It was unofficial, but these Minnesotans were USA’s first – Twin Cities

The moment Mike Dibble realized that he was a long way from his boyhood home in South Minneapolis was when he found himself under a bridge in Leningrad, selling American blue jeans on the then-Soviet black market.

It was about this time of year, 1973 was becoming 1974, and Dibble was among nearly two dozen boys — most of them Minnesotans — who traveled to what was then the Soviet Union to represent the United States in what was, unofficially, the first World Junior tournament.

That fact may lead to some numbers confusion in the coming week or so as what is billed as the 50th World Juniors comes to St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“They’re advertising it as the 50th anniversary of the World Junior tournament,” said Dibble. “I said, ‘No, it’s the 52nd.’ ”

To be clear, 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the tournament that is officially sanctioned by the International Ice Hockey Federation. But in 1973, fresh off coaching Team USA to a silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, a year earlier, former Gophers standout Murray Williamson worked together with his many contacts in international hockey to put together a team for the first tournament to pit the world’s best under-20 men against one another.

Rather than the formal tryout process involving the best players from coast to coast that we see today, Williamson put together a squad from the players that he knew best. All 19 players who traveled to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in Russia were Minnesotans. Most of them were playing junior hockey in the Twin Cities for teams like the St. Paul Vulcans and Minneapolis Junior Stars at the time.

And the rumors of a possible world tournament kept at least one local player from jumping to college too early.

“One of the reasons I played a second year of juniors was there were rumors that there was going to be a World Junior team where we were going to be able to travel to Leningrad to play in a tournament,” said Mark Lambert, now 71 and retired, living in West St. Paul. “That really sparked my enthusiasm. So, totally excited and very happy for the opportunity.”

After getting passports and visas, the players found themselves to be popular among the Russian kids because they had candy they would toss out the windows of the team bus. A few even got a taste of the black market that flourished long before the Berlin Wall came down.

“We had to get a passport, a visa. How exciting,” said Dibble, who played prep hockey at Minneapolis Southwest, then was a goalie for Wisconsin. “Back then there was no social media, but we knew you could bring blue jeans and trade from them underneath the bridge. Dan Bonk and myself brought jeans and we traded at midnight underneath the bridge in Leningrad. I got the Russian mink hat. Still have it. It was fantastic.”

On the ice, the trade-offs were more lopsided. The Americans won just one game, and lost 11-1 to Sweden, 9-1 to host Russia.

“We got blown out for sure by the Russians, and maybe somebody else, but very respectable against the Canadians, and that’s who I was really measuring our team against was the Canadian juniors,” said Lambert, who played prep hockey at St. Paul Mechanic Arts, then won a NCAA title with the Gophers.

“I didn’t know anything about European hockey, but I knew that the Canadian juniors fed our NHL league, and I knew that for us kids who wanted to someday maybe play pro hockey, we had to compete against those people. I thought we were on an even basis with them.”

They fell 5-4 to the Canadians in the only North American scuffle of the six-team tournament.

In the Americans’ finale, they faced Czechoslovakia and won 3-2 on the strength of a 50-plus save performance by Dibble, who would go on to win the 1977 NCAA title with the Badgers.

“The Russian crowd was chanting, ‘Dee-Bull, Dee-Bull,’ because they didn’t like the Czechs,” he recalled with a smile.

Of the Team USA players that year, at least four went on to play in the NHL, including former North Stars fan favorite Gary Sargent from Bemidji and Paul Holmgren from St. Paul, who spent the bulk of his career with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Williamson died in September at age 91, and of the 19 players that went to Leningrad, six of them have passed on. But with the World Juniors coming back to the Twin Cities this year, Dibble and Dave Heitz — also a goalie from Minneapolis who was a long-time NHL scout — worked to get as many of the 1974 players as they could contact back together.

In mid-December they gathered at Shamrock’s in St. Paul to share stories and show off some of their saved newspaper clippings, rosters and other memorabilia from not only their international hockey experience, but from the early days of junior hockey in Minnesota.

“Everybody that said they were coming showed up today, except for one,” Dibble said. “And they’re excited. We just should have done it 20 years ago when more of these guys were alive.”

The American team looking to three-peat as gold medalists at Grand Casino Arena — the tournament starts Friday — is Minnesota-heavy, to be sure, with seven players from the state among the 25 on the final roster. But there are also seven from Illinois, four from Michigan, two from Massachusetts, and one each from California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri.

That’s a far slap shot from 1974, when a bunch of kids from all across Minnesota took on the world for the first time.

“I know the kids now come from high schools all over, but there is a lot of tradition in St. Paul hockey, especially in the ‘70s, and the ’60s,” Lambert said. “St. Paul’s even knocked some really good hockey players out for the Olympic teams and the Gophers and even the colleges across the WCHA.”