With a permanent outdoor rink built to NHL standards and a massive video board already in place two miles east of downtown Hastings, and the fiscal support of myriad sponsors jumping into the fray, organizers of Hockey Day Minnesota 2026 figured 24 hours just wouldn’t be enough.

Born in 2007 on a frozen river just a long slap shot from the Canadian border in Baudette, the event which started as a one-day affair has grown a little bit here and there over the past decade-plus. A “Hockey Day Weekend” that began with games on Thursday and ran through Saturday, when the televised nationally televised marquee matchups happen. became the standard a few years ago.

But in Hastings this year, they’ve taken it to a whole new level.

“It’s Hockey Week Minnesota,” said Kevin Gorg, who has been one of the mainstays calling the games on TV for FanDuel Sports Network since the event began. “It’s changed a lot, and it feels like every year the next city in line wants to out-do the previous one. It’s gotten bigger and better and they’ve learned what works, they’ve learned what fans are looking for and what types of experiences they want.”

The actual Hockey Day Minnesota in 2026 will be Saturday, Jan. 24, when the Hastings girls will host Park, the Hastings boys will host East Ridge, and Rock Ridge will face St. Thomas Academy. It will include a full day of TV programming, culminating with the Wild hosting Florida that evening at Grand Casino Arena. But by then, the 5,000-seat HDM site, located at the United Heroes League complex, will be a well-known destination for hockey teams and fans in the state.

In all, there will be eight days of scheduled games and exhibitions at the Hastings rink, starting Saturday morning, Jan. 17 with four varsity prep games.

Community creation

Shane Hudella, who founded United Heroes League as Defending the Blue Line in 2009, is overseeing nearly every aspect of Hockey Day at their rink that’s situated in a scenic meadow between the Mississippi River to the north and the wooded bluffs to the south. He said that with all of the infrastructure they have in place and the overwhelming support from sponsors and the community, having it all on-line for just two or three days didn’t make sense.

“It’s Hockey Week in Hastings,” he said, speaking in one of the four permanent locker rooms on site as a junior team from St. Cloud finished up a morning skate. Hudella and a group from Hastings attended the Hockey Day Minnesota in Warroad two years ago, and in Shakopee last year, learning what works and what is needed to make this event a high-profile success.

“Warroad was great to learn some right ways to do things, from a fan experience and from a rinkside perspective. Our VIP tent mimics theirs,” Hudella said. “We learned some things in their (fan) village for layout that really helped us out.”

In Shakopee, where the event was held in the parking lot of Valleyfair theme park, with rollercoasters as a memorable backdrop to the rink, sponsorship dollars were reportedly harder to come by. There, the 2026 organizers got a good reminder of how much money is needed to make this event work, and made a concerted effort to get things fiscally sound almost from the day Hastings was announced as the future host.

Hudella said they have found generous sponsors to the tune of more than $1 million, and the results show in an outdoor rink set up with a capacity larger than anything seen at Hockey Day Minnesota in recent years, along with multiple tents where fans can get food, beverages, merchandise and hear an extensive schedule of live music while they warm up between periods and unwind after games.

“So just from a business perspective, to make that investment in infrastructure, we wanted to stretch the event and capture more revenue to offset it,” Hudella said. “There’s so much interest around Hockey Day and we were just inundated with teams that wanted to be a part of it, so we didn’t think we were going to struggle to find programming.”

On Saturday, Jan. 17, a full week before the actually scheduled Hockey Day Minnesota, Hudella said they were expecting upwards of 10,000 fans for the quartet of high school games.

Getting there

The biggest anticipated challenge is traffic management and parking. The site is in a rural area outside of the community’s historic downtown and riverfront, with one primary road – Ravenna Trail – leading to Hastings in one direction and to Treasure Island Resort and Casino in the other. There is parking on site for roughly 2,000 to 2,500 vehicles (at $20 per car), but with the number of games and the amount of interest in being a part of the week of festivities, organizers are promoting arriving early, carpooling and even using the shuttles that will be available from park and ride lots in Hastings and at the casino.

“We think most of the local community is prepared for it and understands, yeah, we’re going to have some backups,” Hudella said. “But I think between the (police department), MNDOT and the county, everything will be pretty well-marked for people coming to the event.”

The highest-profile event among the more than 30 games and scrimmages scheduled for the Hastings rink is Friday evening, Jan. 23, when the Minnesota Wild’s top AHL minor league team, the Iowa Wild, faces the Milwaukee Admirals, who are the Nashville Predators’ farm team.

The 2026 Hockey Day Minnesota site outside Hastings, Minn., includes a lighted outdoor skating path through the woods among the Mississippi River bluffs. (Contributed / Hockey Day Minnesota)

But they also have put together opportunities for fun away from the rink, including a lighted skating path that winds a little less than a mile through the nearby woods, and an ice mini-golf course that uses sticks and pucks in place of putters and golf balls.

On a recent afternoon, after days of sun and above freezing temps, the skating path looked a bit slushy, but Hudella offered assurance that with the thermometer dropping to near zero in the coming forecast, the ice would be in good shape by the time the gates opened for real.

Slappers and songs

They also have developed a notable schedule of live music in one of the on-site fan tents, with 18 different acts – many of them from Hastings and the region – booked for the eight days of the event.

“We have this massive, massive entertainment tent and we wanted to have an opportunity for all of the local bands in our small town to play a big stage for an hour or two,” Hudella said.

Having been to more than a dozen previous incarnations of Hockey Day Minnesota, in weather varying from bright sunshine which made the ice a challenge in Moorhead (2011) to some dangerously low wind chill nights in Bemidji (2019), Gorg relishes playing a role in this event that has become like a state holiday.

He also understands that for the few hundred kids that will get to play a game in Hastings this year, or in Brainerd next year, or wherever else Hockey Day Minnesota is held beyond 2027, the hour or two they spend there will be a highlight of their lives in the game.

“For all of us that get to work the games, we don’t take that lightly, because these are lifelong memories,” Gorg said. “Not everybody gets to play in the State Tournament, right? So if you’re lucky enough to be a part of the Hockey Day celebration that week and you’re going to play on that big stage, on that rink, we think that’s really cool for the kids and their families.”

Tickets, parking and transportation information, a full schedule of games and information about live music and food vendors are available at the official Hockey Day Minnesota website, hockeydaymn.com.

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A Champlin woman was charged with killing her daughter the day a judge granted temporary custody to the girl’s father, a Lakeville man, according to court documents.

Maige Elizabeth Yang, 23, was charged Tuesday with the second-degree murder of De’Ali Blia Delgado, 18 months.

De’Ali Blia Delgado. (Courtesy of GoFundMe)

After Hennepin County District Judge Theresa Couri granted the child’s father temporary custody on Jan. 9, authorities allege that Yang went home and killed her daughter and then tried to kill herself, according to the criminal complaint.

The following details were found in court documents about last week’s custody hearing:

During the hearing, Couri said it would be a difficult decision since the girl had spent most of her life with her mother but, due to the mother’s “erratic” behavior, the father, Erick Delgado of Lakeville, would get temporary custody of the child.

Delgado said during the hearing that Yang was demonstrating erratic behavior and he believed that she had untreated mental health issues. It also was revealed that Yang’s mother had found a note in the trash in which Yang had threatened to end her life and her child’s life.

Based on an affidavit about the threat, Champlin police issued an endangered missing person alert for the mother and child on Jan. 3, saying they were last seen on Dec. 28. The alert said that after Yang disappeared, “Family later located communications that lead law enforcement to be extremely concerned for Yang and her daughter’s safety.”

The alert was canceled later that day with authorities saying the pair had been located.

Yang argued in court that she left the state to get away from the stress of the custody case and that she handled her mental health issues by taking medication and seeing a therapist. She said her daughter would not be safe in her father’s care because of his “inability to handle his anger and history of domestic abuse.”

Delgado could not be reached for comment, but in the custody hearing documents, the judge said that based on the facts Yang provided, it was not established that domestic violence had occurred.

In her ruling, Couri said it was a difficult decision to grant temporary custody to the father since the girl had bonded with her mother and been in the mother’s exclusive care most of her life. However, the mother’s recent behavior had been “deeply concerning.”

Couri ruled that the mother’s threats were a “profound threat” to the child’s well-being, warranted “immediate intervention” and were a “severe safety concern.”

It is unclear from court documents when Delgado was going to take custody of the girl, but Yang took her home to Champlin after the hearing.

Later that day, police were called to Yang’s home in the 11900 block of Castle Rock Court on reports of a child in distress. When they arrived, they found the toddler on the living room floor. She was not breathing. Despite lifesaving efforts, she was declared dead at the hospital.

Police found Yang partially unconscious in an upstairs bedroom. Authorities said that she had attempted suicide. She is currently hospitalized under police supervision.

Her parents told police that when Yang returned home from the custody hearing, she took her daughter to an upstairs bedroom. When Yang’s father went to check on them, the door was locked. He forced the door open and found the girl on the floor with her lips turning blue. He grabbed her, ran downstairs and called 911.

Yang later allegedly told investigators she poured a “significant” amount of children’s sleeping medication into the child’s bottle in order to “make the pain go away.” She also allegedly confessed that she intended for it to be a lethal dose so her daughter would “pass peacefully” in her sleep.

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A GoFundMe for funeral expenses (gofund.me/0059faf1c) was started by Delgado. As of Wednesday afternoon, it had raised nearly $10,000.

“It’s with my heart shattered that I write this post,” Delgado wrote on the GoFundMe page. “My baby girl De’Ali Blia Delgado was not just taken away from me, She was murdered. I did everything right. Today I was (supposed) to wake up right next to my daughter. I had finally won custody of my beautiful baby on Friday, January 9th at 11:30Am and by 4Pm her life was gone. I fought my hardest for you, and the justice system failed you. I ask for your help at this very unexpected time to help me and my family bury my beautiful princess.”

The criminal complaint says Yang will be booked into the Hennepin County jail after she is discharged from the hospital.

Verizon customers experienced a mobile service outage across the nation on Wednesday.

More than 180,000 unconfirmed reports were made to Downdetector, peaking in the early afternoon. The hotspot map showed most of the reports coming from New York City, Chicago and Portland, Oregon.

The network status section of the Verizon website appeared to have crashed, as well.

The outage affected voice, text, and data service, but users reported retaining WiFi connections to use apps. Hundreds of Verizon Fios reports were made as well, according to DownDetector.

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Many users reported seeing “SOS” in the area of their cellphone screen typically reserved for service bars and 5G icons. Disconnecting and reconnecting via “airplane mode” or restarting devices did not appear to solve the problem.

911 calls should still go through via other networks or satellites.

Customers with an iPhone 14 or newer device can try the Messages via Satellite feature until the outage ends.

“We are aware of an issue impacting wireless voice and data services for some customers,” the company wrote on social media. “Our engineers are engaged and are working to identify and solve the issue quickly. We understand how important reliable connectivity is and apologize for the inconvenience.”

“Verizon engineering teams are continuing to address today’s service interruptions,” the company said in an update later Wednesday afternoon. “Our teams remain fully deployed and are focused on the issue. We understand the impact this has on your day and remain committed to resolving this as quickly as possible.”

An estimated time for service to be fully restored was not provided.

T-Mobile, AT&T and US Cellular customers also reported outages, but in much smaller numbers.

Ryan Ecklund dropped his son off at school in Stillwater, then drove to Woodbury, where he lives, to get groceries. When he arrived in the Cub Foods parking lot in Tamarack Village, he said, he saw what were “clearly ICE vehicles.”

Ryan Ecklund (Courtesy of Ryan Ecklund)

“I didn’t start my day by looking for ICE agents to follow or record or anything like that,” Ecklund said.

Ecklund says he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Monday after following that vehicle. He said the agents forcefully entered his vehicle, slammed him to the ground and took him to the Whipple Federal Building at Fort Snelling, where he was detained for nine hours in a holding cell.

“I wasn’t causing a scene,” Ecklund said. “I didn’t flash my lights or honk my horn or yell anything out my window. I was simply following that vehicle and recording them.”

ICE has been contacted by the Pioneer Press on this matter. A response has not been received. Ecklund referred to the officers as ICE agents but he said they never identified themselves so he can’t be sure what agency they were with.

‘I’m a U.S. citizen’

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Ecklund said when he arrived at the Cub Foods parking lot, he saw a “police-type vehicle with dark-tinted windows, no license plate on the front, an out-of-state plate on the back and a man in tactical gear and a face covering driving the car.”

He said he decided instead of getting groceries to follow the car and start recording. Ecklund said he followed the driver to a different parking lot in the shopping center, then the driver stepped out and took a photo of him.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but it’s very obvious now that they ran my plate or did some sort of facial identification, because they then proceeded to leave that shopping center and drive into the neighborhood that I live in,” Ecklund said.

Ecklund said the driver returned to the shopping center, and when Ecklund followed, the driver stepped out of the vehicle and gave him a verbal warning.

A still image from video taken by Ryan Ecklund on his phone Jan. 12, 2026. (Courtesy of Ryan Ecklund)

“I said, ‘I don’t need a warning,’” Ecklund said. “’I’m a U.S. citizen who’s allowed to record you. I’m not impeding your movement or your investigation. Have a good day.’”

After close to three minutes, Ecklund said he followed the driver east of the shopping center, and an additional black truck turned off of Radio Drive onto Parkside Drive. The two vehicles parked in front of and behind Ecklund, he said. Five ICE agents walked up to his vehicle and opened the car door, Ecklund said. One climbed in the back seat and put his arm around Ecklund’s neck and headrest so he couldn’t move, he said.

Ecklund said he was then put in handcuffs and taken to the Whipple Federal Building, where he saw protesters demonstrating outside the building. He said he was put in a holding cell from 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

“At no point in time was I told why I was being detained,” Ecklund said. “What was told to me by the DHS officers was that I can be detained without being charged for anything for up to 48 hours.”

10-hour panic attack

Ecklund said he requested a phone call, as he was not offered one when interviewed by the Department of Homeland Security officer. He said he called his wife, Tamara Ecklund.

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“I had a 10-hour-long panic attack,” Tamara Ecklund said. “To say that I was terrified is an understatement.”

While her husband was held at the Whipple Federal Building, Ecklund was on the phone with an attorney and posted videos to Instagram, explaining the situation.

“The biggest piece of advice is, if you have a loved one who’s detained, please, please, please seek legal help, because I really think that was the only reason the needle moved for us at all,” she said.

Tamara Ecklund said the killing of Renee Good has had her thinking about how unlawful and unjust it all felt. She said they talked to their 12- and 10-year-old sons about it “and tried to frame it for them in a way that they could comprehend, which is impossible because I can’t comprehend it.”

“When my older son said, ‘Mom, do you think that ICE will come to Woodbury?’ I said, ‘No, honey, I don’t think they will.’ I was wrong,” she said.

A responsibility

Ecklund said that though he has political opinions and personal values, he does not consider himself a political activist.

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“I simply considered it my right and my responsibility to record them (ICE agents) in the event that they did something illegal to somebody else,” Ecklund said. “If my recording them and my presence stopped them from doing something illegal to somebody, then that was my responsibility as a citizen.”

He said a lot of people in his community are terrified of the uncertainty that ICE brings up, especially for immigrants “who are here legally looking for a better life, who are here to work and work hard and continue to build our communities, because they’re built by immigrants.”

“The biggest emotion that I felt was disbelief,” Ecklund said. “I think it’s important that everybody understands that if you think ICE isn’t in your community, you’re mistaken.”