Tim Kalinowski or @Timmy_Takes is the name almost every hockey follower in the state recognizes after watching last weekend’s Minnesota Boys’ High School State Hockey Tournament.
Travelling all the way from Massachusetts to experience what he calls one of the “seven wonders of the hockey world,” there was no doubt Kalinowski would not pick up on the hate Edina faces, specifically around this weekend every single year.
“I’d always wanted to come to the [state] tournament because as a hockey guy, it was always on my bucket list,” Kalinowski said. “When I was younger I saw the YouTube videos, and all the stuff that would go viral about it. And then I started watching it on TV about about 10 years ago or so.”
Through Snapback Sports, a sports media company, Kalinowski travels around the world looking for the best experiences in sports. Undeniably, having grown up in the hockey world, this was an experience Kalinowski could not miss.
After just recently returning from the Olympics, he was gearing up to travel north to Minnesota when he and his team stumbled across a video which locked down his decision to become a fan of the Hornets.
On Feb. 25, in the Section 6AA final game against Wayzata, junior Bode McConnell went viral for one of his three goals of the game in a once-in-a-lifetime play, where the puck took an inexplicable bounce off the boards, rolling across the top of the net, and before the goalie could react, McConnell tapped it in.
And after scrolling through the comments, which showed no mercy in the state’s hate for Edina, Kalinowski’s boss said he was “actually more infatuated with Edina than the tournament at this point.”
“I made a video about how I was discovering in real time how much people hate Edina, and that video just spread like wildfire. Because I was aware of the tournament and watched it a bunch, I knew who Edina was and I knew the lore of Edina,” Kalinowski said. “But I didn’t know until I got here, until right before I got here, the hatred and how much of an actual thing it is here. I was really astonished by how many people truly hated Edina.”
As he flew in the day before the beginning of the state tournament, he was in contact with Edina High School Activity Director Troy Stein and School Store Specialist Ronald “Banks” Jenkins. He received a tour of the hockey arena and even got a haul of Edina merch from the school store.
Within the next 24 hours, Kalinowski was fully immersed into the Minnesota hockey culture. Having spent all day at Grand Casino Arena, experiencing the “chirps” and insults from other teams’ fans, he was now an Edina Hornet through and through.
“From the moment he walked into Edina High School, he was instantly a hit. Honestly, it almost felt like a celebrity had walked in after his first Edina video took off,” Jenkins said. “But what made it special was how much he wanted to understand the story behind everything. He really leaned into learning why Edina hockey is such a big deal, from our first state championship in 1951 to the traditions, the fans, the staff, and the long history of Hornet hockey. He was genuinely excited to take it all in and share that energy with his audience and the world.”
Although Edina was out of the tournament after a repeat of last year’s loss to the Moorhead Spuds, Kalinowski can now say he has experienced the tournament’s culture, Edina’s culture, and Minnesota hockey culture as a whole.
“I was shocked by how much Edina embraced me and took me in… I was even more shocked that they embraced that everyone hated them,” Kalinowski said. “I thought it was going to be ‘hush, hush, don’t talk about that,’ but they were all in. By day two, I was in their parent group chats and getting invited to their pregames. Even the students have been so cool. I became fully one of them for four days.”
Going into the final game of the Minnesota Boys’ High School State Hockey Tournament without the Hornets, it gave him a difficult decision on which of the two teams he should cheer for next.
“I don’t think any of the two remaining schools are willing to accept me at this point,” Kalinowski said, “so I guess I’m just going to have to be a Hornet for life, which I definitely don’t have a problem with.”
