It’s almost been a decade since Brock Boeser decided to attend the University of North Dakota but the reason why he chose Grand Forks over Minneapolis and the University of Minnesota is fresh information.
Boeser, the 26-year-old from Burnsville, Minn. already in his eighth NHL season with the Vancouver Canucks, explained on the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast what prevented him from playing for the Gophers in college.
“Because my cousin played at Wisconsin I hated the Gophers. I went on a visit there two different times, I tried to see if I could like it, I just couldn’t do it,” Boeser said.
His cousin, Dan Boeser, played for Wisconsin from 2000-04 so Brock was just a little boy at the time, but the border battle hate runs deep and it stuck with him from an early age.
“Minnesota? Well, to be honest, my sophomore year of high school we were going on a visit, we were sitting in the parking lot and we called them and we’re like ‘Hey where are you?’ and they were like ‘Oh we gotta reschedule’ so that was off the bat,” Boeser recalled. “That wasn’t good.”
It’s unclear who set up the visit but Boeser was a 10th-grader in high school in 2012-13 so that would’ve been under ex-Gophers head coach Don Lucia, who guided the Gophers from 1999 to 2018.
“There were some other factors, like they had an Olympic-sized rink,” Boeser admitted. “I wanted to go somewhere where I could develop and try and get ready for the NHL.”
Boeser, who originally committed to Wisconsin before changing his mind, played at Burnsville High School in the southern Twin Cities metro but never played in the heralded Minnesota state tournament.
