Hendrickson witnesses son win state championship

ST. PAUL --Darby Hendrickson has been a part of a lot of history inside Xcel Energy Center and got to be a small part of some more on Saturday night when he watched his son, Mason, win a state championship with Minnetonka High School.
The top-seeded Skippers secured their first-ever state title in boys hockey when it upended Duluth East 5-2 in the Class AA championship game.
Hendrickson didn't tell his wife, Dana, or his son, Mason, a junior forward on the team, that he was coming back following the Wild's victory in Vancouver on Friday night.

Wild coach Bruce Boudreau and general manager Chuck Fletcher discussed the situation and approached Hendrickson with the opportunity to go home immediately after the game.
"Chuck brought it up and I just thought it was a great idea," Boudreau said. "Darby didn't want to leave at first, but once he had time to think it through, it's a once, maybe in a lifetime thing, to see your son win the state championship in Minnesota. I was very happy for him, he was very happy in the end, so it all worked out."
The following morning, he was on a flight back to Minnesota and was home in plenty of time to get down to the arena and take in the game. Seeing it in person was more enjoyable than monitoring the web stream of the broadcast, which Hendrickson admitted he had peeked at the prior two days.
"It was fun to be a dad and be a fan and see two really good teams," Hendrickson said. "It was special. It was classy. It was something I'll never forget just being there with my son. Those are moments that we can never get back so the fact that they let me do that was unbelievable."

Between his playing and coaching careers, Hendrickson hasn't been able to witness many state tournaments in recent years. The Wild is always on the road during that time, so he guessed it had been about a decade since he last witnessed a state championship game in person.
The win for Minnetonka also offered a little bit of personal satisfaction for Hendrickson; his lone state tournament appearance as a player was in 1991, when his Richfield High School team was knocked out in the first round by Duluth East.
"It was fun to be with the family and be around it. There's nothing like it," Hendrickson said. "I think the neat thing about the atmosphere is it's people that have been there for tons of years with their kids and there's a tradition that's there. When someone has a personal connection it's even better."