The Parking Lot Volume 25

25 Years of AHA

It’s hard to believe summer is already coming to an end. The Minnesota State Fair has wrapped up and we officially wrapped up another AHA Summer League with our champions taking home their hardware. Normally this would simply mean it’s time to start looking toward fall hockey, but this year we have something much bigger to celebrate. The Adult Hockey Association is turning 25!

A lot can happen in 25 years, and AHA has grown into something pretty special during that time. What started as a place for adults to play hockey has become a community that keeps people connected to the game and, more importantly, to each other. You see it in the locker rooms and after games, when everyone is hanging around the parking lot. Hockey might be what brings us to the rink, but it’s the people that have kept AHA going for a quarter century.

There’s also some fun timing on The Parking Lot side of things. This is our 25th volume and the beginning of year three! With AHA celebrating such a big milestone, there couldn’t be a better time to look back at some of the people and stories that helped make this league what it is today. And that’s exactly where we’re going to start.

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Still in the Game: Brian Harris and a Lifetime of Hockey

In 1995, Brian Harris opened the newspaper and saw an ad. Yes, the newspaper.

The ad was for a local adult hockey league. Brian had no way of knowing it at the time, but answering that little advertisement would begin a hockey journey that would eventually put him there for the birth of the Adult Hockey Association and, more than 30 years later, bring him back to the ice to teach new players how to play the game.

At that point, Brian hadn’t really been a hockey player for nearly a decade. He had grown up playing youth hockey in Michigan and eventually made his way into Junior hockey with the now-defunct Tri-State Junior Hockey League. When those days ended, hockey mostly ended with them. There were a few pickup games here and there, but eventually the skates stayed off.

Brian relocated to Minnesota. He may have stopped playing hockey, but he certainly hadn’t stopped loving it. During the Minnesota North Stars’ final season in the state, Brian attended a first-round playoff game against his Detroit Red Wings at the old Met Center. Then, in 1995, his significant other started attending the University of Minnesota, and the two picked up student season tickets for Gopher hockey, a tradition they continued long after the college years were over.

Somewhere along the way, though, watching hockey wasn’t quite enough anymore. Brian wanted to play again.

That’s when he found the ad.

The MAD DOGS

Brian signed up for the league expecting a chance to play hockey again. Instead, he soon found himself voted captain of the MAD DOGS.

His old hockey instincts came back with him. From his playing days, Brian understood the importance of practice, skill development, and team chemistry, so those became part of how he ran the MAD DOGS. One of his teammates noticed and eventually asked Brian to help with his son’s youth team, which had been struggling with organization.

Brian wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about the idea. As far as he was concerned, he wasn’t a coach. Still, he reluctantly agreed to help out, and before long, “helping out” turned into taking the steps to become an official coach with Como Area Youth Hockey Association.

A second hockey life had started almost by accident.

Brian eventually moved to coaching with Washburn Youth Hockey Association, closer to his south Minneapolis home. After getting married and building a house in the northwest suburbs, hockey followed him again, this time to Osseo Maple Grove Hockey Association. All the while, the MAD DOGS kept playing. Brian even picked up a second team, the Storm, around 1999, and that group eventually traveled to Vancouver and came home champions.

Then, in 2001, Brian’s adult hockey journey entered a new chapter.

The hockey, however, didn’t stop.

A New League

That year marked the beginning of the Adult Hockey Association.

Brian was there. So were the MAD DOGS.

What had started for Brian as a way to get back on the ice had become a fixture in his life, and now he was watching the beginning of the league we know today as AHA.

As the years went on, the MAD DOGS kept getting better and moving up. There was just one problem: Brian wasn’t getting any younger. By 2005, the bulk of the team was younger, and Brian could see the writing on the wall. He wanted somewhere he could continue playing at the right level.

So Brian did something that has become pretty familiar throughout AHA’s history when players can’t quite find the team they need.

He made one.

The Zephyrs were born in 2005. Brian became captain of the new team while continuing to skate with the MAD DOGS, although he stepped away from his captaincy there. That same year, the MAD DOGS gave him another memory for the collection when they traveled to Chicago and came home National Champions.

Hockey had gone from something Brian thought he’d left behind to a central part of his life again. Soon, it would become a family affair.

Hockey Changes

Three years later, Brian’s daughter was born. By the time she was two, Dad had her on skates, and another two years later, Brian was coaching again.

Hockey was changing. It wasn’t only about Brian’s games anymore. Now there was a little girl learning to skate, and Dad had a front-row seat.

Brian returned to the Osseo Maple Grove Hockey Association and eventually coached alongside Minnesota Made’s Choice League and Machine AAA Hockey. As his daughter grew as a player, Brian watched her have the opportunity to learn from some remarkable members of Minnesota’s hockey community. Over the years, Brian had become a player, captain, coach, and now a hockey dad.

It seemed there would always be another rink.

Then, in 2019, Brian underwent his second major neck surgery.

This time, there wasn’t another team to create or another division to move down to. After a hockey journey that had taken him from Michigan youth hockey to Juniors, through a decade away from the game, back through a newspaper ad, into the MAD DOGS and eventually the beginning of AHA itself, Brian was forced to retire from playing.

For a few years, he stayed off the ice.

But hockey wasn’t quite finished with him yet.

Back Where He Belongs

This time, Brian didn’t return to chase a puck. He returned to teach someone else how to chase it.

Brian came out of retirement to join the coaching staff of the AHA Beginner School.

There is something wonderfully fitting about that. In 1995, a former hockey player who had spent nearly a decade away from the game happened upon a newspaper advertisement offering adults an opportunity to play hockey. He took the chance. Thirty years later, he’s helping provide that same opportunity to someone else.

Some of the players stepping onto the ice at Beginner School may have played when they were younger. Some may have spent years away from the game. Others may be putting on hockey equipment for the first time in their lives. Brian knows better than most where that first skate can lead.

Maybe it’s a few seasons of hockey. Maybe it’s a championship or lifelong friendships. Maybe you become a captain. Maybe you become a coach.

Maybe, 30 years later, you’re still at the rink.

As AHA celebrates its 25th anniversary, Brian Harris can say something very few people can: he remembers what came before it. He played through its beginning, watched it grow and today is helping introduce its newest players to the game.

After all these years, Brian still describes himself as blessed to coach for what he calls the “hands-down best adult hockey league around.”

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Open Programs

Program	Start Date	Status
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