- Minnesota Hockey announced the first Jessi Pierce Community Cup, an eight-team tournament at TRIA Rink in St. Paul
- All proceeds go to the Jessi Pierce Legacy Scholarship Program
- Read below for the dates, the format and how the Wild already honored Pierce
The Minnesota hockey community has a date on the calendar for Jessi Pierce.
Minnesota Hockey announced the first annual Jessi Pierce Community Cup on Friday, a three-day tournament running Dec. 11-13 at TRIA Rink. Eight teams will play a bracket across the weekend, and every dollar the event brings in goes to the Jessi Pierce Legacy Scholarship Program.
Registration details are still to come. Here is the announcement:
Pierce covered the Wild and the NHL for NHL.com for more than a decade. Her byline also ran at USA Hockey, the Minnesota Hockey Journal and The Athletic, and she co-hosted the “Bardown Beauties” podcast.
She died in a house fire in White Bear Lake on March 21 at the age of 37. Her three children, Hudson, Cayden and Avery, died with her.
Michael Russo of The Athletic sat next to Pierce in press boxes for years. He wrote about her the morning after the fire, describing a colleague nobody could miss in a room:
“The life of the party, always with a smile on her face.”
Two weeks later, the Wild gave her a permanent spot at Xcel Energy Center. Her seat in the press box is hers for good, and the blankets left on it are deliberate, because Pierce hauled one up there every night to stay warm.
A scholarship fund and a rink full of teams in December is a heavier tribute than a plaque, and it is the one her own community picked. The first Community Cup drops the puck Dec. 11.
