Tom Kurvers used to pick up hitch-hikers, don’t hold it against him.

I met Tom Kurvers because I was too cheap to pay for a city bus and instead was hitch-hiking my way to the campus at UMD.

I was just beginning my sophomore year and was going to study with my girlfriend. Because I didn’t own a car and walking straight uphill a couple of miles to campus from Superior Street was a deal-breaker. 

I hitch-hiked. Just saying that now is cringeworthy, but the year was 1981, and in this instance, the story actually turned out pretty well.

I left my apartment about 6 p.m. on a Monday night, walked out to Superior Street, and with my backpack over my shoulder I stuck out my thumb. As luck would have it, one of the first cars passing by, an older sedan, slowed and pulled over as it passed. I jogged up, the driver asked if I was headed up to campus, I confirmed I was, so I hopped-in and off we went.

The driver was also a college student and being young males there wasn’t a lot of conversation. Upon arrival on campus the driver told me that he had night class at 6:30 on Monday and Wednesday’s, so if I ever needed a ride and he saw me he would pick me up. I told him I would appreciate that, and we went our separate ways.

Same time two nights later I’m headed out the door with one of my roommates in-tow. Sure enough, here comes the sedan, which pulls-over, we hop-in, me in front and my roommate in back, and we’re on our way.

I acknowledge the driver and thank him for the lift, but he’s not much of a talker and that’s fine with me. We get up to campus, he parks, we get out I say thanks, and my roommate adds, “Look forward to watching you play again this winter!” To which the guy awkwardly replies something along the line of, “Oh, thanks,” and walks away.

That’s how I met Tom Kurvers. 

“That was a ’72 Oldsmobile, or I might have upgraded by then to a 1974 Chevy Monte Carlo,” said Kurvers upon being told the tale years later. “I don’t remember, but if it was the Monte Carlo, I actually drove that car to my first training camp in Montreal, if you can believe that?” 

I can believe it, because that was Tom Kurvers. Tall, handsome, stud athlete, not a hint of “attitude” but loads of backbone.

The rides to campus ceased soon after Kurvers’ cover was blown because I got us kicked-out of our apartment, only to stumble into another unit on Superior Street, which as luck would have it, was right next door to where Kurvers was living with several hockey teammates. 

Many years later I’m in the press box at Xcel Energy Center before a Wild game, yukking it up with other sports media types when a soft-spoken gentleman in a sharp suit comes up and introduces himself as Tom Kurvers. 

Before I can regale him with the hitch-hiking story, he asks me if I went to UMD and if I used to live on Superior Street? I confirmed that I did and I had when he says to me, “You and your friends used to “Airband” to that song ‘What I like about you’ by the Romantics.”

Now, my jaw is on the ground, but Tom continues. “You guys played that song so many times it drove me crazy! And to this day every time I hear that ‘bleeping’ song I think about your dumb a--!”

Kurvers continued, “I remember you guys won money with that! You guys banged away on that song time after time after time after time and those houses were so close together those speakers may have just as well have been in my living room. I remember that clearly, that’s funny!”

After that we exchanged contact information and stayed in loose contact until he was named the Wild’s Assistant General Manager in 2018, and a loose friendship was formed.

A native of Bloomington, Kurvers starred at Jefferson before playing his college hockey at Minnesota-Duluth. He capped-off his playing career with the Bulldogs by winning the Hobey Baker Award, which is given annually to the most outstanding player in NCAA Hockey, in 1984. During his senior year of 1983-84, Kurvers registered 76 points in 43 games while leading the Bulldogs to a runner-up finish at the NCAA Frozen Four.

Taken with the 145thpick of the NHL draft by the Montreal Canadian, Kurvers went on to play for 7 teams in 11 seasons in the NHL, winning a Stanley Cup with the Canadians in 1986.

After his playing days ended Kurvers made a smooth transition into NHL scouting and eventually the front office where in In 2008 he was named assistant general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning. 

From 2011 to 2018, Kurvers served as the senior advisor to the general manager of the Tampa Bay Lightning before being named the assistant general manager of the Minnesota Wild.

Kurvers was hired by Paul Fenton, and was retained by current GM Bill Guerin, when he was diagnosed with lung Cancer in January of 2019.

“January 21 of ’19, the diagnosis was non-small cell endo-carcinoma, small tumor on my right lung,” said Kurvers. “And there were some other factors in the right lung, basically, you know, that emanated from the tumor and it’d moved to my left lymph nodes in my sternum.”

Kurvers, had noticed that he was becoming short of breath while taking the stairs from the Wild parking ramp up to the team offices. Like many former player, Kurvers adhered to a steady workout routine. When he started to experience what he describes as a “pinch” in his chest he consulted team doctors, who recommended a CT scan. But, Kurvers says, nothing could quite prepare him for the results of that test

“Oh, you’re just floored by it. You're pretty shook up and scared, and without any knowledge of what you're dealing with, and you just hear the words that you don’t want to hear, that you have cancer,” said Tom. “In my case, lung cancer. But you just can't accept that you’re the next person to get that diagnosis, it's not reality to think that. And then suddenly, that is your reality and it overwhelms you.”

Kurvers used the same word to describe the support he received from his NHL family after he went public with his diagnosis, and throughout his experience with cancer.

“Overwhelming, and it continues to be overwhelming, and it continues to be a source of strength, but the first month was incredible,” said Kurvers. “There's just so many good people in the game, the amount of people that you cross paths with, whether you played with or against, or guys I worked with for different teams, or a guy that you develop a friendship with because you're on the road as a scouting community for as long as I was. It was immediate, it was powerful, and it continues. When I see people, it's still there, you still feel it from people. And I know that it's a gift that’s given me strength to fight my fight.” 

Kurvers said he took the job with the Wild because Paul Fenton was giving him an opportunity to come home to Minnesota.”

“I wasn't looking to leave Tampa. I really like the job I had in Tampa and I liked the people I worked with,” said Kurvers. “But this was a great opportunity to move up, be closer to the decision making, to be with the hometown team, which I never had. I never played for the Gophers or the North Stars, I was too old to have ever played for the Wild. It was my first time ever being on the hometown team after a long time in the game.”

With extended family in the area, the move was not only a promotion, it allowed Tom and his wife Heather, who have four children between them, including two school age sons to be near family. A move that proved vital during Tom’s final chapter.

“You can’t predict life, we're living in a situation right now where you can’t write the script,” says Kurvers. “Looking back on it, that all happened in relatively short time, and I didn't see any of it coming. Yeah, it's kind of a blur. It was a surprise on the health front for sure, and then it was a surprise on a late July morning when I talked to Craig Leopold and he had let go of Paul and he was going to search for a new GM, that was a surprise as well.”

On the eve of training camp before the 2019 season, and seven months after his cancer diagnosis, Kurvers found out that Wild owner Craig Leopold had suddenly let go general manager Paul Fenton, just 14 months after hiring him. In late August of 2019 Bill Guerin was named as the fourth general manager of the Minnesota Wild. Not only did Guerin retain Kurvers, but the two developed a close working relationship during an exceptionally unusual time for the game, and for Kurvers.

“I've been looked after at home by my wife,” said Kurvers. “Then at work, Bill (Guerin) has stepped up a couple of times just to say, ‘hey, you're not doing this or this, and that's an order.’ But it's more in a ‘I'm looking after you. I don't want anything bad to happen. On a couple notes where it really wasn’t on my mind that I need to be that cautious. So, I have important people in my life that are, you know, watching after everything I do.”

I wasn’t best friends with Tom Kurvers, there were plenty in the hockey world and here in Minnesota who were luckier than I was, to have known him longer, to have played with and against him, to have known his as a husband and as a father.

I was just lucky enough to have struck up a friendship with him, to have teased each other about our jobs, our careers and mutual guys we knew. In the time I spent with him I came to know a man who knew his strengths and his limitations. A man who went from competing at the highest level on the ice to competing at the highest level off the ice, while producing results.

The State of Hockey has lost one of its brightest stars, gone far too soon.

Hey Tom, thanks for the rides, thanks for the laughs, thanks for the pride I took in seeing “one of us” succeed at the highest level, and thanks for doing the wrong thing and picking up at least one hitchhiker.

Said Kurvers in 2018, “Not only do I not pick up hitchhikers anymore, if I had known the whole “Airband” thing was going to happen I would have considered running you over.”