In Edina, it’s cool to be a cake eater

The Cake Eater Classic sounds like it belongs on a one-shot marquee in a satirical primetime cartoon episode. Its trophy looks like it was pilfered or purchased from the Food Network’s hardware vault.

Not so on either count. Since 2005, the multi-tiered girls’ hockey tournament has been a culturally quintessential event in Edina, Minn. It combines the game that every conversation in the area seems to come back to with a historically significant expression. And it culminates with the victors hoisting a silver, three-layered cake-shaped cup topped with a hockey-player figurine.

“It’s one of the coolest trophies for a tournament I’ve ever seen,” local product and Buffalo Beauts forward Corinne Buie told Pucks and Recreation.

Buie all but represents an intersection of evolution in Edina. The town’s first ambassador to professional women’s hockey was born seven months before The Mighty Ducks depicted her community.

A crucial storyline in the 1992 film revolves around cultural and class clashes in the Minneapolis area. In so doing, it popularized an epithet — traced back to the out-of-touch “Let them eat cake” statement misattributed to Marie Antoinette — that had been frosting the rich side for decades.

“It has followed the community since the ’50s or early ’60s,” noted Pete Waggoner, the Edina Hockey Association’s tournament director, in an email to Pucks and Rec “Minneapolis Washburn was known as the original Cake Eater city/school.”

The Mighty Ducks does not mention Edina by name. But in the 1994 sequel, the Adam Banks character cites it as his hometown. With that confirmation, the citizens of the historically affluent suburb could retroactively view the villains’ district as enveloping their locale.

In the movie, the district is home to the dynastic Hawks peewee program, whose embarrassment of talent and resources is luck of the geographic draw. It is like what the Montreal Canadiens enjoyed in the NHL’s pre-draft era, when every Quebecois prodigy was automatically theirs.

But the Ducks’ (nee District 5) astute ally, Hans, discovers one key exception that took otherwise unnoticed effect. He informs coach Gordon Bombay that, due to offseason realignment, the Hawks MVP Banks’ block now sits in their territory. The league promptly addresses the error, leaving Banks to either transfer or forego the balance of the season.

Upon first entering his new team’s locker room, his literally soft-spoken line typifies his innocence of snobbery. “I just want to play hockey.” That does not suffice for Duck Jesse Hall, who curtly interrupts captain Charlie Conway’s welcome statement to mutter “Cake eater.”

Hall had used the same term earlier upon learning that Bombay is himself a former Hawk. The statement sets off a temporary strike by the long-underprivileged District 5 team.

But by the final time Hall speaks the term in the screenplay, he ices it with decidedly sweeter connotations. As Banks is wheeled off after sustaining a concussive hit by an old teammate, his new friends pledge to avenge his injury by derailing the dynasty to usurp the state championship.

Waggoner, like many locals old enough to remember the movie’s release, sees a real-life turning point for the term there. The likes of Buie have since grown up savoring the playful jabs.

“I think my parents heard it more when they were growing up,” she said. “My cousin, who played in a neighboring community, definitely didn’t let me forget about the nickname. It was always in good fun, though.”

As more Cake Eater Classic alumnae move up the ranks, the history and sustained relevance of the epithet-turned-endearing moniker fades. Grace Bowlby, a Wisconsin Badgers freshman and veteran of the U.S. 18-and-under team, admits she has never watched The Mighty Ducks or D2. (She did, however, see D3, which again contains no mention of Edina and only one utterance of “cake eater.”)

“Personally, the term never made sense to me,” Bowlby told Pucks and Rec. “It never really bothered me when I heard it.”

She added, “I’ve heard it mainly from people that aren’t from Minnesota.”

Based on Bowlby’s accounts, bona fide ’90s kids who grew up on the movies have ample reason to feel old. And neither Bowlby nor Buie have listened to the “Cake Eater Anthem,” a viral video from the Game On! Minnesota YouTube channel.

But the locale’s largely agreed-upon choice to reclaim the phrase is as fresh as pumpkin pie every November. The Cake Eater Classic consists of six tournaments for different age groups and skill levels at the three-sheet Braemar Arena. A slot in the showcase is arguably the most coveted of any weekend on the Minnesota girls’ hockey almanac.

The host Edina Hornets jealously guard their nest while their visitors crave a bus ride home with the metallic confection. Attendees can indulge in real cake from Braemar’s concession stand while getting their fill of competitive hockey.

Some locals sport T-shirts bearing the slogan “Cake, the Breakfast of Champions.” Others emulate the Green Bay Packers fan base by substituting dessert-shaped hats for Lambeau Field’s legendary cheese lids.

The town’s youth basketball program has even taken the tournament’s name for its own bonanza.

“There was some controversy over the name,” Waggoner recalls. “Some members in the Edina Hockey Association and in the community did not want to draw what was deemed negative attention to it.

“My belief is that the use of the term in The Mighty Ducks normalized the term. And to most Edinians, it is a term of endearment.”

More importantly, for Buie, Bowlby and future youth players, the Cake Eater Classic has catalyzed the Hornets’ endeavor for equal renown in girls’ and boys’ hockey. Bowlby was born and Buie turned six the year the EHA introduced a formal girls’ program. Buie did not cross over from the boys’ side until age 10.

Today, she noted, “We have the largest girls’ youth ice hockey program in the state, if not the nation.”

The program was rich with incentive based on the town’s blue-blooded history of boys’ hockey. Edina High School won its first boys’ state title in 1969, and has logged 12 banners in total. The late Bill Nyrop was on the 1969 team, then had a 209-game NHL career with Montreal and Minnesota.

Calgary Flames president Brian Burke, New York Islanders forward Anders Lee and Islanders prospect Kieffer Bellows highlight other Edina alums. Bellows’ attendance is a result of his father, ex-North Star Brian Bellows, settling into town for his post-playing career. Lou Nanne and Doug Risebrough have done the same, as have many other key North Stars and Wild figures.

But if there was any inequality of concern in Edina hockey, it was in the gender gap. Buie’s bloodline was instrumental in rectifying that. It began with two of her aunts playing in a house league cofounded by her grandparents in the mid-’70s.

“It started because my grandmother, Joann Buie, went to the Edina City Hall to request the program,” she noted. “She also did work on behalf of the Minnesota League of Women Voters to help ensure that Edina High School adhered to Title IX legislation.”

When that progress was still blooming, a prodigy named Jenny Potter played interscholastic hockey for the Hornets’ boys’ JV team. One year after graduating, she helped Team USA to the first women’s Olympic gold medal at the 1998 Nagano Games.

But in Potter’s time, there were still no paid professional leagues for women. In her former town, it took almost another decade for the girls’ game to freeze its own foundation. With that said, the impact was instantaneous when it did.

“It was fun to have our own tournament,” said Buie, who was in the eldest division at the event’s inception. “And I think we probably thought it was kind of funny to be called the Cake Eater Classic.”

Funny name, sweet-tasting sideshow outside the dashers, serious interest between the boards. Nearly four months before the 2017 Cake Eater Classic, the EHA tweeted that registration for the event was “nearly full.” The six levels combined for three remaining openings at the time of the July 31 warning.

In the scholastic ranks, visiting parties are bound to covet bragging rights more than before. Before she left this year, Bowlby — who in 2013 helped the Hornets to their first Cake Eater crown at her level — captained Edina’s first Minnesota girls’ state championship.

“There had never been an Edina team to actually win the Cake Eater tournament,” she said. “And it’s one of the better tournaments that we played in all year.”

Now Bowlby’s former mates will wear a target not unlike the Hawks. Or perhaps they are best described as one of the new favorites, much like Banks’ team in the sequels.

Whether they appreciate the references or not, chances are, like Banks, they just want to play hockey. And for her part, to answer Jesse’s admonishment to Banks, Buie will not forget which side she is on.

“Although the movie was inaccurate about a lot of things,” she said, “it was so cool to have such a classic hockey movie based off my hometown. I always rooted for the Ducks!”