Okay. Here's the thing about Minnesota. We are the State of Hockey; everyone here grows up with hockey. It doesn't matter if you don't follow hockey, if your family doesn't follow hockey-- there is hockey everywhere. Flooding your backyard every winter is super normal. Every single sports store here sells ice skates and roller blades. A stupidly high percentage of kids play hockey-- our high school hockey tournaments are televised, and on cable too! (During one Wild game, the Wild were on a POWER PLAY and the announcers got distracted talking about the local HIGH SCHOOL hockey prospects.) When it comes to hockey, Minnesota is similar to Canada--in a way that, to our knowledge, isn't true in the rest of the United States, even other large hockey markets--with the pervasiveness of hockey in the local culture.

what it says on the tin