From The Rink Live
By Rob Beer
MINOT, N.D. — Jay Buchholz was out of hockey. The former Fargo Davies forward grinded it out for two seasons in junior hockey and had a memorable moment playing against the hometown Force at Scheels Arena, but the Division I offers weren’t coming.
So instead of shooting for the top shelf, he went to work for a Fargo company that made them.
Passing on a few Division III offers, mainly due to higher tuition costs, he was content — for a while — to hang up the competitive skates as a new employee of Poss Woodworks & Design making custom kitchen cabinetry.
But a former assistant coach of one of his junior teams continued to stay in contact. Wyatt Waselenchuk, now the head coach of Minot State, which plays in the American Collegiate Hockey Association, eventually got the answer he wanted to hear.
“I never really pressed Jay,” said Waselenchuk, who was an assistant for the Minot Minotauros when Buchholz played there. “I think he had to go and kind of figure it out for himself.”
A November text message from Buchholz saying he was missing the game put everything in motion.
“If it wasn’t for Minot State, I probably would’ve went to a two-year school back in Fargo while I was working, Buchholz said. “I obviously wanted to go to college and keep playing hockey, so this worked out perfect.”
A 37-point producer at Davies his senior year in 2017-18, Buchholz had a breakout season with the Portage Terriers in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League. He scored 17 goals in a 47-point regular season and turned on the jets in the postseason, scoring eight times in 15 games. Down three games to two in the best-of-seven league championship series, Buchholz had two goals in a must-win Game 6 and the Terriers went on to beat Swan Valley in Game 7 for the title.
He followed it up with a 41-point season with the Minotauros in 2019-20, but the season didn’t come without sadness. His mother, Kim Buchholz, died that January.
“Obviously going through that, it was very tough, no matter what age you are,” Buchholz said. “It’s a very hard thing to do. I know I had family, friends, teammates, all the support in the world, which means the world to me.”
It gave him a new perspective on hockey and life, he said.
Making the leap the next season from the NAHL to the USHL’s Sioux Falls Stampede for 15 games, he cherished a moment playing against the Fargo Force, a team he often watched growing up.
“I kind of had a little moment on the bench the first time I actually played there and kind of looked around,” Buchholz said. “I know all the Fargo Force and their intros and how they do their games. I was looking around and thinking ‘I finally made it playing in front of my hometown, my friends, my family.’ I think that might have been one of the coolest experiences I’ve had in junior hockey.”
Shipped back to Minot, he had 22 points in 38 games but was a minus-12.
With nothing on the horizon, a friend helped him land the job at the cabinet shop. A trip to Duluth to go watch former high school teammate Tyler Kleven play for North Dakota and another trip to watch his billet brother play in Sioux Falls got his juices flowing again.
“After watching those games, I realized I didn’t want to be done with this. I still have a love for the game and I wanted to keep playing,” Buchholz said.
In his first season at Minot State, he had 12 points in 15 games. Then, in the Beavers’ ACHA championship season his sophomore year, he produced 39 points and joined teammate Christian Kadolph on the U.S. squad in the World Cup of University Hockey in Romania. Buchholz scored a goal in the gold medal game, a 4-0 victory over Canada.
“I mean, what a great grab for us,” Beavers captain Carter Barley said, knowing Buchholz had quit playing hockey for a while. “[Coach] Was knew him from playing with the ‘Toros and what a player to have on this team, as a leader and as a guy who can go out there and get a goal or make a big play.”
A business management major, Buchholz is considering coaching hockey down the line or hosting his own hockey camp someday.
This season, Buchholz has six goals and 12 assists through 21 games for the top-ranked team in the ACHA’s highest level.
“He’s everything to us,” Waselenchuk said. “He plays the game the right way. He’s a tremendous young man. We’re just so fortunate that he chose to stick with it after taking a semester off.”
The Beavers will get a chance to step onto Division I ice when they play exhibition games at Colorado College on Dec. 29 and at Denver on Dec. 30.
There are certainly times when Buchholz thinks about what could’ve been for himself at the NCAA Division I level, especially as players like Kleven moved on to the NHL. But the 23-year-old credits Waselenchuk and his teammates for bringing him back to hockey and making his time in Minot worthwhile.
“I’ve got buddies playing Division I hockey,” Buchholz said. “I love seeing what they’re doing. So for that dream, I can kind of live through those guys and I’m kind of doing my own thing.”
And if Minot State ever requires an expanded ACHA trophy case, he’s got the number for that cabinet maker back home in Fargo.
(Originally published at https://www.therinklive.com/mens-college/once-a-cabinet-shop-worker-fargos-jay-buchholz-making-his-mark-at-minot-state)
