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You didn’t just read John Gilbert’s stuff — you heard it. The cadence, the rhythm, that clipped, old-school authority that said, “Kid, I was there before you learned how to sharpen your skates.”
My longtime friend and colleague John was one of those press-box originals who never needed to check Twitter because he already knew what happened, who did it, and why the coach was lying about it. He’d scribble in a notebook that looked older than most of the beat writers covering him, then file a story cleaner than anything you’ll read today after a week of corporate edits.
He’s gone now, and the State of Hockey is worse for it.
Gilbert grew up in Duluth, when you could smell the mills and hear pucks ricocheting off garage doors in January. He cut his teeth at the News Tribune and ended up at the Star Tribune when newspapers still had backbone and ashtrays. Before long, he wasn’t just covering hockey — he was hockey.
They say Herb Brooks was a visionary. Fine. But every visionary needs a translator, and that was John. Herb trusted him enough to actually talk — which, if you knew Herb, tells you everything. When the Miracle on Ice happened, Gilbert wasn’t just another credentialed stiff in Lake Placid; he was the guy who’d already seen the blueprint.
John wrote the truth, minus the parade.
And here’s the kicker: after changing how this state read about hockey, he did the same thing for cars. One day he’s dissecting a neutral-zone trap; the next he’s reviewing a new F-150 like it was the second coming of the ’72 Summit Series. Somehow, it worked. He wrote about engines the same way he wrote about forechecks — torque, timing, teamwork.
That was Gilbert: hockey brain, car and truck reviewer, heart of a newspaperman.
The man could cover a peewee game in Proctor and make it sound like the Stanley Cup. And he could chew out a copy editor for touching his lede. He didn’t suffer fools, and he didn’t fake enthusiasm. If he said a kid could play, he could play. If he said a team was soft, you might as well cancel practice and start over.
He wasn’t sentimental — not in the Hallmark way. But he cared. He cared about the craft, the game, and the people who did it correctly.
I remember running into him after some tournament at the Heritage Center in Duluth. He was holding court in the lobby, still wearing the same notebook-stuffed parka from 1983, arguing about high-school pairings with three guys who looked like they’d been driving the team bus since the Eisenhower administration. Everyone else eventually gave up. Not John. He’d quote rosters, shift charts, and car specs until you either agreed with him or died trying.
That was the thing — you couldn’t win an argument with him, but you always walked away smarter.
The younger writers, bless their hashtags, have no idea what they missed. They think journalism started with a Wi-Fi password. John wrote with a stubby pencil, a stopwatch, and a Rolodex that would make the NHL’s media department weep.
And through it all, he never lost that little grin. He loved the absurdity of it all — the coaches who fibbed about lineups, the dads who thought their Bantam was a lock for the Gophers, the editors who tried to cut his sentences and failed.
He could be tough, yeah. But when you were on the receiving end of his praise, it meant something. Because he didn’t hand it out like free popcorn. You earned it.
He lived 82 years, wrote more words about Minnesota hockey than anyone alive, and somehow still found time to raise a family, mentor a generation, and explain why the ’79 Olds Cutlass was an underrated masterpiece. That’s range.
So raise a glass — coffee, beer, doesn’t matter — to John Gilbert. The man who saw the Miracle before it happened, who gave us the words to make it real, and who could still tell you the horsepower on a Chevy Silverado from memory.
The Amsoil Arena press box that already doesn't sound the same without that gravelly laugh, the one that started with a cough and ended in a story.
Rest easy, John. The rest of us will keep the tape rolling and try not to screw up your lede.
Howie Hanson writes from Duluth, where he’s been poking the city’s sacred cows since before half the current council learned to parallel park. He runs HowieHanson.com, a one-man newsroom powered by caffeine, sarcasm, and an allergy to PR spin. Part reporter, part historian, part irritant, he still believes in telling the truth—even when it makes the room uncomfortable.
