Minnesota Shockingly Misses The Net In Ranking Of Top Hockey Towns

Minnesota has long been known as the "State of Hockey." That reputation might be at risk, though, if you believe the results of a recently published study.

In a study conducted by the team at WalletHub, the 76 top hockey towns across the United States were named for 2025. While Minnesota had a strong showing as one of the states with the largest number of cities showing up on the list, the "State of Hockey" performed surprisingly poorly compared to some other places around the country.

Let's take a look.

Why Minnesota is the "State of Hockey"

For reference, Minnesota is the top state when it comes to producing NHL players. The stats website Hockey Reference identifies Minnesota as the leader when it comes to birthplaces for NHL players over the years.

READ MORE: Minnesota among top states to become a professional athlete

Here's a look at the top 5 states for producing NHL players:

1. Minnesota: 308 players
2. Massachusetts: 228 players
3. Michigan: 200 players
4. New York: 141 players
5. California: 56 players

Despite leading that statistic by a sizable margin, having one of the most robust youth hockey programs in the country, hosting the largest state high school hockey tournament in the country, having numerous Division I collegiate hockey programs, a perennial NHL playoff contender, and two-time PWHL championship winning team, Minnesota still fared surprisingkly lower than you'd expect in WalletHub's study.

How did Minnesota cities rank in the list of best hockey towns in the United States?

No matter how I spun the numbers of their study, Minnesota is not even in the top three in representation in WalletHub's 2025 study. Here's how the numbers break down:

Get our free mobile app

What states have the most "top hockey towns"?

Minnesota came in fourth when you look at how many cities in the state are represented on this list.

• New York: 11 cities
• Massachusetts: 8 cities
• Michigan: 8 cities
• Minnesota: 6 cities

What states have the most top-50 hockey towns?

Out of the 76 cities WalletHub ranked, how many of those states I just mentioned have multiple top-50 cities? Minnesota didn't do a ton better here either.

• New York: 9 top-50 cities
• Michigan: 6 top-50 cities
• Minnesota: 3 top-50 cities
• Massachusetts: 2 top-50 cities

Slightly better, but still lower than I would have imagined.

What are Minnesota's top hockey towns?

You've seen that Minnesota had 6 cities get named to WalletHub's top 76 list. If you factor in how they scored each town, I bet you'll quickly guess what they all are. You might still be surprised how they rank.

WalletHub used a scoring method to rank cities that used a variety of factors, including the number of NHL and Division I NCAA teams, team championships, fan engagement and attendance, and so on.

Using this scoring method, here's how Minnesota's cities ranked:

• St. Paul: 13th best hockey town
• Bemidji 41st best hockey town
• Minneapolis 48th best hockey town
• St. Cloud 56th best hockey town
• Duluth 58th best hockey town
• Mankato 64th best hockey town

St. Paul makes the list for being home to the Wild, which is consistently a passionate fanbase for a team regularly making the playoffs. How the other towns were ranked might be a little more up for debate among fanbases.

Just for reference, here are each town's NCAA Men's & Women's Division I Hockey Championship appearances:

• Gophers (Minneapolis): 32 total appearances (23 Men's, 9 Women's)
• UMD (Duluth): 15 total appearances (8 Men's, 7 Women's)
• Minnesota State (Mankato): 2 Men's appearances
• SCSU (St. Cloud): 2 Men's appearances
• BSU (Bemidji): 1 Men's appearance

Who beat out Minnesota towns for the top spots?

Boston claimed the top spot, with "Hockey Town" Detroit coming in at #2. Here's the full top 15:

1. Boston, MA
2. Detroit, MI
3. Pittsburgh, PA
4. New York, NY
5. Newark, NJ
6. Denver, CO
7. Sunrise, FL
8. Tampa, FL
9. Buffalo, NY
10. St. Louis, MO
11. Raleigh, NC
12. Philadelphia, PA
13. St. Paul, MN
14. Anaheim, CA
15. Chicago, IL

You can see the full ranking and more information here.