Goaltender Katie Fitzgerald has St. Cloud State on a record winning streak

It might have been lost around the Western Collegiate Hockey Association by some folks.  After all, top-ranked Wisconsin hosts defending national champion Minnesota this weekend in the resumption of the Border Battle of two of the best women’s college programs in the land.

However, around the National Hockey Center, the fact that St. Cloud State has won a school record six-straight games is bigger news than any Black Friday sale.

No one is more excited about it than Katie Fitzgerald, the Huskies’ senior goalie who has been in goal for the same number of victories this season (seven) as in her first three years combined.

“I was just talking to my mom about this. It’s almost surreal,” said Fitzgerald. “This winning streak is just great. I can’t describe the feeling.”

In the last three weeks, St. Cloud, with Fitzgerald in goal, have outscored Minnesota State, Ohio State and Lindenwood, 20-8, and raised its overall record to 8-7-1. If they can secure a win against Minnesota Duluth this weekend, they will have as many victories in conference play (five) as they did all of last season. For her work in the streak, which includes a 1.33 goals-against average and a .950 save percentage (while making 152 stops), Fitzgerald was named WCHA Defensive Player of the Month for November.

“We are all having a lot of fun right now and we are definitely a group that is gaining confidence,” said Fitzgerald, who has a 7-7-1 record, a 2.86 goals-against average and .907 save percentage for the season.  “A lot of this is due to trusting each other and coming together as a team. The defense is blocking shots when we need to. The line combinations are working.”

The Huskies’ six-straight victories, including four wins in conference play, give them a fifth-place standing in the WCHA with a 4-7-1-1 league record. Now those are modest numbers, to be sure, but the ledger shows nearly as many league victories as they had during the entire 2014-15 campaign.

This comes from a program that has only 10 WCHA wins in the previous three years and was 18-74-9 in Fitzgerald’s first three seasons.  In Fitzgerald’s sophomore year they had but four victories, 13 one-goal losses and a change in coaches.

“You try not to get down on yourself, but a lot of petty things bother you. There is a lot of weight on your shoulders when you aren’t winning,” said Fitzgerald. “The old coaches were great but the new coaches have brought energy and everyone has really come together this year.”

Eric Rud is the director of the Huskies’ unprecedented month of November.

“Coming into the season we thought our strength would be the ‘D’ corps and goaltending, and Katie has held us in a lot of games until we would get a big goal,’’ said Rud, the SCSU head coach. “Our defense has been strong and we have played seven of them to keep everyone fresh and energized, and hopefully keep Katie fresh. Take away the first weekend at Merrimack (where the Huskies won twice) and the two blowout losses to Minnesota (11-0 and 7-0), and Katie has given us a chance to win every weekend.”

While Fitzgerald has provided solid goaltending, senior Molly Illikainen has been a sniper for the previously offensive-challenged Huskies. Moved to a line with freshman Julia Tylke and Alyssa Erickson, Illikainen is seventh in the WCHA in scoring with 12 goals, nine assists and 21 points this season. In the Huskies’ six-game winning streak she has scored eight goals and has five assists. After being held without a goal in the first six games and after finding her new linemates, Illikainen has scored a point in nine straight games and has 12 goals and 18 points in that span.

“They had chemistry right away,” Rud said. “It’s been different having a line that gives us offensive output and has allowed our other lines to relax and get better.’’

Illikainen comes from an athletic family. Her father Darrin played hockey at Minnesota Duluth, her mom Mary played basketball for UMD and her brother Alex is a freshman basketball player at Wisconsin, last year’s NCAA runner-up. Molly was a Ms. Minnesota Hockey finalist when she played for Grand Rapids High School.  She played two years at Providence College before transferring to St. Cloud last season along with defenseman Lexi Slattery.  In her first year in the WCHA, she played in 37 games and led the Huskies in points with 10 goals and nine assists. This season, she has twice been named WCHA Offensive Player of the Week.

“At every level she has gone to, Molly has been a goal scorer,” said Rud. “She has a chance to score every shift. And she can score a goal, not just one way, but in different ways. She is good with the puck and can make a move and score. She is a threat to score on the rush or by working down low.

“Molly has the will and a passion to score goals. She is like players I have seen everywhere I have gone in hockey,” said Rud, a former Colorado College defenseman, an assistant coach at his alma mater and the head coach of the Clark Cup-winning Green Bay Gamblers in the United States Hockey League.  “There is one thing about the elite player. You watch when they score. They don’t celebrate like other players.  It’s more a relief to them when they score, rather than joy.”

Now Rud recognizes his streaking team faces nationally-ranked Duluth and Minnesota in road games before the Christmas break, so he is realistic about his team’s chances at becoming an immediate WCHA contender. But he also knows you have start small and grow.

Fitzgerald and her family learned that in a real-life situation 21 years ago.

You see, Katie’s mother Mary was preeclamptic, meaning her blood pressure went to dangerous levels during the pregnancy. Katie was born 14 weeks early and weighed one pound, 11 ounces. She was given a 10 percent chance of survival by the team of doctors and nurses who were dedicated to her care.

“My mom has told me about all the dramatic things that they went through,” said Katie. “It is pretty amazing. I am still friends on Facebook with one of the nurses who took care of me in ICU. My mom kept in contact with her all these years and when Facebook came along, I got to be her friend.”

Oh, the stories they can tell about young Katie.

“My dad (Bill) tells me the story how scared they were,” said the two-time 2015 WCHA Defensive Player of the Week. “I wore a heart monitor so an alarm would go if I had an abnormal heart rate. I guess I would sneeze and everyone would jump.”

“It was a day-to-day worry, but the doctors and the team with Katie just kept us focused on the next day and then the next day,” Mary Fitzgerald told David Pickle of NCAA.org.

Katie was hospitalized for four months after birth and then she spent six months in the neonatal intensive care follow-up care clinic. By her tenth month, Katie was home and living a normal life as an active infant, but she was still small for her age.

“We thought she was going be our petite little Katie,” Mary said. “When she started to walk, she was so small that she could walk under the table in the house.”

At age 5, Katie started skating because her brother Ian played hockey. She played goal in first grade, “when everyone rotates positions,” said Fitzgerald. “But I liked it. With all things my parents went through with me, people couldn’t believe I wanted to be a goalie.”

And with her diminutive nature, Fitzgerald earned a nickname. “My coaches kept naming me ‘peanut’ because I was the smallest,” she said.

Fitzgerald said her growth spurt occurred about age eight and continued until her high school years. She is 5-foot, 11 inches now and, says Katie, “I am not a peanut anymore.” In fact, North Dakota forward Becca Kohler and Ohio State defenseman Jessica Dunne are the only players in the WCHA who are taller.

No one may be more athletic. Fitzgerald played softball, volleyball, basketball and hockey until high school. “My parents were superheroes driving me around,” she says.

Fitzgerald was a four-time most valuable player on Maine West’s high school volleyball team and also was an all-conference softball player in Des Plaines, Ill. It was that athleticism and her play as the goalie for the Chicago Mission, a national U-16 runner-up when Fitzgerald played in 2011, which caused then-SCSU Coach Jeff Giesen to offer her a scholarship in the early signing period.

Fitzgerald played 15 games as a freshman, posting a 4-10-0 record and a .912 save percentage. She continued to split time with Julie Friend in goal as a sophomore and had a 1-9-1 record and .907 save percentage in that long 2013-14 season. As a junior, she was still in the goalie rotation, played 16 games and had a 2-11-1 mark with a .907 save percentage and her first shutout.

Fitzgerald stayed in St. Cloud last summer to train and work on school, with plans to graduate in May and hopes of going into sports public relations. With Friend having graduated, the Huskies’ goaltending position was now all hers. With her size and quick left-handed glove hand, she is an imposing figure in goal.

“Katie has played a lot of games and she may have been in Julie’s shadow,” said Rud. “But she worked hard for her senior year and she has really stepped up and had a good year. Actually, after training hard we went to Merrimack to open the season and she didn’t have her best game. It might have served as a wake-up call for her because she has given us a chance to win most every game.”

Fitzgerald repeated as the WCHA’s Defensive Player of the Week after posting a 1.00 goals-against average and stopping 45 of 47 shots against Lindenwood in a nonconference road series last weekend. One of the victories was a 2-0 shutout, her first of the season and third of her career.

“This winning is about the team,” said Fitzgerald. “Molly is getting goals, but so are other lines. Again, we are much more confident than we’ve been. Our confidence is at a different level and expectations are higher this year.

“It,’’ she said, “has been a long time coming.”

The post Husky Pride: More Than a Fighting Chance appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

No superstitions necessary for All-American Brittni Mowat

The stories about superstitious goalies are legendary. Goaltenders’ antics are often weird.

Long ago, Glenn Hall, a Hall of Fame goalie, would vomit before games. He believed he would lose if he didn’t. Another NHL goaltending great, Patrick Roy, would carefully lay out each piece of equipment and dress himself in a specific order, talk to his posts and never skate over the blue lines or red lines — but, rather, just step over them. Some goalies wear the same undergarments for good luck. Lots of goalies bang the two ends of their stick against the goalposts to begin and end every period.

Goaltenders? Bring up the word and often times hockey people roll their eyes. The stereotype says they are weird.

And then there is Brittni Mowat. As far as a goalie goes, the junior from Bemidji State is as predictable as Thanksgiving on Thursday. No crazy pre-game rituals. She doesn’t need them and Bemidji State fans wouldn’t have any other way.

She is consistent. And she is good. So good, in fact, that she became the first, first team All-American goaltender ever from Bemidji State last season. Mowat is even better statistically this season for the Beavers, who are ranked fourth nationally, a high-water mark in school history.

Mowat has posted a 10-2-1 record with two shutouts, a 1.06 goals-against average and a .961 save percentage for Bemidji State, which faces defending national champion Minnesota this weekend in a matchup of top-five teams in Minneapolis.

“She is a wonderful person and a great teammate. A hard worker,” said Jim Scanlan, Mowat’s coach and a former goaltender himself. “Brit is a great student; very conscientious. There is nothing quirky about her that I can tell you.”

“I think I do things pretty normally,” said Mowat. “I am calm before the game. I just try to focus on the game ahead because every game is important. But I have no superstitions.”

Since there is nothing abnormal about her pre-game preparations, there is no reason to change for Mowat.

As a sophomore last season, Mowat recorded a 19-13-1 record with a 1.68 goals-against average and a .945 save percentage. Her 19 wins marked the best single-season win total in program history and she posted a single-season record for most shutouts with seven in BSU’s best campaign in school annals.

Behind the play of the All-American goalie and a shot-blocking, crazed defense, Bemidji State upset Minnesota in the semifinals of the WCHA Final Face-Off before losing to Wisconsin in the championship game.

“Brittni’s best asset is her mindset. She doesn’t let anything bother her,” said Bemidji State assistant coach Shane Veenker. “We have picked up that mentality as a team. There aren’t many parades or funerals around here. We try to keep an even keel and we go as she goes.”

It was Veenker who recruited Mowat. She was from Glenboro, Manitoba, playing for the Pembina Valley Mohawks against Shattuck High School in Winnipeg four years ago. Her teams won three provincial championships and Mowat also won a silver medal with Team Manitoba at the U18 Nationals.

“She was tremendous,” recalled Veenker from the tournament in Winnipeg. “She anticipates everything so well. But only one other school offered her a scholarship.”

Veenker acknowledges that Mowat’s 5-foot-7 inch stature might have kept her from more offers and points out that only two Manitoba goalies have ever got Division 1 college scholarships. When Bemidji State made her a scholarship offer, Veenker acknowledges Mowat rejected the offer because it wasn’t a full ride.

“She has the most quiet confidence of anyone I have ever seen,” said Veenker, a Bemidji assistant for the last 10 years. “She wanted a full scholarship and she wasn’t going to settle for anything else.”

That self-assured nature translates onto the ice.

Like many farm kids from Manitoba, Mowat has been playing hockey since she was five-years-old and has been a full-time goalie since 12.

“My parents were kind of against it, but they knew I really wanted to play goal so they gave in,” Mowat says. “I think they are glad now, even if it is a stressful position.”

If the lack of scholarship offers causes Mowat to play with a chip on her shoulder, you would never know it by chatting with her.

“Bemidji has been a great fit for me,” she says. “I knew I wanted to stay close to home and there aren’t many schools near where I live. I guess I was a no-name. I have just worked hard and my team in front of me has helped me a lot.”

As a former Bemidji State goalie under legendary coach Bob Peters, Scanlan can analyze Mowat’s play expertly. He knows he was quite fortunate to inherit a goalie of Mowat’s caliber when he took over from Steve Sertich behind the BSU bench last season.

“I think she got a break her first year and got an opportunity to play because of injuries,” said Scanlan, who was named WCHA Coach of the Year in his first season. “She got into a role where she played all the time.”

Mowat made the All-WCHA Rookie Team in 2013-14 and set multiple rookie records at BSU, including games played (33), wins (10) and goal- against average (2.42). She posted three shutouts and had a 50-save performance against Ohio State, making a name for herself and the Beavers. She impressed Scanlan right away.

“I was very, very impressed with her composure,” said Scanlan. “She has a very calm demeanor. She doesn’t get too excited about much of anything, but she is extremely competitive. She hates to be scored upon.”

Technically, what makes the goalie with the blonde ponytail under her headgear so good?

“She is upright,” Scanlan said. “When she goes down, she still seems to stay upright. She squares up to the puck very well. She is a gamer. The bigger moments don’t seem to phase her. The bigger the game, the bigger she plays. We talk a lot about the mental things involved in goaltending. Keep your eye on the puck all the time. But I try to keep the goalies alone. The position has changed a lot since I played.”

If Mowat is the face of Bemidji State hockey’s resurgence these days, the heart is the way the Beavers block shots. They led the WCHA in blocked shots last season, feature two of the best shot-blocking defenseman in Ivana Bilic and Alexis Joyce, and frustrate teams by clogging up the neutral zone like the freeway at rush hour.

“It is kind of the Beaver legacy, to be honest,” said Mowat. “My defense has made it easy for me. They keep pucks to the outside and block a ton of shots. When I came here as a freshman, that was our motto: Block shots and get your body in front of the pucks. That is what we do.”

There are no pre-game goaltending rituals necessary to understand the Beavers’ success. They were beaten twice by Wisconsin, the No. 1 team in the country, by scores of 3-0 and 4-0, last month, but in the rest of the WCHA season, the Beavers have scored 17 goals and given up only six in eight games. They are 10-2-1 overall and 7-2-1 in WCHA play with 22 points and in second place, one point better than Minnesota.

“We try to be a team that is tough and is not fun to play against,” said Scanlan. “We talk about doing little things. You have to credit the players. Blocking shots can be contagious. Somebody does it and the whole bench erupts. They saw last year what happens if you play hard. When you play against a team like Wisconsin or Minnesota they are going to have the puck more than you are. You better know what you are doing in your end, getting in shot lanes.

“The players realize it can lead to our team being successful. They know it is one of those little things that we have to do well. If we do it well, it can lead to a good habit. (Against Wisconsin in the first game of a series in Madison), they had us for 26 blocked shots. If you look at a goalie’s save percentage and you figure teams score on one of every 10 shots, that may have saved us two goals. And you never know, you might get one going the other way. That’s what Coach Peters used to always say.”

If teams get through the maze of clingy Bemidji defenders, then they have to face Mowat, who shared honors with North Dakota’s Shelby Amsley-Benzie as an All-WCHA first team goalie last season and set program records for wins, goals-against average and save percentage in a single season. Those numbers made her Bemidji’s first, first team All-American goalie. BSU’s Zuzana Tomcikova, who played in the Olympics for Slovakia, was a second team All-American in 2012.

“That was a big surprise for me,” said Mowat. “My team deserves a lot of credit for it too.”

The awards kept coming after the season for Mowat, too. The exercise science major was named a WCHA Scholar-Athlete and then completed her sophomore year with the news that she had been named Bemidji State’s Female Athlete of the Year.

“I was shocked because there are so many good athletes at Bemidji State,” said Mowat. “I had to prepare a speech and I didn’t know what to say. I was completely shocked. I never expected it.”

Following the season, Mowat was invited to Team Canada’s national women’s strength and conditioning program, but suffered an injury and returned home to concentrate on her junior year, a season where the Beavers have changed their image under the old goalie, Scanlan, and the new goalie, Mowat. Bemidji State heads into Friday and Saturday’s game with Minnesota as more of a WCHA contender than an in-state rival.

“We have big expectations,” said Mowat. “We lost a couple key players, but we have some good freshmen. We have big goals. We need to continue working hard and I think everything will gel.”

The post Abnormally Good appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Forever-linked Johnson, Harrington to go head-to-head from the bench

They have trained together, played together on the most inspirational gold medal team in U.S. Olympic history and beat the USSR hockey juggernaut in the “Miracle on Ice.”

They have signed countless autographs while sitting by one another at memorabilia shows and stood next to one another while their teammates lit the Olympic torch. They have heard thousands of people go to the way-back machine and tell them where they were that February weekend in Lake Placid, N.Y. in 1980.

But they have never coached against one another – until this weekend in Mankato, Minn. when Mark Johnson leads the unbeaten University of Wisconsin women’s hockey team against first-year coach John Harrington and his über-young Minnesota State Mavericks.

“It will be awkward to see him on the other bench,” Johnson said. “The only time I ever coached against him was at fantasy camp at Lake Placid last March. My team won the gold medal.  John’s didn’t do so well.”

Johnson chuckled. He knows what a competitor Harrington is.  Sure enough, Harrington had a response for Johnson.

“I needed to fire my general manager who picked the fantasy team. Neal (Broten) was my GM and we had a poor draft,” Harrington said.

When it was suggested that Harrington has a tough time losing – at hockey or golf, or trivial pursuit, for that matter – the man known as “Bah” interrupted. “Mark is as competitive as I am. He just does it with a different demeanor than me.”

The friends and ex-teammates will come at this weekend’s Western Collegiate Hockey Association series with different perspectives. Johnson’s Badgers, an NCAA Frozen Four finalist last year, are unbeaten in eight games this season, have outscored opponents 42-2 and have registered a program-record (and WCHA record-tying) six-straight shutouts in league games.

Minnesota State head coach John Harrington (right). (WCHA.com photo)

Harrington’s Mavericks have yet to win a WCHA game and are 2-7-1 overall. The Mavs dropped a pair of games last weekend at Ohio State while skating 17 freshmen and sophomores. “We have two seniors and one hurt her ankle and the other had a concussion,” said Harrington. “We have a lot of growing pains, but our team is getting more accustomed to the pace of the league and getting better each week. But here comes Wisconsin who hasn’t allowed a goal to anyone and we are averaging 1.1 goals a game.

“I just hope Mark takes it easy on us,” Harrington said. The tone in his voice said Harrington’s team won’t roll over for the Big Red.

Harrington and Johnson have come a long way since being fresh-faced kids who stood on the podium at Lake Placid 35 years ago with gold medals around their necks, while the national anthem played and the country’s sports fans became hockey fans filled with patriotic frenzy.

They were “Bah” and “Magic” then. Harrington was a member of the Conehead Line with Mark Pavelich and Buzz Schneider, while Johnson earned the nickname Magic for his play as the Olympic team’s leading scorer. Now they are they are called grandpa around their families. Both are 58 years old, but still are in great shape physically – probably below the weight they played at in Lake Placid. Harrington works out religiously and Johnson ran his seventh Ironman Triathlon with his son Patrick over Labor Day weekend.

Both are hockey guys, lifers in a sport they love. They aren’t living in the past as characters in the movie “Miracle.” They have forged careers in the sport they love.

Before they became teammates on Herb Brooks’ 1980 Olympic team, Harrington and Johnson played against each other in the WCHA. Johnson played for his dad, the iconic Badger Bob Johnson, at Wisconsin, scoring 40 goals as a freshman in his hometown of Madison, Wis. and winning a NCAA title in 1977. Mark was an All-American who scored 125 goals and had 256 points in three seasons at UW.  Harrington was an overachieving, walk-on from Virginia, Minn. who played at Minnesota Duluth and became a force in the WCHA while playing on a line with fellow Iron Ranger and future Olympian Pavelich.

Following their collegiate careers, Johnson was the leading scorer on the U.S. Olympic team with 11 points, including two goals against the Russians, and Harrington was credited with an assist on Mike Eruzione’s go-ahead, game-winning goal against the Soviet Union in the “Miracle on Ice” semifinal win. Harrington also played on the 1984 U.S. Olympic Team, while Johnson went on to an 11-year career in the National Hockey League, including a 1983-84 season with Hartford when he was the Whalers’ leading scorer with 87 points and tied an NHL All-Star Game record with three assists.

Johnson and Harrington are the only two members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team to be actively coaching, after Mike Ramsey left the Minnesota Wild’s NHL organization two years ago. Both proudly consider themselves career coaches. Harrington has won titles as a Division III coach, a European pro coach; and, he won a pool B title as Team Slovenia’s head coach at the world championships. Johnson has 368 career victories in 13 seasons at Wisconsin, fourth best all-time in women’s collegiate hockey and 18 wins away from tying former Minnesota Duluth coach Shannon Miller for third place.

“All kidding aside, this will be exciting, coaching against Mark,” said Harrington. “He is one of the great coaches in women’s hockey. I have watched his games in the past as a fan but now, when I study his team on video more closely, I am impressed at how well they do the little things. They have a lot of talented players, but they are just a well-coached team.”

After Johnson’s playing days ended in 1993, he returned to Madison and started at the bottom of the coaching rung. Johnson was an assistant coach at his alma mater, Madison Memorial High School. The next year he coached at Verona High School and in 1995 took a pro job in the Colonial Hockey League with the Madison Monsters, where he coached current North Dakota coach Brian Idalski.

In 1996, the legendary Jeff Sauer hired Johnson to be an assistant coach with Wisconsin’s men’s team, a position he held until 2002 when Sauer retired. There are many folks in Madison today that still wish Johnson succeeded Sauer, but UW athletic director Pat Richter chose to hire Mike Eaves, a former teammate of Mark’s. Johnson then applied to be coach of the UW women’s program, got hired and has experienced great success.

With Johnson on the bench the last 12 years, the Badgers have won four NCAA titles, five WCHA playoff titles and four WCHA regular season crowns while producing four Patty Kazmaier Award winners.

The success has not gone unnoticed. Johnson was named coach of the U.S. Olympic team in 2010 and the American women collected the silver medal, losing 2-0 to Canada in Vancouver, B.C. He has become the face of women’s hockey to many people in North America, but Mark is not the outgoing salesman of the game that “Badger Bob” was. He is more a teacher, quietly explaining the game to anyone who will listen.

You have to ask both Johnson and Harrington if you want to talk about what happened in the Olympics in 1980. Harrington said his new team has yet to ask to see his gold medal. Aside from signing DVDs from the movie “Miracle” or politely talking with fans who bring up Lake Placid in 1980 at the rink, they are unlikely to talk about the past. Harrington sold his Olympic jersey and other gear last year to help finance his daughter in nursing school. They still do the occasional autograph show to sign memorabilia and coached together at the 1980 team fantasy reunion camp last winter. But both guys are very much coaches now, concerned with the present and not living in the past.

Johnson, whose daughter Mikayla is a winger on his team, said “he was very pleased” with his third-ranked team’s two shutout wins over No. 6 Bemidji last week. “Bemidji has a good team. They can limit your chances, have a good goalie and some seniors that can score. When we got (Sarah) Nurse back (from missing two games with an illness) we had a complete team and a good effort.”

Now it’s a road trip to face his old friend and the Mavericks.

Wisconsin head coach Mark Johnson. (WCHA.com photo)

“I think it will be fun,” said Johnson.  “Of all the players on the (1980 U.S. Olympic) team, you are closer to some more than others and Bah is one of those I have always been friends with. We have kept in contact over the years. When he was coaching at St. John’s (in Collegeville, Minn.), we’d talk a lot and we have kept in contact regularly.”

Harrington was an assistant coach at Denver and St. Cloud State (men’s team) before becoming the head coach at St. John’s from 1993-2008, where he led the Johnnies to a 241-142-31 record, five MIAC regular-season titles, five NCAA Division III tournament appearances and four MIAC playoff titles. He coached pro players in Switzerland and Austria and coached the Slovenian national team before taking a scouting job with the Colorado Avalanche. During his tenure with the Avs, Harrington helped out as a volunteer assistant with St. Cloud State’s women’s team and enjoyed the experience.

When the Minnesota State job opened up, Harrington applied for the job, conferred with his old buddy Mike Hastings, the Minnesota State men’s coach, and then called Johnson.

“We’ve had other talks about coaching over the years, but last spring at fantasy camp in Lake Placid, I talked to him about the women’s game and how he enjoyed it and the transition he made from coaching the men (as an assistant) at Wisconsin to becoming the women’s coach,” said Harrington.

“We just talked about the women’s game, in general, and about the league,” recalled Johnson. “I am glad it all worked out for him. He is a very knowledgeable coach. I am sure he is finding his way around the league right now, but he has had a lot of success over the years and I am sure he will there.”

This weekend’s games will be the second women’s series held at the renovated Verizon Wireless Center after years at old, rickety All Seasons Arena, and it will be the first series overhead with a large jumbotron scoreboard overhead.

“It is awesome,’’ said Harrington. “It is a good-looking arena now. Everyone who has seen the place is very impressed.”

“The move to the big rink will give him a fresh start. It was a good time for John to go in there,” Johnson said. “Obviously moving downtown and them renovating their facility downtown and bringing the women’s program back to that facility is a step that’s going to be really positive for that group to start over.”

In future years, there may be bragging rights at stake when Harrington and Johnson go head-to-head. This weekend, it may be more of a reunion, a time to catch up with an old friend who is starting a rebuilding project.

“John has a great track record with a lot of different programs,” said Johnson. “It will be his first time with the women’s side, but I think he’ll do a good job and have an opportunity to put women’s hockey on a different level in his city.”

The post Golden Boys appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Trio of first-year WCHA head coaches ready to craft exciting new legacy

EDINA, Minn. – A year ago this month, John Harrington was behind the bench, coaching  a team that included Jarome Iginla, Alex Tanguay and Nathan MacKinnon as Patrick Roy looked on from the stands.

Last week, Harrington was about to lace on his skates for his first practice and was aware his team included just one veteran, a senior winger named Katie Johnson. It is quite a transition from coaching in a Colorado Avalanche preseason intrasquad game to running practice at Mankato’s All Seasons Arena.

“I am just as excited,’’ said Harrington, a scout with the Avalanche for the last four years and now a rookie women’s hockey coach at Minnesota State. “Whole new experience.  New players.  It is a chance to teach and that is what I like.”

What a difference a year makes.

Just ask Jenny Potter. Last season she was the head coach at Division III Trinity College in Connecticut and still good enough to play, as her all-American resume at Minnesota and Minnesota Duluth and her medals from the U.S. Olympic team attests. Her hockey skills were reinforced last winter when she played occasionally for the Boston Blades of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League. Last week, Potter was blowing the coaching whistle as the new leader of the women’s program at Ohio State.

“I’m excited to be back in the WCHA,” Potter said. “I had great times playing in the WCHA as a player and now I’m excited to be in it as a coach. Top-to-bottom it’s the most competitive league and that’s what excites me.”

Maura Crowell shares Potter’s excitement about her new position, head coach of the tradition-rich Minnesota Duluth women’s program, which has won five national championships. Two years ago, Crowell coached Harvard to an NCAA berth when Katey Stone was leading the U.S. Olympic team. Last season, Crowell returned to her position as Stone’s top assistant, a person responsible for recruiting many of the Crimson players who reached the NCAA finals before losing to Minnesota at Ridder Arena in March. A month later, Crowell took the next step in her career, moving from the Ivy League to the Twin Ports in northern Minnesota.

”Being a head coach in the WCHA is an unbelievable opportunity,” said Crowell. “The WCHA is the best league in country. I know they have had a ton of success here (in Duluth). The challenge is to bring us back to national prominence and I know we have the resources here to get the job done.”

While three programs are watching new coaches introduce themselves to their players and implementing new systems, the WCHA, which has 15 national championship trophies in its 16 years of existence, has also undergone a renovation with five programs changing coaches in the last 18 months.

“The one thing that has been consistent is each team every year is getting better and better,” Wisconsin’s Mark Johnson, the dean of WCHA coaches, said during the league’s preseason conference call. “It seems like our fan support is increasing. Our product has gotten stronger. That’s a testament to each of the eight athletic departments that have committed to helping women’s hockey grow.”

While there may be a lot of new coaches, there is still a look of familiarity to the WCHA season, which opens this Friday (Sept. 25).

Defending WCHA and national champion Minnesota is once again the preseason coaches’ pick to win the regular season title. Wisconsin, which won the WCHA playoff championship at the Final Face-Off last season, is picked to finish second and North Dakota is picked for third. Not coincidentally, those teams all have veteran coaches – Johnson, starting his 13^th season at Wisconsin, along with North Dakota’s Brian Idalski and Minnesota’s Brad Frost, who each are starting their ninth season as head coaches.

Bemidji State, which won a school-record 21 games and advanced to the WCHA playoff finals in Jim Scanlan’s first season as head coach, is picked to finish fourth, followed by  Minnesota Duluth, Ohio State and St. Cloud State.

“I wasn’t given the keys to a clunker, there were a lot of good players,” said Scanlan about the Beavers’ success last year and praising assistant coaches Amber Fryklund and Shane Veenker, who were holdovers from  former coach Steve Sertich’s staff.

Scanlan, a successful head coach at East Grand Forks High School, and St. Cloud State’s Eric Rud, who was a men’s assistant at St. Cloud State and Colorado College, were the new kids on the WCHA coaching block last year at this time.

Rud, like Harrington, lacked experience coaching women prior to taking over in St. Cloud. His best advice for Harrington?  Keep an open mind. The culture in women’s hockey is a tad different from what Harrington saw as a successful head coach at St. John’s University, a Division III program, and coaching pro teams in Europe before taking a scouting job with Colorado.

Let Rud explain: “We were up a goal in a game early in the season and I walked by the locker room and the tunes are blasting and the girls are having a great time,” Rud said. “To be honest, at first, I panicked. I said, ‘What on earth is going on in here,’ and (SCSU assistant coach and former Olympian and UW player) Jinelle Siergiej pulled me aside and told me, ‘This is what we do. We do this in the Olympics. We do this at Wisconsin. This is our deal.’ It wasn’t that they were screwing around. They were enjoying the process and excited. I enjoy that part of the women’s game.”

Harrington, who like Johnson played on the gold-medal winning 1980 U.S. Men’s Olympic team, said he is energized by the new job.

“As you get older, you look back on your career and I have been fortunate to do a lot of things,” said Harrington, who was also a men’s assistant coach in the WCHA at St. Cloud State and Denver, and coached two pro teams in Switzerland after leaving St. John’s. “A couple years ago, when Goose (Jeff Giesen, now Harrington’s assistant coach) was at St. Cloud, he let me work with his team at practice a few times. It energized me and made me realize I enjoy working with these young women who want to learn as much as they could.

“It whet my appetite to get back into coaching and then this opportunity arose. Mike Hastings (the Mavericks’ men’s coach)  is a good friend of mine and when he told me about the plans for the women’s team moving downtown, it made the job even more appealing.  I think when we start practicing and playing at the (remodeled) Verizon Wireless Center, it will give the program another jolt of excitement.”

Harrington knows his team has only three juniors to go with one senior. He knows the league is tough and four other programs have plans to re-energize their programs and compete with the three holdover coaches who have elite programs.

“We’re certainly going to try to win. I think it’s going to be important for us to have an understanding of success, and that might not include wins and losses,” Harrington said. “We can’t always look in those columns. It’s going to be a process here to develop. I think what I enjoy doing is trying to develop players and to teach.”

“I am acquainting myself with the players, and they are with me and their new teammates. It’s like I said on the conference call, I suggested to the players they might want to put tape on their helmets with their name on it so I know who is who.”

It may be advice that a lot of coaches and fans can employ as the WCHA – with a new look but arguably better than ever – starts another season.

The post Dawn of a new era appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Bemidji State junior goaltender Brittni Mowat (MHM Photo / Brent Cizek)

BEMIDJI STATE

Coach:  Jim Scanlan, 2^nd season

Last season: 21-17-1, set school record for victories, finished in fifth place (13-14-1-1, 41 pts.) and was WCHA playoff runner-up

Key losses: Kristine Grenier had 18 points (3g-15a).

Key returnees: 21 players from last year’s team, which led the nation in shots blocked. Junior goalie Brittni Mowat, who was first-team All-WCHA last season and garnered first-team All-America honors, is back, as are as top defenders Ivana Bilic (fresh off a stint with Hockey Canada’s National Women’s Development Team), Alexis Joyce and Madison Hutchinson. The team’s top two scorers return in Stephanie Anderson (14g-10a=24pts), who participated this summer at USA Hockey’s Women’s National Festival, and Kaitlyn Tougas (13g-14a=27pts).

Top newcomers: Forwards Emily Bergland and Sylvia Marolt had high school success at Thief River Falls, Minn. and are among five freshmen who will try to crack the veteran lineup.

Outlook: Ranked No. 9 nationally in the preseason USCHO.com poll, expectations are high at Bemidji State. “There’s a lot of excitement around the program after the year we had last year,” Scanlan said. “But the ladies realize none of that means anything when the puck drops. You still have to get out there and play the game.”

The post WCHA 2015-16 Women’s Season Preview appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.