In the Spotlight
Feb. 15, 2001
By P.J. Slinger
There was a simple reason that Ben Christopherson wanted to play defense when he was young: Defensemen got more ice time.
"I just wanted to go out and have fun," the Minnesota State-Mankato senior said. "When you're little you only have maybe four defensemen on your team, so you get out there every other shift. The more you play, the more fun it is."
And Christopherson has been playing a lot for the Mavericks. He was in the line-up almost immediately as a freshman and hasn't lost his spot.
"I wanted to come in and play right away," he said. "I got lucky enough to get the chance my freshman year and somehow I've managed to stay in the lineup. Sometimes I wonder why."
He shouldn't. Christopherson has been an integral part of the MSU offense, yes, offense, from the blue line.
"He's very good with the puck, he moves it around very well," first-year MSU coach Troy Jutting said. "Offensively, he is our best defenseman. And he's quarterbacked our power play basically since he got here. He's very valuable to us."
This season Christopherson is third in scoring among defensemen in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association with 21 points and leads the Maverick blueliners in points for the third year out of four.
He has a total of 80 points in his career, which places him seventh on the MSU list for defensemen. However, Christopherson was a freshman when MSU made the jump to Division I, so he has played every college game at that level. All of the others ahead of him on the scoring list have played only some or none at that level.
Christopherson was also a member of the WCHA All-Academic team last year and was part of the WCHA all-star team that traveled to Norway last summer. And he was recently named the WCHA defensive player of the week for his plus-2, four-point effort in a sweep at Denver.
"Part of my offensiveness is because of my size," the 5-11, 180-pound Mendota Heights, Minn., native said. "I'm not going to go out there and take guys and meet them in the corners. So I figure I'll have to contribute to the team some other way, like scoring. If I feel I haven't done that, I haven't helped my team out."
Christopherson's offense mostly comes from assists, but he does have 11 goals in his career.
"I know every goal I've scored I always wondered if somebody taped it," he said. "And I haven't had a goal all year where I've known I scored. Maybe that's the moral of the story."
Christopherson wasn't even sure if he was good enough to play college hockey.
"Actually I was just going to come to Mankato and try to walk on," he said. "I hadn't talked to the coaches or anything. Tom Ward, who coaches at Shattuck-St. Mary's (Faribault, Minn.), told me to play juniors for the (St. Paul) Vulcans. I signed with them after high school. If I hadn't done that, I would have just gone to school right away."
Christopherson said those years with the Vulcans did wonders for his game.
"Speed, skill and strength," he said. "And just knowledge of the game. I had great coaches with Jim Johannsen and Jim Hillman. They taught me a lot about the game and that helped tremendously over those two years. I couldn't imagine stepping in (to the WCHA) right in from high school."
And by waiting those extra two years, Christopherson was able to play Division I all four years and in the WCHA his final two seasons. MSU joined the WCHA in the 1999-2000 season.
"They guaranteed that my junior year we would be in the WCHA, which is what it turned out to be," he said. "But now that we look back on it, nobody knew for sure. I just wanted to get a chance to play."
As a young kid, getting a chance to play had an altogether different meaning.
"I actually started as a figure skater," he said. "I have a sister who's a figure skater, so I was in a couple ice shows with her, with make-up and everything. It was kind of embarrassing. But that's where I got my start. It was more just learning how to skate, power skating, that kind of thing, more than actual figure skating with jumps and stuff like that."
But Christopherson isn't all hockey (or figure skating) like many of his peers. He's kept himself busy during non-hockey season with a variety of eclectic hobbies.
"I followed (the music group) Phish for two or three summers and have seen 30 or so shows," he said. "I went to Colorado, saw four shows at Red Rocks, Illinois, Alpine Valley and New York. It's been fun. I like the Grateful Dead and I saw their second-to-last show at Soldier Field and then started listening to Phish. I liked the music and actually saw a show before I even got into their music and that got me hooked."
This past summer Phish was on a sabbatical of sorts, so Christopherson found something else to do.
"I sold fireworks," he said. "A former teammate, James Breyer, and me and (MSU goalie) Eric Pateman and (former MSU player) Rob White set up a tent in Fargo. It was a lot of work but it paid pretty well. Pateman and I were sitting around in the summer with nothing to do. We didn't have jobs or anything and we figured we should make some money this summer, so up we went."
Christopherson is also into mountain biking (he worked at a bike shop for several years) and fishing (Phishing?).
Next on his wish list is to continue playing hockey after he graduates. "I'd like to try to play in Europe," he said. "It was neat to see how they played over there (in Norway). They don't dump the puck as much and they don't use the body as much. That suits my style of play a little more. Hopefully I'm good enough to make it."
Several MSU alumni have played hockey in Europe, most of them in Germany.
"I took four years of German in high school," he said. "But sprechen si
Deutch is about all I remember."
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