Hockey a family affair for Blues’ first-rounder Snuggerud | St. Louis Blues

For proof look no farther than James Westby. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he skates from 10 a.m. to noon at the Bloomington Ice Rink in the Minneapolis/Twin Cities area.

“They’ll bring mini-corn dogs. They’ll bring different snacks,” said Snuggerud’s father, Dave. “They all bring a couple beers. They sit in the locker room (after the hockey), have their little buffet, have their couple of beers and then they go home and take a nap.”

Westby, Jimmy Snuggerud’s maternal grandfather, is 85. And still playing.

“I think it’s probably a 60-and-older league,” Jimmy said. “But I used to skate with him when I was probably 8, 9, 10 years old. It’s like a little scrimmage. They used to travel to Florida every year, but they don’t anymore.”

Westby played for the University of Minnesota and the 1964 U.S. Olympic team.

Dave Snuggerud played for the University of Minnesota, the 1988 U.S. Olympic team, and then logged 265 regular-season games in the NHL for Buffalo, San Jose and Philadelphia from 1989-93.

“They both grew up in hockey, and I’m growing up in the sport,” Jimmy said. “They love it. They enjoy it. And so do I.”

Jimmy, 18, has spent the past two seasons playing for the U.S. national team at the junior level, and is headed to the University of Minnesota, and eventually the Blues — who took him 23rd overall Thursday in Montreal.

“He’s got a better shot, he’s a better skater,” Dave Snuggerud said of his son. “Yeah, he’s better than me. He’s 10 times the player I was.

“He’s fun to watch. He’s got such a way of seeing the ice. When we see it up top, it looks easy to make those plays, but he sees it at ice level going 20 miles per hour. So it’s fun to be able to watch him do the things that he does.”

The game has been imbedded in Jimmy Snuggerud’s life — you can call him “Snugs” — for as long as he can remember. There’s a backyard rink at the Snuggerud home in Chaska, in suburban Minneapolis. A spare bedroom was converted into a…