun facts and local hockey history like: The pond hockey scene in the 1986 movie Youngblood was filmed on the old farm (Burow) pond near Victoria and Marie (find still of video from movie); Feature on the history of the West St. Paul-Richmond Kings annual exchange; Feature on the old, single penalty box and fans right on top of the benches; feature on Emri’s skate sharpening booth.

In addition to the large video monitor displays, there would be a glass-front display case area for rotating displays of artifacts such as jerseys, trophies, patches, tournament programs, and more. There would also be solicitation for donations or loans of such items. This area would have either another small monitor to display information about the physical item(s) or a place slotted document holder.

In development

As we develop content for this website and the arena display, we ask for your help.

  • View our player research files and help us determine which players had a history here. Our goal is to not miss anyone.
  • Submit content to make this project better. That can include:
    • Tournament programs featuring our teams from Squirts to High School and Juniors
    • Team and individual photos from your photo collection
    • Trophies from major wins by our programs (to be displayed in a rotating exhibit section of the display)

We’ve been searching hockeydb.com, eliteprospects.com, and college athletics websites to find players who list West St. Paul, Mendota, Mendota Heights, Lilydale, Sunfish Lake, or Eagan as their hometown. That only gets us so far (especially in the case of Eagan where a small subset would have played Mend-Eagan or Sibley Area youth hockey). And some records are incomplete or list St. Paul as hometown.

You can browse our research files and help verify the local connections.

Unverified Players

Our NCAA Division I players