John King will withdraw to his White Bear Lake, Minnesota, basement after Saturday’s conclusion of the Minnesota boys’ high school state hockey tournament in order to watch videos of mullets, bleached mop heads, and caterpillar-like mustaches.
This weekend, his “All Hockey Hair Team” video montage will be made available on YouTube, reclaiming its yearly position as a cultural icon in Minnesota and beyond. Without a hint of sarcasm, it will honor the “lettuce,” “ramen,” and general “flow” that participants display during their entrances, contributing to the tournament’s rise to fame on social media and elsewhere.
Mr. King, 50, a former advertising executive and self-described “archaeologist of hockey hair,” is one of the founders of Pulltab Sports, a sports and entertainment website that he claims has a “flyover state of mind.”
Mr. King stated, “We try to take things that get overlooked in the Midwest and make them a big deal.” “An excellent illustration of that would be the hockey hair.”
Duke Cannon, a Minnesota-based manufacturer of men’s grooming goods, is now a presenting sponsor of his movies, which he has been putting together annually since 2011. The Hendrickson Foundation, which aims to increase hockey accessibility for those with impairments, uses the movies as a means of earning money.
