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Two Tickets To Paradise

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It’s 35 minutes to game time, and the area around the Providence Civic Center resembles a commodities trading floor. Buyers and sellers barter, and, in most cases, wait each other out. The clock is ticking.

The commodity, is, of course, tickets for the finals of the 2000 NCAA hockey championships.

“I’m willing to go $100 each, but no more than that,” said Sean from Boston. “I need four, and single seats are going for $150.

“I’m going to hold out a little longer. Prices should come down closer to the start of the game.”

Which is often true, but tickets may not be available by then.

So the bartering continues.

The face value of a championship ticket is $40, or $35 for each semifinal. In Rhode Island, a reseller may charge just a 10 percent premium for tickets, and undercover police were out in force on Thursday for the semifinal games, so most people approached for this story were less than willing to talk.

“Get the [expletive] away from me,” said one gentleman when asked if he was buying or selling tickets.

“I’m a reporter, not a cop,” I said.

“Even worse.”

Scalping is a bigger issue this season due to the relatively small size of the Civic Center, which holds about 11,500 for hockey. Last year, the NCAA approved changes that make 15,000 the minimum requirement for future championships.

Last season, 14,447 people attended the finals in Anaheim. 18,276 were at the FleetCenter in Boston in 1998, and 17,537 at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee in 1997.

The decision to award Providence the 2000 championship was made in 1996, following the relatively unsuccessful championships in Cincinnati, where the final game had an announced attendance of 12,957, but a lot of empty seats.

After awarding the 1999 finals to Anaheim, a risky though ultimately successful endeavor, the NCAA wanted a slam dunk for the following year, a sure sellout. So they returned to Providence, site of six prior championships.

The general public bought up all the available tickets the day they went on sale, so the only alternative for fans out of luck before this weekend was to buy packages from travel agents (about $450 including three nights in a hotel and game tickets) or look for someone selling tickets via newspaper ads or on the Internet.

Rumors abounded about three-game ticket packages going for $1,500 on Internet auction site eBay, and several buyers and sellers were put together thanks to the U.S. College Hockey Online message board.

“Chippy” McSwain of Boston is an example.

“I found a guy from Maine on the message board willing to sell three sets of tickets for $800,” he said. “So I left work right away and met him in the parking lot of the Cabaret Club up on Route One. I bought the tickets and went back to work. Then I got back on the message board and posted for sale my tickets for the Maine-North Dakota game, which I wasn’t interested in.

“A few minutes later, I found a different guy from Maine willing to buy that set for $200, so I went back up to the Cabaret Club, he came down from Maine, and we did business.”

McSwain made out pretty well. He wound up with three decent seats for both BC games with a face value of $75 for about $200 each.

Also hoping for a happy ending was “Mike,” a player at Division III UMass-Dartmouth. He drove down to Providence by himself, looking for a little magic similar to what happened in 1997 when the finals were at the FleetCenter.

“Some guy gave us tickets for free right before the game started,” he said. “It was like a miracle.”

Saturday night, though, he had cash in his pocket.

“I’m hoping not to pay more than $150,” he said.

Five minutes to game time. Mike is nowhere to be seen, nor are there a lot of tickets still being exchanged. Buyers and sellers have concluded their business.

Time for the real game to begin.

Finding His Way

By Adam Wodon
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Like most youngsters with any hockey ability, Lee Goren had dreams of the National Hockey League. And, for a Winnipeg native, the standard route to the NHL is normally thought to be through the Canadian major junior system. So Goren, like so many of his friends, went off to the WHL and the Saskatoon Blades.

Five years later, with an NCAA national championship and Frozen Four Most Outstanding Player Award under his belt, he’s the poster child for the college side of the neverending NCAA vs. major junior debate.

Goren did not feel things were working out in Saskatoon. So, he sat down with his dad, Chuck, a former player at Lake Superior, and decided to go to Tier II in Minot with the intention of heading to a U.S. college.

Because that would mean taking a year off, only two schools showed interest. Goren verbally committed to Michigan Tech at one point, but later switched allegiances to North Dakota.

“They wanted me to do different things [in Saskatoon] that I didn’t want to do,” Goren said. “I wanted to play hockey and have fun, and I wasn’t having any fun.”

Goren practiced with North Dakota in 1997, but had to sit while the Sioux won the NCAA championship. It was frustrating being a freshman and not being able to participate, but what he learned that year, helped him over the next three.

“I know how the seniors [in ’97] felt right now,” Goren said. “Being able to win your last game is amazing.

“Those guys had unbelievable leadership. We had a starting goalie, Toby Kvalevog, who had a freshman goalie [Aaron Schweitzer] take over halfway through the year. Just watching him and the way he reacted to it, and being the positive guy on the bench the second half of the year, was huge for us. Then seeing Dane Litke and Mark Pivetz and Kevin Hoogsteen, they led us.

“[This year] we had 28 guys here who loved being around each other and loved having fun, working hard every day, day in and day out, and they deserve this.”

The usual argument in favor of major juniors is that players participate in as close to an NHL type of system as possible. They play over 70 games in a season, and they play with fighting and a center line. The argument in favor of college hockey is that, for late bloomers especially, you can’t beat the kind of improvement you get out of working on skills every day in practice.

In recent years, the NHL has seen former U.S. college players and Europeans dominate the rookie statistics, lending credibility to that argument. Could Goren be the next in line?

“My dad’s ultimate goal for me is to play in the NHL, and mine too, and major junior was considered the fast way,” said Goren. “But I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t developed. Our choice [to go to college] was a good choice.

“Just this year, I’ve improved two to three times from last year. Skating, stickhandling, shooting, everything. We’re on the ice every day, working hard, and the way Coach drills us into the ground every day, if you continue to work as hard as he wants you to, you’re going to get better.”

That decision by Lee and his dad couldn’t have worked out better. He struggled through his sophomore season, with mononucleosis and then a shoulder injury. But by the end of his junior year, he had blossomed. By this season, Goren had become a First-Team All-American and the nation’s leading goal-scorer. And on his dad’s 50th birthday, Lee scored two goals and won the tourney MOP award, providing a most fitting conclusion to the last five years.

The last two seasons were disappointments for the Sioux, who won the WCHA regular-season title but lost in the Final Five and the NCAA tournament. This year, it was Wisconsin’s turn to pull that trick, while the Sioux refocused and charged into the postseason.

“We owed Wisconsin, and we beat them in the WCHA Final Five,” Goren said. “And we owed Boston College because they knocked us out last year, and I wanted them to come out of that side because I wanted a shot at them. They put a sour feeling in our gut last year, and we wanted to do the same thing this year.”

If Goren is to become an NHL star, it could very well be with the Boston Bruins, who own his rights. Ironic, considering the Sioux defeated Boston University to win the ’97 title and Boston College to win this year.

“I don’t know how that’s going to work out,” Goren said with a smile. “But I haven’t thought about it much.”

Adding to the fitting nature of it all, if Goren cannot crack the NHL right away, he would start his pro career where he ended his college one, in Providence, with the AHL’s Bruins.

“If I go on to play, whether it be with Boston or Providence, that would be great,” he said. “I just want to play hockey.

“It’s all up in the air. In May I’ll graduate, so I’d like to do that, get my degree. I’m a month away, and I might just do that.”

At the very least, in the last four years Goren has learned he can do anything he puts his mind to.

Coming Around Again

By Adam Wodon
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It was March 1998, and St. Lawrence was staring at elimination from the ECAC tournament, a dubious distinction when 10 of 12 teams make it.

After being a national contender for years, the Saints spent most of the ’90s in the lower tier of the ECAC standings. They thought they were close to turning things around, but 1998 was another year near the bottom.

Now, needing two wins in the final weekend to make the playoffs, St. Lawrence found itself tied late in overtime against Cornell. With the season in the balance, then-freshman Erik Anderson won a faceoff back to the point, and John Poapst teed up a shot that whistled in with one second remaining in overtime.

St. Lawrence went on to win the next night, make the playoffs, and give first-place Yale a run for its money.

From seemingly innocent seeds come amazing fruits. Two years later, St. Lawrence coach Joe Marsh, his program reborn and again a national contender, remembered years ago.

“It hit the water bottle. And it was probably one of the biggest goals ever scored in our program,” said Marsh. “We won the next night and got in the playoffs by the skin of our teeth in 10th place, and we went down and tied Yale the first two games in a best-of-3 series and lost the third game in a series we were so close to winning.

“I think right there, we got three playoff games under our belt, and the guys started to learn and understand, and got the taste of it, and that set the tone for last year.”

"I do think we can come back. Maybe I’ve learned a little more about what it takes to build a team like this, and I think I appreciate it more."

— Joe Marsh

Last year meant a second-place finish and an appearance in the ECAC tournament championship game against North Country neighbor Clarkson, followed by an NCAA tournament loss to Colorado College in the West Regional.

“To get to the finals and lose the [ECAC] championship game, that then set the tone for this year,” said Marsh.

This year meant a trip to the national semifinals for the first time since 1988.

There’s a sense that St. Lawrence has come full circle. But, by the same token, there’s a bigger sense that it is not done yet.

In 1988, St. Lawrence lost a heartbreaking overtime decision to Lake Superior in the finals at Lake Placid. This year, the Saints dropped an agonizing 4-2 game to Boston College in Providence on Thursday when Jeff Farkas scored with two minutes left.

But the differing aftertaste — or tone — of the two defeats, 12 years apart, is what allows Marsh to still feel good today despite the bitter disappointment of Thursday.

When St. Lawrence battled Lake Superior into overtime of the 1988 title game in Lake Placid before falling short, Marsh had a stocked team loaded up for one run at glory. This time around, however, there’s every reason to believe, just two notches up the mountain removed from the 1998 10th-place finish, that the Saints’ program can maintain these standards of excellence for years to come.

“In ’88, I was a lot younger, I had more hair, it was a different color, and I certainly was a lot stupider,” said Marsh, in the quick-witted, Boston-accented style all his own. “It was my third year as head coach and we came within an overtime goal of a national championship. We were loaded. We just felt we had every component at the right time. There was a karma there. We felt we had everything right there.”

St. Lawrence would have some more good years left, with players like Mike Lappin, Les Kuntar and Dan Laperriere, but the cupboard would run dry. Other teams caught up, and the Saints, unable to give scholarships, watched rival Clarkson and others soar past them.

Of course, it’s no coincidence that St. Lawrence’s revitalization coincides with the green light given by the administration to finally award scholarships.

“That year, 1988, might have hurt us, because the administration might have thought, ‘We’re doing well without scholarships,'” said Marsh.

“Having recruited for that team, I knew how difficult it was. We’re sort of a small market team. But I don’t feel that way anymore. I think college hockey has changed, the parity, the competitiveness.”

Marsh is not being cocky when he says he now believes his program can maintain a certain level of excellence, and return to the tournament again with a good chance to compete. He says it with a bit of tentative nervousness, but it’s simply a statement of reality, that his program is now on a level playing field with schools like Clarkson. It might still be in a small market, but it has plenty going for it, too.

“I do think we can come back,” said Marsh. “Maybe I’ve learned a little more about what it takes to build a team like this, and I think I appreciate it more.”

Some people believe granting scholarships means a school will recruit anyone as long as they could play hockey. But Marsh always knew there was an added obligation to find character kids, because the administration would further scrutinize the program.

“Scholarships have been a plus in many ways,” said Marsh. “It allows us to be more competitive and selective academically. The administration is pleased with the results. The best teams are often the best academically as well. This past semester they had a 2.95 grade point average.”

In that group is the Muir twins, Sean and Mike, from Needham, Mass., who both just finished their sophomore seasons. Marsh says they have run their own landscaping business since they were 13, and Sean was a recent St. Lawrence Freshman Scholar-Athlete of the Year award winner.

“We’re well-balanced and well-focused, on and off the ice,” said Marsh. “Long term is what were looking for. We want a kid we don’t have to baby sit for, who comes in and creates an agenda you can be successful with.”

Of course, it still has to be done on the ice. One of the nice residual effects from making it to the tournament, was the contacts Marsh made, which then helped compound the success.

“I’m really thankful to get into [the tournament] and get to know some of the other coaches better,” said Marsh. “A guy like Jeff Sauer offers us an opportunity to go and play in Wisconsin, and we lost and tied, and it was one of the best trips we’ve ever taken. At the time they were [ranked] first in the country, and we got a lot out of it.”

St. Lawrence was successful this season thanks to a well-rounded group, led by senior defensemen Dale Clarke and Justin Harney. The offense had five double-digit scorers, led by Alan Fyfe’s 17, but none with 20 goals.

But as with any successfully rejuvenated program, there are the unsung guys who laid the foundation along the way, guys who gave their all to the team but who may not have been around to see the fruits of their labor.

“We have people that have graduated like Bob Prier and Paul DiFrancesco that are still in that room in a way,” said Marsh. “They set a tone, set an agenda, that has affected a lot of the players when they were younger, like Clarke and Harney, and now they’ve passed it along. Success breeds success.”

The Saints lose just one regular forward from this year’s team, 13-goal scorer Jason Windle. His linemates, Fyfe and Erik Anderson, along with Mike Gellard and Brandon Dietrich will form a solid core.

But there’s also plenty of reinforcements on the way, most notably Russ Bartlett. Bartlett was the third-leading scorer for Boston University last year, but was unceremoniously cut from the team by BU coach Jack Parker before this season. Bartlett was stunned, but he recovered, came to St. Lawrence for his year-in-waiting, worked out with the team, and is ready for big things.

“I think he’s taken the high road,” said Marsh. “He’s come in and worked very hard. He’s had to battle the mental part of it, being in limbo.

“Jack [Parker] runs his team as he sees fit. I think Jack likes the kid a lot, but he went in a different direction. But there was never any bashing. I would never engage in something like that.

“[Bartlett’s] faster, he’s stronger, he might be so appreciative now. He’s not going to take anything for granted.”

Rich Peverly will be another addition to the frontline.

Marsh was also the beneficiary of some more good fortune when he landed defensemen Ryan Glenn (6-foot-3, 210 lbs.) and Jeremy Cormier (6-2, 205) from the Walpole Stars junior program. They were ticketed for UMass and Maine, respectively, at one point, until circumstances changed their decision. Both will be over 20 when joining the Saints, and will help at least to begin fill the void left by the departures of Harney, Clark and Josh LeRoy.

“Cormier is a big strong kid who can shoot it right through the boards,” said Marsh. “Glenn is a very dynamic player, aggressive, skilled and he competes like it’s World War III.”

Perhaps most importantly, Marsh will have Derek Gustafson in goal. The freshman emerged this season from a pack of three goalies, and will get a lot of preseason attention in 2000-01.

“Hopefully we can take the next step, but I’m a realist too,” said Marsh. “It will be pretty hard to replace No. 8 and 15 [Clarke and Harney]. But I definitely feel we have a better understanding of the process.”

Harney was the cornerstone for the Saints the last few seasons, and he can take pride in leaving the program in much better shape than when he arrived. He was a Boston-area kid whose brother was a captain for Boston College, but he chose St. Lawrence.

“Looking back, I wouldn’t have done it any other way,” said Harney. “I have absolutely no regrets at all, and I don’t think anyone on our team should have any regrets. My brother Joe played at BC. He was captain there in ’96. Obviously, things have to come to an end, and it’s tough to swallow right now, but I’m sure we’ll look back [fondly].”

Said Marsh, “To be involved in this tournament, and a classic game like we had against BU, it whets your appetite.

“I’m just glad they have something to show for the hard work. They can stick a banner up there in Appleton [Arena]. I guess we’ll even get them some rings, if we can dig up some money. Hopefully the alumni [are] still pretty happy.”

Battle Along The Blue Line

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The opportunity remains for the Eagles to remove the “1949” title — referring to the school’s last national championship — thanks to a dramatic third-period comeback on the way to a 4-2 victory over St. Lawrence on Thursday night. That’s the good news for the Eagles. The bad news for the Eagles is their next opponent: North Dakota, a team that bases its existence on the “run-and-gun” offense.

And thus it’s time for the Eagle defense to step to the forefront once again.

“We’re trying to enjoy the moment and just be energized by it,” said Eagles head coach Jerry York. “It’s not a situation where we can be just overjoyed to be here. We want to be energized and try to win a national championship.

“Having said that, when you get this far in the season, the other club is always going to be a very good hockey team. There isn’t any reason to think that North Dakota isn’t the club it’s been over the last three years.”

York is alert to the offensive style of North Dakota, and believes this year’s club ranks among the best.

“I call North Dakota one of the Original Six,” said York, referencing the club’s storied tradition in college hockey and the founders of the NHL in one fell swoop. “This particular team is very quick. [Jeff] Panzer is one of the outstanding forwards in college hockey, and with Goehring back in the goal, they have an All-American in goal.”

The defensive style that the Eagles will need to play is no strange concept. York has preached an “offense from defense” style of play all season, which has led to Boston College setting a school record for lowest goals-against average. The system is embedded in the heads of all the players, proven by talking to any of them.

“[At this point in the year] you have to tighten up [the defense] a lot,” said junior defenseman Brooks Orpik. “You can’t take as many offensive chances.

“We have guys like [Mike] Mottau and Bobby [Allen] who are offensive. Then the rest of our guys sit back and play [defense].”

Given this Sioux style of play, one thing that helps the Eagles is having the Hobey Baker Award winner, Mike Mottau, anchoring the blue line. It was Mottau who sparked the comeback in Thursday’s semifinal, scoring a third-period goal to even the game at two.

“Mike has been a great leader for us all year,” said fellow senior Blake Bellefeuille. “He gave a great speech before the third period, and then it was unbelievable — he went out and scored the tying goal.

“You’ve got to believe in a guy like Mike Mottau. When he speaks, everybody listens. He’s been there all year for us and I can’t say enough about the guy.”

Though the two clubs have only met 12 times in history, the Eagles and Sioux are at least a little familiar with each other. The two teams met one year ago in the NCAA West Regional, when the Eagles upset then top-seeded North Dakota, 3-1. It was the third meeting of the two clubs in the NCAA tournament, with the Eagles victorious twice.

And though some things are different, York still believe that a lot of the Sioux team is the same.

“They’re different in the fact that [current Los Angeles Kings forward Jason] Blake is not there,” York said. “But a lot of the same faces besides Jason are there.

“They’ve really changed from their heyday of the 70’s and 80’s. Then they were a really strong, physical team — an intimidating team — and they won a lot of games using that as a background. But they’ve evolved, just like the WCHA has, to a quick, up-tempo club.”

Putting the opponent aside, the Eagles have used the last two seasons as a springboard to this national championship game. Two years ago, BC reached the championship by lighting the nation on fire in the second half of the season before eventually falling to Michigan, 3-2 in overtime. And last season, Maine ended the Eagles’ run during the semifinals.

Bellefeuille commented on what that experience has meant to the club, and what the expectations are Saturday.

“Going into the [1998 championship game], there was kind of no pressure,” said Bellefeuille. “We were on a streak there and just went in to have fun.

“I think the attitude on our team is a lot different this year. We’re going into this game right here knowing that we have the guys on the team that can go out and win the game. We take nothing away from [North Dakota], but we feel we can go in there and win tomorrow night.”

York agrees.

“Two years ago, it was the first time that anyone on the team had played in the Frozen Four. This year I think about 90 percent of our team has played in two Frozen Four. We’ve got a little more experience, a little more understanding of what’s going on here.

“There’s a lot of obstacles still in the way if we want to win a national championship,” said York. “But that’s the way it should be this time of year.”

And if those obstacles are scaled by the Eagles on Saturday evening, no one in Chestnut Hill will have to listen to “1949” ever again. You have to think that listening to people say “2000” just won’t be very painful.

BC Notes: Goaltender Scott Clemmensen did not attend the postgame press conference after Thursday’s semifinal win over St. Lawrence. York said that he had tweaked a muscle, but later added that it’s nothing to be concerned about.

“[Scott’s muscle pain] is not an issue,” York clarified. “The trainer just wanted to ice whatever it was, and that’s why he didn’t come down.”

If BC is victorious on Saturday night, it will reach the 30-win plateau for the first time since the 1986-87 season. That year’s club, led by Kevin Stevens, posted a record of 31-9-0, but lost in the NCAA quarterfinals to Minnesota. That was the only club in BC history to win 30 games; the last two seasons, BC has posted 27 and 28 wins, and both year’s lost in the Frozen Four (1998, championship game to Michigan, and 1999, semifinals to Maine).

Mottau Wins Hobey Baker Award

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Boston College senior defenseman Mike Mottau was named today as the 20th winner of the Hobey Baker Memorial Award, given annually to college hockey’s most outstanding player.

A three-time All-American, Mottau has led the Eagles to three consecutive appearances in the Frozen Four and will be looking to cap that Saturday with BC’s first national championship since 1949. He becomes the first defenseman since Tom Kurvers in 1984 to win the honor.

Mottau topped two teammates, senior Jeff Farkas and junior Brian Gionta, as well as seven other finalists in the balloting.

The Hobey Baker Award caps a string of individual awards bestowed on Mottau in recent weeks. In addition to the All-America honors, he took league awards as Hockey East’s Co-Player of the Year, Best Defensive Defenseman and First Team All-Hockey East. He was also named the winner of the Walter Brown Award, given annually to New England’s outstanding American-born college hockey player.

A stellar defender, Mottau also quarterbacks one of the nation’s best power plays and is a mainstay on BC’s penalty-kill unit, which set a Hockey East record this year for efficiency. He enters the national championship game with 43 points on the season and a 27-120–157 scoring line for his career.

Since 1981, the Decathlon Hotel & Athletic Club in Bloomington, Minn., has presented the Hobey Baker Award. This year marked the first time that a fan component was added to the selection process, as the 20-member committee included representation based on USCHO’s Vote for Hobey, won by Laing with Reinprecht the runner-up.

Mottau becomes the second Boston College player to win, preceded by David Emma (1991), and only the third defenseman, following Mark Fusco (1983) and Kurvers (1984). He is to be honored at a banquet on Friday, April 14, in Bloomington.

Back In The Spotlight

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Jeff Panzer is not a picky man. He’ll take another 2-0 final in the national championship game Saturday night.

Just as long as North Dakota has the 2.

Panzer and the Fighting Sioux could only find the back of the net twice in their national semifinal against Maine on Thursday, though that was enough to get them here. But against Boston College in the NCAA title game, most expect there to be quite a bit of skating, with offense still at something of a premium.

“I don’t know if we want to start swapping goals, make it an 8-7 game or something like that, because that’s not really our style,” Panzer said. “We like to score goals but we play pretty good defensively too.”

The usual assumption in matching speed with speed is that scoring chances will arise. In a national championship, however, teams aren’t going to risk taking a good chance if there’s a chance for another good chance to result on the other end.

That was evident in the semifinal, when North Dakota’s goals came on a power play and while shorthanded. Both occurred in a similar fashion, with the scorer beating the defenseman to the outside and firing a quick shot.

But it was obvious to all what made those plays happen — the Sioux’s ability to transition out of their own zone and the speed of their players.

However, the thing that kept coming up from Blais and the Sioux players at a news conference on Friday was that they had to get to the net to create chances.

“All year long we’ve been having success driving to the net, getting rebounds, tip-ins, so-called garbage goals, but that’s how we’re going to have to score,” North Dakota coach Dean Blais said. “There’s not going to be a lot of pretty plays, not a lot of 3-on-2s, 2-on-1s, outnumbered situations by either team.

“We’re going to try to shoot the puck from everywhere and hopefully get some bounces.”

And don’t expect either team to get much of a jump on the other, Sioux senior Peter Armbrust said.

“Best-case scenario, we’d like to get a big jump going, but I don’t think that’s going to be the case,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a tight game. It’s going to be a battle, it’s going to be back and forth. Both teams have so much firepower that you’re going to see it go back and forth. It’s a matter of who’s leading with the last minute left.

“And who knows, something might happen after that.”

The Sioux have more than just a national title to play for against the Eagles. Payback is also on the table. In Madison last season, BC knocked UND out of the NCAA tournament in the quarterfinals.

“We’re trying to avenge that loss,” Blais said. “We seem to play on a lot of that this year. Wisconsin beat us twice in Madison in overtime and we beat them in the [WCHA] Final Five. We were looking forward to playing New Hampshire in the quarterfinal but Niagara beat them.”

One of the things North Dakota can’t afford to do against BC is take many penalties. That very easily could have cost them against Maine.

The Black Bears had a pair of 5-on-3 power-play chances but the Sioux were able to get by. But Blais doesn’t want his team to even be in that situation.

“I thought last night we were just totally off our game as far as penalties,” Blais said. “I watched them play Michigan State and I think they went five out of six on the power play. We were lucky last night to get away with two 5-on-3s to a very good Maine team.”

They were lucky, with the help of Sioux goaltender Karl Goehring, who made 30 saves for his first NCAA tournament win. Another shutout from the junior goaltender who has broken many of North Dakota’s goaltending records would be unheard of. But not out of the question.

“It’ll be tough to hold that team to a zero on the board,” Sioux forward Lee Goren said. “But with Karl in the net, anything’s possible.”

Leger Wins Fifth Annual Humanitarian Award

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Jim Leger is comfortable in the spotlight. As a senior captain of the Maine Black Bears, he’s a celebrity throughout the state. An obvious BMOC at Orono and a hero to youth players in rinks from Boston to Bangor.

Yet Leger has generally kept his life off the ice out of the limelight. Until now, that is. The secret’s out: Jim Leger is the recipient of the 2000 Humanitarian Award, given annually to “college hockey’s finest citizen.”

The senior from Saugus, Mass., is the fifth person to win the award, although the Humanitarian committee prefers the term “recipient,” since according to director Jeffery Millman, “all the nominees are winners.”

Leger, who excels in school as well as in the community, has never made a big deal out of commitment to volunteerism.

“I don’t volunteer to be recognized,” he said.

It was only after his school nominated Leger for the Humanitarian Award that this part of his life became public.

“We found out things about him that even we never knew he did,” said his father, Jim. “He doesn’t brag about them.”

“My reward has always been to see a smile on someone that I have helped,” said Leger, whose vocation began when attending Phillips Andover Academy.

“I was a junior at the time. The professor asked if there was anyone in class that wanted to help out with bilingual kids. We would go to the class and discuss poetry. The kids would also write poetry.”

That fueled his desire to get more involved with children, so he began working with handicapped kids, getting his fellow athletes at Phillips Andover to join him.

“We would do anything with them that they wanted,” he said of the mentally challenged kids that he worked with. “We would play with them if they wanted, or we would sit and just hang out with them.”

Leger next played for the Stratford Catillions in Ontario, and pitched in there was well. He began working with elementary school children, tutoring the ones needing special help, as well as coaching youth teams.

“You should see a hockey player coach a girl’s basketball team,” he said. “But we went to the county playoffs and we had one of the most successful teams they had in a long time.”

Leger then went to Maine, where he made the hockey team as a walk-on. He scored 20 goals and 20 assists in his four years, including nine goals and nine helpers this season. Two of the nine tallies were game-winners, and two came shorthanded.

The business major, who was voted “most inspirational” and “unsung hero” by his teammates, received the Dean Smith Award as the top male scholar athlete at Maine, compiling a 3.67 grade-point average.

Still, Leger had time to turn his volunteerism up several notches, including organizing a record-setting Toys for Tots program, serving as the Grand Marshal for the local Walk for Multiple Sclerosis, and devoting countless hours to kids in schools and hospitals in the Orono area.

“He has a special interest in helping children,” said Maine assistant athletic director Tracey Flynn. “If a volunteer is needed, Jim can be counted on to be there. Better yet, when he participates in a community service activity, he invites fellow student athletes along.”

He takes his captainship very seriously, helping teammates with their studies and offering guidance on and off the ice.

“If you have a problem with anything,” said teammate Cory Larose, the Bears’ leading scorer this season, “you just go to Jimmy.”

“The term ‘role model’ is frequently used by people who come in contact with Jim,” said co-founding trustee Nicholas Lopardo. “He truly personifies this award.”

As far as the future goes, Leger graduates in a month and says that he would like to continue playing hockey somewhere. Wherever that may be, they’ll be some lucky teammates and children.

“I plan to continue volunteering even after I graduate,” he said.

“I can’t see myself stopping.”

A Class Act

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Boston College had just defeated St. Lawrence in dramatic fashion to advance to a national championship game against North Dakota. The Eagles were celebrating in the locker room.

BC coach Jerry York got everyone’s attention and told them to make sure the door was closed.

“This doesn’t leave the locker room,” he said. “You can’t tell anyone.

“But Mike Mottau won the Hobey Baker.”

The locker room erupted. Jubilant cheers echoed through the room as the team voiced its pleasure at the selection. Each player moved over to Mottau, and one by one he hugged his fellow Eagles.

“I cried,” said the senior captain. “My emotions got the better of me. It was an unbelievable experience. It was a real special time. I’ll never forget it.”

With a lesser individual or a different mix of personalities, the cheering might have been more muted or at least not quite so unanimous.

For only the second time in the award’s history, a team had not one, not two, but three finalists. Senior Jeff Farkas and junior Brian Gionta had joined Mottau on the Hobey committee’s list of the top 10 candidates.

Many teams might have broken into a factions, each supporting their best buddy of the three. But not the Eagles.

When Gionta and Farkas were asked at the award ceremonies if Mottau’s coronation had contained just the slightest bittersweet taste since it meant that they had not won, the two teammates practically fell over each other quashing the notion.

“No, not at all,” answered Gionta at the same time that Farkas said, “Absolutely not.”

“Neither of us think that,” continued Farkas.

“It’s great for him,” said Gionta, interrupting. “He’s a great kid. We’re best friends with him. It’s a great honor for him.”

The tag-team endorsement switched to Farkas.

"He’s a difference-maker. He makes a difference in the game. He makes a difference in the locker room. He makes a difference, I think, in college hockey."

— BC coach Jerry York on Mike Mottau

“I’m ecstatic,” he said. “The kid is my roommate. I’ve lived with him for three years. It’s almost the same as me being up there or Brian being up there getting it.

“That’s how we all feel. We’re a tight team. Him winning it means a lot to us. We’re really proud of him.”

Such unity in a potentially divisive situation speaks volumes of the character of Farkas and Gionta as well as the undivided respect that Mottau has earned from his teammates.

And it sure doesn’t hurt that Mottau deflects so much attention away from himself. He offers a humble willingness to share the credit that nips envy in the bud.

It took only the third sentence of his acceptance speech for him to say, “I’m really proud of the two guys on my team who were finalists, Jeff Farkas and Brian Gionta.”

He continued spreading the praise.

“I’d like to thank my teammates,” he said. “We all have to keep in mind that hockey is a team game. This is an individual award, but there’s no possible way that this could be accomplished without great teammates.”

Of course, even Tinseltown phonies lay down thick layers of praise and thanks when accepting Oscar awards, only to show their true colors away from the spotlight.

But with Mottau, the attention he deflects and the generous praise he offers to his teammates is genuine.

“That’s just the kind of person that he is,” said Farkas. “He doesn’t want to put too much attention on himself. He’d rather let everyone else have the limelight. But he deserves to be in front of everyone today.”

When asked about his reticence to take his share of the bows, Mottau offered his parents as the reason.

“That’s the way I’ve been brought up,” he said. “My parents haven’t so much instructed me one way or another how to act. But the way that my father acts and my mom acts — I just respect them tremendously as people.

“I’d rather be known by everyone else as a better person than a better hockey player. The stats — the goals and the assists — will be there, but to let people know that I’m a better person is what I’m looking for. That lives a lot longer than the stats.

“Deflecting the attention isn’t something I try to do. It’s just the way I am.”

In his speech, Mottau offered a touching tribute to his older brother Rob, who preceded him by five years into the collegiate ranks, where the elder Mottau played for the since-disbanded University of Illinois-Chicago.

“I’d like to thank my brother Rob, who’s been my idol since I was really young,” said the younger Mottau. “He’s still my idol today. I’d just like to thank him for everything he’s done for me, letting me become the person that I am and the player as well.”

Mottau also thanked his sisters, Charlene and Kimberly, for their support, saying with a wide grin, “I had to go to their dance recitals. It was a tradeoff because they had to go to the rinks.”

With a class act like Mottau, it’s small wonder that York heaps high the praise for his captain.

“Mike Mottau is a real ambassador for college hockey,” said York. “Mike has a real presence about him. He’s a very charismatic figure. On our campus, he is so well thought of by the professors, by the coaches in all the different sports, by our student body and particularly by his teammates.

“He has a real influence on how they conduct themselves in practice and how they conduct themselves on the road.

“He’s a difference-maker. He makes a difference in the game. He makes a difference in the locker room. He makes a difference, I think, in college hockey.

“When you look at Boston College and all the tremendous sports figures that we’ve had, Mike is going to be right with Doug Flutie, Dana Barros and David Emma.”

That’s one illustrious group. But it’s also one in which Mottau fits quite nicely indeed.

The Right Choice

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North Dakota coach Dean Blais didn’t have to say much to sum up his team’s 2-0 national semifinal victory over Maine Thursday.

His goaltender, Karl Goehring, did most of the talking with his play on the ice.

Goehring, who missed the Western Collegiate Hockey Association Final Five and the quarterfinal round of the NCAA tournament with a concussion, and who didn’t know if he would return for Thursday’s game, made it look like he was never gone, stopping all 30 shots he faced.

But the decision to start Goehring was tough. Andy Kollar, who led the Sioux to wins in their last three games, made a good case for starting in his fourth straight.

After the game, though, there was no question.

“I guess we chose the right one,” Blais said.

A situation like this could be construed as a challenge for a goaltender coming off an injury. Thrusting Goehring, who was 0-2 in NCAA tournament games coming in, into a game of such magnitude is almost like putting a pitcher into Game 7 of the World Series on two days’ rest.

Goehring, who found out at 9 a.m. Thursday that he would lead North Dakota onto the ice five hours later, played up to the challenge by putting together a solid performance despite Maine’s intentions toward crashing the net.

“I was just trying to keep my focus,” Goehring said. “This is too much fun right now to get worried about stuff like that.”

Goehring and the Sioux were able to kill off two Maine five-on-three chances, the second helped by a penalty to Maine’s Brandon Walsh that negated part of the power play.

“There were a few scrambles right away on the power play where I don’t know how the puck ended up underneath,” Goehring said. “I’m just thankful that it did.”

Luck aside, Goehring had to work for his career-high eighth shutout of the season. He showed quick reflexes on a handful of occasions, denying Maine chances from the slot and clearing out rebounds.

The Black Bears, who said they were aiming high on the goaltender and subsequently missed the net occasionally, were turned away time and again.

“Karl, if he can see it, he’ll stop it,” said North Dakota’s Bryan Lundbohm, who scored the Sioux’s first goal of the game.

Goehring, who improved to 18-6-4 this season, had to endure a tough two weeks of waiting. Waiting to get his next chance.

He suffered a concussion in practice the week before the Final Five and was sidelined for more than a week with headaches.

On a day when the rest of the Sioux took a break from practice this week, Goehring was given permission to take to the ice with the puck-shooting machine to get back in game shape.

It apparently worked.

“I just got prepared the last two weeks the best way I knew how — by working hard,” Goehring said. “I just stuck to my game and fortunately I got an opportunity to play.”

Now, he’ll play for the national championship on Saturday. Not bad for a 5-foot-7, 160-pound kid who’s been told he’s too small to play goaltender for a major college.

“I’ve heard that all my life and it’s been a big motivation for me,” Goehring said. “I’ve kind of used those comments to motivate me to work harder.”

Pucks In Providence

By Paul Burton
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Welcome back, old friend! Haven’t seen you in five years.

For the first time since 1995 and the seventh time overall, Providence, R.I., is the host for the NCAA Hockey Championships — the Frozen Four. And with all due respect to Colorado Springs, Detroit, Milwaukee and Albany, to name a few, there is no better gathering place for college hockey’s best.

The games are now televised, tickets are $40 and $35, the event is sold out months in advance and fans in the East have had to scrounge the Internet for ticket brokers in America’s heartland. It was a lot simpler in 1965, when Brown University hosted the event at its cozy Meehan Auditorium — so low-key that legendary Coach John “Snooks” Kelley simply had Boston College commute by bus to and from both games that year.

We’ve witnessed the surreal, ranging from triple overtime to a Zamboni in city streets. We have seen future Hall of Famers and Olympic heroes.

As Providence VII beckons, let’s give the kaleidoscope a good shake, sit back and enjoy flickering images from the past:

1965

BC’s upset of North Dakota in the Thursday night game was a stunner, for sure. Back when the Frozen Four was the Only Four, East victories over the West in tournaments were a rarity. But the Eagles, sparked by future NHL coach John Cunniff, current Eagles coach Jerry York and a spunky goalie in Pat Murphy, held off the Fighting Sioux. While this week’s games are televised nationally, fans back then who didn’t make the trip from Boston settled for the radio voice of Fred Cusick, who went on to become the legendary Boston Bruins’ TV broadcaster.

One night later, host Brown, which qualified by upsetting BU in the ECAC semifinals at Boston Arena, was no match for Michigan Tech, falling 4-0. There was no ESPN or ESPN2, but if you lived in Boston and had a good antenna, you could pick up Channel 10 in Providence and ignore your mother’s pleas not to watch television through such a snowy reception.

BC, likewise, was a notch below Michigan Tech; head coach John MacInnes’ Huskies, with future NHL Hall of Famer Tony Esposito in the net, prevailed 8-2.

1978

As residual snow from the Blizzard of ’78 was heading for the exits, there was a storm of controversy.

BU, which had lost but once in the regular season, fell 5-1 to Providence in the ECAC semifinals. After BC beat the Friars in the league title game, the second East berth was in question. What evolved was an additional outbracket game — the WCHA and CCHA already had one — between BU and Providence, this time at Providence College’s Schneider Arena. BU won 5-3, drawing Wisconsin in the Final Four.

The defending champion Badgers’ trip East both tickled and concerned hotel operators. Wisconsin, which won the nationals in Detroit a year earlier, always travels well, but their fans are more than a tad raucous. Holiday Inn’s Detroit people called their Providence managers to say, in effect, “bolt down everything, Wisconsin’s coming.”

The best hockey Wisconsin played was the foot variety in hotel lobbies; the Badgers fell to BU 5-2 and lost the consolation game to Bowling Green, which was making its first Final Four appearance.

On Saturday night, it came down to the championship of an avenue — Boston’s Commonwealth, as BU, saddened during the ECAC playoffs by the cancer death of coach Jack Parker’s wife, beat BC by a cosmetic score of 5-3. It was the Terriers’ fourth victory of the season over the Eagles, prompting defenseman and tournament MVP Jack O’Callahan to say: “Heck, we shouldn’t have to beat BC for the national championship. We can do that anytime.”

Little did we realize that two years’ hence, the likes of BU’s O’Callahan, Jim Craig and Dave Silk, Wisconsin’s Mark Johnson and Bowling Green’s Ken Morrow would join their U.S. Olympic teammates at a gold medal ceremony in Lake Placid.

1980

Northern Michigan carried the banner of the CCHA, becoming the first team from that league to reach the title game, but favored North Dakota had too much Doug Smail and Phil Sykes. Smail scored four goals and Sykes had four assists as the Fighting Sioux avenged their loss by a goal to Minnesota in the previous year’s showdown game.

The Sioux survived a scare in the Thursday semifinal, scoring four goals in the last 10 minutes to turn a 1-0 deficit into a 4-1 victory over Dartmouth. Bob Gaudet, the current Big Green coach, played admirably in defeat for the Big Green. Cornell, which fell 4-3 to Northern Michigan, has yet to return to the semifinals.

The consolation game between league rivals Cornell and Dartmouth had everyone in a testy mood. “The only people who show up for the consolation games are the reporters,” Cornell coach Dick Bertrand said.

1982

A half-hour after the championship game ended, red-clad fans were on the ice, clapping, cheering, singing the Bud Song and chanting “sieve” after kicking milk cartons into the net.

This, after their team lost by three goals.

Yes, Wisconsin fans were their usual entertaining selves, but North Dakota stole the show, scoring three third-period goals to break a 2-2 tie and prevail, 5-2. The Sioux, in winning, avenged a 9-0 loss to the same Badgers in the WCHA playoffs. Sykes, the erstwhile setup man for Smail, took his own bow this time, grabbing the MVP honors.

Two years after the Miracle On Ice at Lake Placid, NHL scouts were there en masse, having begun to take college hockey more seriously. And whom they saw included the likes of Wisconsin’s Chris Chelios and Bruce Driver (the latter was the only Badger to wear “ski pants”), and North Dakota’s James Patrick and Troy Murray. It marked the collegiate finale for the late Wisconsin coach “Badger Bob” Johnson, who left for the NHL.

Northeastern made its lone appearance in the Frozen Four, New Hampshire its third in six years. Both lost routinely in the semifinals.

1986

Fans had a one-hour wait between the first and second periods of the championship game between Michigan State and Harvard. As it turned out, the Zamboni was broken and they had to borrow one from Brown. The driver had to negotiate hilly streets down from the College Hill neighborhood, then drive through downtown, drawing attention from gawkers, as though they were watching plodding circus elephants.

Not even a one-hour intermission could keep Harvard fresh. The Crimson could not hold leads of 2-0, 3-1 and 4-2; despite HU tying the game 5-5 on Andy Janfaza’s tally with about 12 minutes remaining, the Spartans won it on Mike Donnelly’s one-time off a faceoff with three minutes left in regulation. Cries of “Fight, fight, go green white!” reverberated through the Civic Center. The win more than atoned for State fans’ disappointment earlier in the evening, when they assembled in the Civic Center’s bar, the Royal Roost, to watch the basketball team lose an NCAA tournament game on a disputed call.

Harvard, fatigued from having played the Friday night game — there were separate semifinals on Thursday and Friday back then — would compete in three title games in seven years, finally winning the championship in 1989. In all three games, the Thursday night winner beat the Friday night winner. The NCAA dropped the Thursday-Friday setup after 1989.

1995

Several media members were assembled in the interview room deep in the Civic Center’s bowels, and the Maine-Michigan game lasted 4 hours, 45 minutes, so late that they began serving the pre-game meal for the night game. Finally Dan Shermerhorn ended it in the first minute of the third 20-minute overtime.

Before coach Red Berenson and the Michigan entourage could come in, Providence College sports information director Tim Connor got everyone’s attention. “ESPN lost the feed,” he said, to no one in particular but loud and clear enough for all. “They missed the winning goal.”

Jolly broadcaster Bob Norton, in between ESPN assignments, had a mouth full of spaghetti, but his Boston accent still rang clear. “They went out to Phoenix to get an update on the golf,” he said. ESPN during the overtime had switched coverage to “The Deuce,” ESPN2, then got tangled on a feed and missed the end of a game which had become surreal.

One coach, an assistant from Division III Trinity in Hartford, Conn., killed time before the BU-Minnesota night game by sleeping on a park bench downtown.

In the end, it was BU’s turn. The Terriers, who outscored their foes 11-3 in the third period of three tournament games, dumped Minnesota 7-3 and weary Maine 6-2 for their first championship in 17 years and second under Parker’s tenure — both in Providence.

Paul Burton is news editor for the Parsippany (N.J.) Daily Record. He has written for Rinkside magazine in New York City as well as covering the NHL’s Hartford Whalers and doing broadcasting and commentary work for high school and college hockey.

Legacy Denied

By Adam Wodon
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Another year, another champion.

While college hockey’s fraternity of teams is a select few compared to many other NCAA sports, the task of repeating as champion is among the most difficult.

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With Maine’s semifinal loss to North Dakota, another chance for it to happen — for the first time in 28 years — went by the boards. In fact, in only three of the last 25 years has a team returned to the final game the season following a championship, the last coming in 1993 when defending champion Lake Superior was eliminated by the heroics of Maine’s Jim Montgomery.

We don’t yet know who the first champion of the new millennium will be, but it won’t be Maine.

Part of the problem with repeating is that, inevitably, every year, every other team is gunning for you. Then, also inevitably, if a team gets close to repeating, the media asks them about it, and players are forced to talk about how badly they want to do it.

“Maine was talking about repeating, and that gave the guys even more motivation,” said North Dakota coach Dean Blais after the Sioux won Thursday, 2-0.

But as Maine senior Ben Guite pointed out, players are savvy enough these days not to slight their opponents, who will hang their hats on any possible comment.

“It’s hard not to think of it because we want it, we want to win it all,” said Guite. “When you only have two games left to that goal, one of the ways to put it is to say we want to win it. But in no way does that take away from North Dakota. It’s just something we want to accomplish.”

Wisconsin is certainly one team that’s been in position to repeat, most recently in 1991, only to come up short.

“The psychological part of things at this time of the year is big,” said Wisconsin coach Jeff Sauer. “The teams are pretty even, so every little thing that goes on matters. North Dakota, I think, had a better team last year. But they lost, so this year, they’re coming in more hungry. Maine won [last year], so maybe they’re not as hungry.”

“I don’t think it’s something as a team we talked about,” said Maine senior Jim Leger. “It’s something that fans talked about it. Whatever fuels [North Dakota], that’s their business, but we didn’t look at it like that. It just didn’t work out.

Maine coach Shawn Walsh, however, downplayed any idea of pre-game repeat chatter as motivation for the Sioux Thursday afternoon.

“I don’t think any talk was any factor in the game,” Walsh said. “Early in the year, it’s a factor. For some teams, it makes their seasons to beat you. Their student body shows up. But that’s good, because it makes you tougher.”

Walsh says the biggest difficulty to winning back-to-back titles is simply the difficulty in winning a title at all. One championship is hard enough, so purely by odds, winning two has to be extremely difficult.

“The No. 1 reason is parity: it’s having [just] 18 scholarships,” said Walsh. “It’s a buyer’s market. There’s so many players, even though a Maine or North Dakota can get good players, there’s so many other good players, and it’s become even more so with expansion into Europe and teams recruiting in Western Canada — even Eastern teams — there’s so many players, you can stock a pretty good club.

“And the coaching in college hockey has improved dramatically. And you don’t have the firings you have in the NHL, so you have a real consistency there.”

Nonetheless, seniors like Leger leave school with something most players never get: one championship.

“In this day and age with the parity, it’s definitely harder,” said Leger. “It’s going to take a lot. But we made a good run at it.”

Great Players, Great Plays

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Sometimes games come down to Xs and Os. A brilliantly designed faceoff play. A game plan that strikes at an opponent’s Achilles’ heel. A power play that breaks down a penalty kill with the precision of a Swiss watch.

Blake Bellefeuille rose to the occasion in the semifinal against St. Lawrence, sending the Eagles to the final game once again.

Blake Bellefeuille rose to the occasion in the semifinal against St. Lawrence, sending the Eagles to the final game once again.

But other times games are won and lost on raw talent. And Boston College’s 4-2 win over St. Lawrence served as Exhibit A for such cases. Great individual efforts by Blake Bellefeuille and Jeff Farkas proved to be the difference between advancing to the national championship game and breaking out the golf clubs.

“Like most coaches, I’ve been in the game a long time,” said BC coach Jerry York. He then added with a grin, “I can actually take chalk and put it in my left hand and describe plays.

“There’s not a lot of science to it. What we have to do to be successful is to recruit quality young guys who are good hockey players who have a good work ethic and want to fit into a team situation. I think we’ve done that.”

Down 1-0 in the second period and killing a penalty, Bellefeuille gave the Eagles a major lift by outracing a St. Lawrence defender to a loose puck behind the net and then roofing it for a game-turning shorthanded goal.

“I gave him a little tuck-and-go when I was skating back with him and tried to get in front of him,” said Bellefeuille. “I got some body position on him when I checked him against the boards. The puck squirted free and I wheeled around the net and just got it upstairs. Fortunately, it found the right post.”

The Eagles found themselves down again entering the third period, 2-1. Mike Mottau almost scored a goal with some flash after stepping around one defender, but his shot clanged the post. Within seconds, however, he had tied the game on that most workmanlike goal, a shot from the point through a screen.

“I just wristed it through and the puck had eyes,” he said.

With the season hanging in the balance, Farkas painted his piece de resistance to win the game with 1:57 remaining in regulation. On the verge of just dumping the puck in after crossing the blue line, he beat first one defender one-on-one and then another. The final brushstroke was a rocket roofed into the top corner.

“That was an NCAA highlight-type goal,” said York.

Brian Gionta, who has scored more than a few of those himself, added, “That goal was unbelievable. Sometimes with this team, you just sit back and watch in awe.”

Even in defeat, St. Lawrence coach Joe Marsh could appreciate Farkas’ masterpiece.

“It was a goal-scorer’s goal,” he said. “A great goal by a great player.”

Marsh then spread the praise around to BC’s other top guns.

“Bellefeuille, Mottau and Farkas scored their three goals [before Gionta’s open-netter,]” said Marsh. “They’ve done it all year long. Their big-name players came up big.”

BC will need strong play from its stars, like Hobey Baker finalist Mike Mottau, to win the title.

BC will need strong play from its stars, like Hobey Baker finalist Mike Mottau, to win the title.

With three Hobey Baker finalists in Mottau, Farkas and Gionta, Boston College has the raw talent that is difficult for any team to match up with. And that’s before considering the oft-overshadowed Bellefeuille, who always seems to deliver in the postseason.

“Good players play well in big situations,” said York. “They thrive on pressure. We’ve got a lot of talented offensive players, but they play with a lot of grit and determination and they make me very, very proud.”

For their parts, the BC stars who could become distracted by individual honors are focused only on the right things.

“This is what it’s all about, winning a championship,” said Bellefeuille. “The best thing about this team is that those [Hobey Baker finalist] guys don’t even care about individual awards. The only thing they’re focused on is winning this Saturday night.”

They’re also quick to spread the credit around to their teammates.

“Coach York recruits the right guys — the skill guys, the character guys,” said Mottau. “We push each other in practice and that translates into the game: Blake beating the guy down the ice and coming around and firing top shelf and the same with Jeff fighting through two checks and roofing the puck himself.

“Both were great individual efforts. I attribute that to hard work and the players that they are.”

Farkas seconds that emotion.

“Going against the players that we have on our team day in and day out in practice [makes the difference,]” said Farkas. “Going against Mike every day is going to make you a better player. We practice like we play.”

In which case Friday’s free practice at 1:45 should be in front of a full house.

AHCA Honors Aronson As D-III Player Of The Year

USCHO Staff Report
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Steve Aronson capped off his storied St. Thomas hockey career by being named the American Hockey Coaches Association’s NCAA Division III Player of the Year.

Aronson, a senior from Minnetonka, Minn., becomes the first MIAC player to receive the elite award, which was announced Thursday at the Frozen Four in Providence, R.I. Aronson was also selected Division III Player of the Year earlier this week by U.S. College Hockey Online.

Aronson

Aronson

“Steve is the finest player that I’ve ever coached, bar none,” said UST coach Terry Skrypek, whose 30-year coaching career includes 17 seasons at Hill-Murray High and 13 at St. Thomas. “I think he’s the best college hockey player in Division III, and I’d put him up against many Division I players. He’s very unselfish, and has worked hard to have a complete hockey game. I think he has the mental toughness to play professionally.”

A two-time MIAC Player of the Year and three-time first-team All-America, Aronson broke several records in his four seasons at UST, including Andre Beaulieu’s 35-year-old MIAC scoring record. Aronson surpassed Beaulieu by nine points, finishing with 244 career points (104 goals, 140 assists).

Aronson’s career totals also rank him first on UST’s career list for goals, assists, and points.

While leading his team to a runner-up finish at the NCAA tournament and 27-4-2 overall record, Aronson led all Division III scorers this season, averaging 2.76 ppg. His 91 points (38 goals, 53 assists) broke UST’s single-season mark of 83, set 20 years ago by Mark Hentges. He was a member of three Tommie teams that won MIAC hockey championships, and played in the NCAA playoffs twice.

Aronson is also a starter on the St. Thomas baseball team that was the NCAA Division III runner-up last season. He has a 3.38 grade-point average in business, and is an Academic All-America candidate.

Aronson was selected USCHO’s Division III Player of the Year by Division III coaches and media who participate in USCHO’s weekly national poll, the Division III reporting staff at U. S. College Hockey Online, and by the combined vote of fans.

Top To Bottom

By Becky Blaeser
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St. Lawrence head coach Joe Marsh once said that he believes the key to any championship-caliber team is the play of its third and fourth lines. When the game is on the line and the stakes are higher than ever, the balance of power shifts from top to bottom. That’s when the real heroes emerge, and that’s where the St. Lawrence story begins.

As the team heads back to the North Country following its eighth trip to the Frozen Four, marquee names such as Brandon Dietrich, Erik Anderson and Derek Gustafson will be thrown around at will … that is, until you take a closer look at the game sheet.

Jason Windle

Jason Windle

Robin Carruthers, Jason Windle, Charlie Daniels, Jim Lorentz, Jack O’Brien, Sean and Mike Muir? Who are these guys?

They are the unsung heroes who have been an integral part of St. Lawrence’s dominating run to the Frozen Four, and part of the reason why this year’s Saints team should be compared to some of SLU’s best.

“You’re not going to have every guy score 15 to 20 goals. I don’t even think that we had a guy who scored more than 20 goals this year, and I think that’s a great tribute to how hard this team competed and how they’ve relied upon one another and not on just one or two guys,” said Marsh. “I think that’s so important. Any year that we have gotten to this point or close to this point and have had a championship-caliber team, we’ve been fairly balanced. We’re a team that if we were going to beat teams we had to do it differently. Maybe we don’t have a marquee guy every year, maybe we rebuild from a different point, like from the third or fourth line.”

During last Saturday’s historic marathon contest against Boston University, there was a subtle yet telling shift of power. Dietrich, a First Team All-ECAC selection and the Saints’ top scorer, gave his team the early 1-0 lead. The next two goals came from less likely sources. First it was sophomore Jack O’Brien, a consistent fourth-line player all season long, who broke down the ice early in the second period and deposited the Saints’ second goal off a feed from linemate Sean Muir. It was a critical goal for a guy who isn’t a prolific scorer. In fact, he has only scored four goals this season, and two of those tallies came in the postseason during a 3-2 overtime win over Cornell in the ECAC semifinals.

Then, with the score deadlocked at two goals for nearly 72 minutes, it was neither Dietrich nor Anderson who donned the hero’s cap. It was a third line player, Carruthers, who gutted out a final burst of speed down the left wing and slammed home his own rebound to give his Saints the semifinal victory at the 1:27 mark of the fourth overtime period. To say it was the biggest goal of the sophomore’s career is a colossal understatement. Carruthers entered that contest with four goals and eight assists, but like O’Brien, he tends to save his best play for the post season. At last year’s ECAC Championships he posted a goal and three assists; this season was no different, as he produced eight points in his last 16 games this season.

Jimmy Lorentz battles during St. Lawrence's 5OT win in the Regional last week.

Jimmy Lorentz battles during St. Lawrence’s 5OT win in the Regional last week.

“They worked to get to that point,” said Marsh of his third- and fourth-line players. “A guy like Jimmy Lorentz is a freshman who had a great game tonight. Jack O’Brien had seven or eight goals huge goals for us this season. Carruthers … that was the biggest goal of the year for us. They don’t have to have a lot of them, but they keep working and they keep plugging and they do other things. They’ve worked harder at their defensive games and they have been willing to contribute in other areas to where they got a chance to play. Then, anything can happen.”

On Thursday night against Boston College, St. Lawrence was led by yet another unlikely duo. Jason Windle (22 goals in his four-year career) and fourth-liner Charlie Daniels (4-9–13) supplied the offensive spark and almost led the Saints to their third NCAA Championship appearance.

Unfortunately it was not enough as the Saints saw their 1999-2000 take its final breath on Thursday night. The Saints’ regular record of 22-7-2 will go down as the third-best in program history, trailing only the 1988-89 team (25-5-0) and the 1987-88 squad (23-7-0). Its home mark of 16-1-0 also tied the record for most home wins in a season.

Perhaps Marsh summed up the season and his attitude the best when he talked about the intangible contribution of two of his fourth-liners, Sean and Mike Muir.

“To give you an idea, these kids have had their own landscaping business since they were 13 years old. These kids just work so hard. They never miss a class … they give it everything they’ve got. They’re constantly in the weight room. They’re zero maintainence kids. They don’t have a ton of points.

“But I am not trading them for anybody because they make everyone around them better. They make Dietrich and Anderson better because they play the same way on Tuesday as they do on Friday and Saturday night. You can’t imagine how hard they work and that’s why they are here and that’s why we don’t hold our breath while they are out there with a minute to go in the game like this. We have to find players like that in order for us to be a successful program.”

So although the team may not be competing on Saturday night for the championship, St. Lawrence has certainly proven its coach right.

The Arrival

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Twenty-four hours before Niagara upset New Hampshire in the Western Regionals, Purple Eagles head coach Blaise MacDonald delivered two sentences that poked fun at a collective college hockey community that had yet to learn that the CHA team deserved its first-ever NCAA playoff berth.

“I’m a little disappointed we’re not the number-one seed. I’m very happy to be here–that’s a standard line,” he said.

If MacDonald sounded a little defensive about his team’s trip to Minneapolis, his quips and occasional jabs at the press were understandable, given that the Purple Eagles had to justify their postseason presence, prove their worth as a team, and fight a lot of stereotyping about programs that are not affiliated with one of the “big four” established conferences.

But MacDonald himself is the first to admit that, just as many people found it hard to believe that Niagara not only participated in the NCAA Tournament but also advanced, the Purple Eagles themselves exceeded their own expectations.

“It’s been a dream come true–it’s been a dream fulfilled to be here, I should say,” said MacDonald after the 4-1 loss to North Dakota.

MacDonald said that the dream itself began because of ties maintained from his days as a player at RIT. Someone phoned MacDonald in Boston–where he was an assistant at Boston University–to tell him that Niagara was starting a program.

“I had heard about it…so I contacted Niagara to find out what they really planned on with the program,” MacDonald said.

MacDonald was enticed to return to western New York from his native New England because of the chance to put his own “fingerprint on the program” and “create the high-performance culture” he says is necessary for a winning tradition.

“It was a tremendous professional challenge.” he averred. “When I showed up the first day, there was no manual telling me how to build a hockey team.

“I didn’t get here until mid-January of 1996. There were no assistant coaches and no 26 players for the following season.” To recruit, MacDonald says with the inflection only he can give a phrase, “I was in Toronto–a lot.”

GREG GARDNER

GREG GARDNER

The fruits of his initial labors not only led his team to the NCAA Tournament in just its third season of play, but resulted in a week-long game of speculation about whether MacDonald would leave the program he built from scratch for a chance to work the same magic closer to home, in Amherst, Massachusetts. After some admitted “sleepless nights,” MacDonald withdrew his name from consideration for the UMass job.

In a statement issued by the Niagara University athletics department, MacDonald said, “It has been a privilege for me to be part of building the Niagara University hockey program. It has taken a lot of hard work, dedication and pride from everybody involved and I want to continue to be involved in this project.”

Just four years after MacDonald began the Niagara project, the coach will find himself facing a different challenge as he and the program say goodbye to 15 seniors, the pioneering class that included goaltender Greg Gardner, forwards Mike Isherwood, Kyle Martin, and Mikko Sivonen, and defenders Chris MacKenzie and Nate Handrahan.

And MacDonald says there’s more to it than losing talented players. “It’s like all of a sudden your family–it’s like you live on the East Coast and your whole family packed up and moved to California.”

It is, in fact, this senior class and the real affection among the entire Niagara squad that was as captivating as the team’s play in Minneapolis.

MIKE ISHERWOOD

MIKE ISHERWOOD

Said Isherwood, “Chris [MacKenzie], Nate [Handrahan], and I came from the same home town. Nate and I grew up together, played hockey together all of our lives.”

“Our legacy to the program and the underclassmen,” said Gardner, “is that beyond everything, beyond the 5,000 fans, beyond the fancy jerseys, the sticks, the fringes that come along with playing hockey, you have to play for each other, you have to enjoy the game itself. You have to realize that there’s a bond between teammates…and nothing else matters.”

“That vacuum and void of losing these men here–we can’t replace that,” said MacDonald. “But we relish the challenges and opportunities to come.”

MacDonald likes that already people are talking about his team’s chances next season after graduating such a large and talented senior class.

“That speaks to a little bit of respect, and I know that we’ve earned that respect,” he said.

MacDonald talks about respect a lot, necessarily so. Perhaps after this season the coach won’t have to justify Niagara’s mere existence, but he was deft at doing so in Minneapolis.

“The question,” he noted, “is, ‘Are we worthy?’ Given the road that we had to take to get here, I truly believe we deserve to be here. You know, we had one opportunity–one slim opportunity–to make the tournament, and that was an at-large bid.

“If we had played in a major conference–to which we have made a couple of presentations– you’re given three opportunities to get into the NCAA tournament: win your league, win the tournament, and also vie for an at-large bid.”

MacDonald joked about the team’s travel schedule that included 28 road games–“…this is our 18,000th mile of travel this year…”–and said that the priests at Niagara “have had to take up a few extra collections for our team travel budget.”

About the progress of the program in such a short period of time, he said, “It’s a dream come true for these kids, as we were two years ago playing in a league where one of our member schools had an outdoor rink.”

And while MacDonald’s sense of humor carried him through many questions about Niagara’s worth, he made it quite clear that the Purple Eagles were and are no joke.

“We beat the defending national champ [Michigan, in 1998] on their own ice surface after losing to them with 1.7 seconds left in overtime,” he reminded. “This year I think our team knew the implications of every game we played from January on in terms of our ability to get into the NCAA tournament. That puts a lot of pressure on every single game–it’s like a 60-minute season.

“We go out to Colorado College, which is a pretty good ballclub, and on an Olympic sheet play them, beating them 3-1. Going into the last game of the season, playing a good Nebraska-Omaha team that was in the CCHA Championship game and get three out of four points–I think was terrific.

“That’s a lot of pressure, and you can say, ‘Well, you only play X amount of games against big-time programs. Maybe it’s easy for you to get up for those games.’ I would argue that it’s more difficult, because we only get one at-bat as opposed to four at-bats, so you can argue that point either way.

“Also, in terms of us having victories against the Air Force Academy, for example, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think every conference in the country has a last-place team. I think if you historically look at our team and our program, I think we’ve proven that we’re pretty good.”

After the burden of proof had been lifted with a win over New Hampshire, even the Purple Eagle players admitted that the figurative distance the team had covered was more than they had ever imagined it would be. Said Gardner, “I don’t think any of the guys would have expected how far we’ve come and how close we came to the Frozen Four, if you’d asked that question at the beginning of the year.”

Martin echoed his teammate’s sentiments. “It’s a dream come true. If someone would have said to me in my freshman year we’d be in the NCAA tournament, I would’ve laughed at them, quite frankly. Fifteen of us seniors started off as pioneers, and it’s very special.”

Says MacDonald, “This will never end. This is something we will relive because of the human relationships that we’ve developed and the experiences we’ve had, and the journey will continue.

“And the journey will continue to be a benchmark for Niagara University hockey for years and years to come. Truly, as we talk about with the team, success has no destination.”

Maybe so, but Niagara hockey has certainly arrived.

The Nightmare

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The nightmare started last Sunday with 1:16 remaining in Maine’s game with Michigan. The Black Bears led, 4-2, and were headed back to the Frozen Four with dreams of becoming the first team to win back-to-back championships since Boston University in 1972.

"I was pinching myself, hoping it was a bad dream."

— Cory Larose

For Cory Larose, however, the dream became a nightmare when referee Mike Schmitt assessed a butt-ending major penalty and game disqualification, sidelining Larose for Maine’s semifinal game against North Dakota.

“There was no intention to injure,” he said. “All I was trying to do was hold [Mike Comrie] back. He had a step on me. If he was on the other side of me, I would have been hooking him. I was just hooking him with the other side of my stick. He embellished it a little bit and it caught the referee’s eye.

Cory Larose will miss the National semifinal after being tagged with a game disqualifcation late in the Regional win over Michigan.

Cory Larose will miss the National semifinal after being tagged with a game disqualifcation late in the Regional win over Michigan.

“I really don’t think it warranted a game suspension, especially at this time of year. Maybe if I was the type of player who was getting suspended five or six times a year and I was trying to hurt guys on a shift basis, [I could understand it. But] that’s just not the way I play. It’s not what I believe in.

“Hey, if I could rewind time, I definitely wouldn’t do it.”

But Larose couldn’t rewind time. He was the winner of the Len Ceglarski Hockey East Sportsmanship Award and a player that one person close to the team called “one of the classiest kids I’ve ever been around.” But he would be sitting the game out because of the major and game DQ.

“This is my senior year and this is the Final Four,” he said with a pained look on his face.

But a game DQ is a game DQ. And that means a one-game suspension.

So Larose spent the next 10 days practicing as hard as he always did, not varying his routine, all the while hoping that his teammates would come through and he’d get one more game — one for a national championship.

In his mind, he knew he’d be sitting out one of the biggest contests of his career. He knew the stark reality. It was inescapable. But it didn’t really hit him in that visceral between-the-eyes fashion until he walked into the Providence Civic Center.

“The toughest part was when I walked in the rink and saw the guys warming up,” he said. “It really hit home. All week I’d been thinking about it, but I’d been able to get on the ice every day. I had practiced with the team and dressed with the guys. I’d conversed with them and did everything I’d done all year.

“When I went out there and saw the warm-up, it was tough on me…. The only other games I’ve missed, I’ve been in the hospital for. Just sitting and watching is just excruciating.”

Of course, many a player has had to sit out a key game because of an injury. But this was different.

“No doubt it’s worse,” he said. “If I were injured, that would be out of my control. But to be suspended… definitely wasn’t the way I saw my college career ending.”

It didn’t get any easier when the Black Bears went on two power plays before the game was even five minutes old. As a fixture on the Maine man advantage, he could see himself out there doing things to help his team. Except he wasn’t out there. He was in the stands wearing his warmup suit.

“I saw a couple situations unfold where I just wished I could have been out there and try to make a play,” he said. “In a game like this, one or two plays is the game.”

Larose sat with a couple former Black Bears, Jason Vitorino, a captain on last year’s national championship team, and Shawn Mansoff, who played two years for Maine before transferring to Quinnipiac. When Larose commented about how badly he felt not being able to help his teammates, Vitorino offered some words of wisdom.

“You know, Cory,” said Vitorino, “every year good players leave and every year good players get hurt in different situations. Other guys step in and play well. The Maine team is the focus point.”

The words hit home, despite the disappointment of the eventual 2-0 loss.

“It’s a team game,” said Larose. “It always has been for four years here. That was the bottom line today. Guys went out there today and they [played] their hearts out. It’s just unfortunate that bounces didn’t go our way. All it takes is a bounce or two and we’re right in that game. We were always just an inch away.”

Would Larose have provided that inch?

“It’s easy to say that, but who knows?” he said. “If I’d been out there, I might have made a couple mistakes and it would have been 4-0. Maybe I might have helped out the guys. It’s tough to say.”

His teammates certainly missed him.

“I don’t want to say that because Cory wasn’t here we lost,” said Ben Guite. “But obviously he has more than one point a game over the season and that’s obviously going to help you in tough situations against good teams. [His absence] did hurt us, but we can’t blame [the loss] on that.”

Brendan Walsh specifically pointed to Larose’s contribution on special teams, where North Dakota scored on one power play and added a shorthanded goal against a Maine man advantage that went 0-for-7.

“Special teams play was a big part of our success this year and he was a big component of our penalty killing and power play,” said the senior captain. “That was a definite factor. But we’re a team of interchangeable parts.”

Maine coach Shawn Walsh, however, would have nothing to do with any comments that might be interpreted as diminishing North Dakota’s win.

“The Cory Larose Issue is not an issue,” said Walsh. “That would simply detract from North Dakota. North Dakota played a great hockey game. They beat a very good team. I don’t think Larose’s absence is an issue one bit. The Fighting Sioux won the game and are moving on. I don’t want to say anything that detracts from their performance.”

Almost to the final buzzer, Larose kept the faith that he would play one more game.

“I never say die with these guys,” he said. “We’ve done it all year. We’ve come from behind so many times. Right up until a minute left, I was crossing my fingers. We had chances, we just didn’t bury them.”

Finally, however, the buzzer sounded and the scoreboard clock read 0:00.

Cory Larose — owner of 61 goals and 119 assists for 180 points over four years — had finished his collegiate career watching from the stands.

The nightmare was over. But the nightmare had been real.

The Quiet One

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There are times in life when people are pleasantly surprised. Rensselaer fans have been pleasantly surprised over the last four years by a quiet young man from Saskatchewan.

Joel Laing came to Rensselaer from Maryfield, Saskatchewan, and has played his way into being one of the ten best players in Division I college hockey.

Laing was named one of the ten Hobey Baker finalists on March 16, a distinction that really was a pleasant surprise.

“Not realistically, no,” said Laing about his chances at being a Hobey Baker finalist. “I didn’t think it would be feasible, with the situation that I was in, I didn’t expect to get the ice time to get there. I was expecting to go from game to game. The situation is strange, and I don’t think it has hit me. I never get too high or too low. I’m not too excited that I am one the finalists and if I never played a game I wouldn’t be disappointed. I don’t let those emotions gather too much except for game day.”

That statement says a lot about Laing. An even-keeled type, Laing came to Rensselaer at the last minute in 1996 — a decision which has changed his life.

“I’m kind of surprised it worked out as well as it did,” he said. “Coming in here my expectations weren’t too high. The only thing I knew was there were two freshman goalies and I thought I could play right away or at least get a look. But as far as the school, I didn’t know too much about it, I didn’t get a chance to fly down, I just took a gamble. I based the decision on the tradition and recognition of RPI through the hockey ranks. I took a gamble and I am real happy with how things turned out.”

Laing was with a junior team in Minot, North Dakota, in 1996, when he was traded to the Melfort Mustangs. There he was the backup to Scott Fankhouser (who went on to UMass-Lowell), but when Fankhouser was injured in the first game of the Royal Bank Cup, Laing found himself thrust into the center ring, as the goaltender for Melfort in the Tier II championships.

“I knew that I was going into a role where I was there for insurance purposes,” he said. “But I also knew that I might have the opportunity to be put in the position to show off my talents to recruiters at the next level and it just so happened that in the first game of the tournament Fankhouser got hurt and I played the entire tournament and won the Goaltender of the Tournament Award. We lost in the final, 2-0 to Vernon, BC, but it was a great experience for me.

“After that nothing was looking promising and I decided that I was going to school in Canada. RPI was still looking for a goalie in July; I got a call and they said there was some money available and I said I was in. It was a no-brainer for me. It wasn’t like I had a lot of other options. They took a gamble on me and I took one on them.”

Without visiting the campus or seeing it, Laing came in with classmate Scott Prekaski, and the two immediately got their chances on the stage of the Houston Fieldhouse ice. The two freshmen played as a duo and continued to throughout their four years. Something special was brewing in Troy, and it became evident the first weekend of the ECAC regular season in 1996.

Joel Laing is trying to become just the second goalie ever to win the Hobey Baker Award.

Joel Laing is trying to become just the second goalie ever to win the Hobey Baker Award.

The Engineers were playing Martin St. Louis, Eric Perrin, Tim Thomas and the number-one ranked Vermont Catamounts in the Gut. Laing got the start and Engineers upset the top team in the nation in their own barn.

“It was my first college win ever,” reflected Laing. “To go into Vermont when they were ranked number one, and I played one of my better games that night. It was so exciting to play in that action and environment. It elevated my level of play and it made the game that much more enjoyable.”

From there the Engineers began to ride the coattails of Laing and Prekaski. The Engineers made it back to Lake Placid that season, but fell in the semifinals and narrowly missed the NCAA tournament.

The next season the Engineers were picked to finish first in the ECAC, wound up third and were eliminated in the ECAC quarterfinals, putting an end to their season. Through it all the two goaltenders continued to alternate.

“We’ve been able to feed off one another and we’ve had a healthy relationship,” said Laing about Prekaski. “When one of us is playing well and when things go a little wrong, we lean on one another and bank on one another’s experiences. Through all the turbulence it makes it a lot easier for us and had made us stronger over four years.”

During the middle of the 1998-99 season, Laing started to get more ice time. One major reason was that he was just incredibly hot on the ice. After the holiday break Laing shut out Yale at home, allowed one goal against Princeton, and then shut out Brown and Harvard on the road. Then next game was against Union, and Laing fell 1:13 short of tying Trevor Koenig’s mark for most consecutive shutout minutes in ECAC competition. Laing also garnered five shutouts that year, tying him with Bobby Fox for the most shutouts in a season at Rensselaer.

colorscans/archives/rpi_j_laing2.jpg

The Engineers made it to Lake Placid, but lost in the ECAC semifinals and narrowly missed the NCAA tournament once again.

This past season, Laing was given most of the load on the ice and he responded. He put up a 17-7-2 record, had a GAA of 1.82 and a save percentage of .947. Numbers that goaltenders dream about.

The Engineers made it to the ECAC championship game, but fell to St. Lawrence and were left out of the NCAAs, ending Laing’s college career.

“I was real proud of how our team played in Lake Placid,” he said. “We gave ourselves a chance to win each night and I will always remember that: when we went up there we played hard and it was a battle each night,” he said.

“I’m not really a sentimental guy. I knew it was over and it was the last game I had played, but it’s out of your control. I have no regrets and knowing that I see all the guys every day helped out. It will be something that you miss. You’re part of a family.

“It’s not that often that a small-town guy from Saskatchewan gets to move to the big city, Troy,” he continued with a laugh. “It’s a long way from home and it’s real good that I had the chance to get an education and a chance to play.

“I am grateful for it.”

In his career, Laing set shutout marks at Rensselaer both for a single season, six, a career, 13.

But Laing does have one more thing to shoot for in his college career — the Hobey Baker Memorial Award. And when one looks at the criteria, one can’t help but be impressed and think that perhaps Laing fits the mold of your model Hobey Baker candidate.

1. A candidate must exhibit strength of character on and off the ice.

Laing was named assistant captain this season and has shown why. Even though he won’t be on the team next year, his leadership may be. He offered the following words of advice for Rensselaer’s incoming goaltenders, Kevin Kurk and Nate Marsters.

“They’re coming into a great opportunity. They’ll battle for ice time and if they come into camp in good shape and in the right mindset, they’ll be great. They have to have the attitude that they have to earn their time. That’s something that always drove me — every day I felt that I had to prove myself, and every week I had to prove that I deserved a chance to play.

“Even though I got two shutouts in a row, in the back of my mind, I didn’t know that I would play. I would go out in practice and get lit up, and that would drive me to play that much better in practice. If they take that attitude of battling every week for what they deserve, and not that it’s handed to them because they are two freshmen and one of them has to play, they’ll both have a chance to show what they can do. They have four years ahead of them; if they come in with a good attitude and a good work ethic then they can break any record that they want.

“Everybody’s replaceable. There is always somebody better than you, and that’s what I truly believe. That’s how I try to keep level-headed, because I know there is somebody better. You can always find somebody to fill a role at any time.”

2. Candidates must contribute to the integrity of the team and display outstanding skills in all phases of the game.

Laing’s numbers speak for themselves, and his skills as a goaltender have improved from year to year. He explained:

colorscans/archives/rpi_j_laing3.jpg

“I don’t know if I have a style. I’m more of a positional goaltender — they always have trouble finding saves from me for the year-end highlight film for the banquet. I always try to put myself in the position where the puck is going to hit me right in the chest, and if I’m not in that position I probably won’t make the save. The keys for me are reading the play, being aggressive and taking away the angles.

“When I was in junior I was more dependent on two-pad stacks and flaring glove saves, but now I keep those to a minimum. They’re fun, but it’s not something you want to depend on.

“Every goaltender plays the give-and-take game. A guy at the side of the net doesn’t have a lot of angle so you open your legs wide, and when he doesn’t have a lot of time to think, he sees it and he shoots and you know where the puck is going.

“It’s been the mental perspective where I have seen it make the difference in the game. One of the things that I have done is not let in the late goal. It’s the mental preparation, visualizing and constantly being on the ball when you’re on the ice. If you’re not focusing on it, then you’re going to be slow to react. That’s one of the differences in goaltending; it’s that for a goaltender the game is 80 percent mental.”

3. Consideration should be given to scholastic achievement and sportsmanship.

Laing has gathered a 3.97 GPA over the course of seven semesters at Rensselaer, as a management major concentrating in finance and information systems.

“I approach [school] in the same situation that any student approaches college. I’m just another student going to school. I play hockey on the weekends and in the afternoons, but other than that, when I am off the ice I am off the ice. I’m in class, contributing to group projects, and in clubs around campus. I take that just as seriously as someone who is in the same situation, as someone who is trying to better themselves for a career after their college years are over.

“I’ve been fortunate to be in a curriculum that I enjoy, surrounded by faculty that are cooperative and have been a lot of help in the classroom. They make it enjoyable to go to class day in and day out. As long as the interest is there and the motivation is high, you are going to be successful.

“When I sit down to do homework, I enjoy doing it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s investments, systems analysis and design or geometry, I enjoy seeing new things and gaining new knowledge. I think if you take that attitude it makes it more enjoyable. Whereas if you’re going into class and saying, ‘Ugh, I’m in class until two, then I have to go the gym’, once you take that mindset you’re going to wear yourself out. It will take out a lot of the joy out of the educational experience. I have been able to enjoy myself and apply myself to my utmost abilities.”

There is no doubt that Laing has all the qualifications. Now he sits and waits for the Hobey winner to be announced. With the above going his way, Laing certainly has a decent shot at getting enough votes to be the recipient.

He has already won USCHO’s Vote For Hobey.

“I was real excited to see that,” he said. “Just to see the pride and enthusiasm of the RPI fans. It’s something that shows the kind of program that there is here, and the following that we have is all quality fans. They’re willing to go that extra mile for you and that helps us on game days — we feel that the fans need to see our best effort, game in and game out. It’s not only coaches and players, but it’s fans that make a lot of sacrifices that come to see us, and they deserve the best.”

The next step for Laing will be a shot at the professional ranks, something that he is looking forward to.

“It’s a progression — you can’t stay in college forever. It’s one of the best times in your life and I have no regrets at all.

“I’m hoping that things work out and I hope that I get an opportunity where I have a chance that will prove that I belong. I think I have to go and take the same attitude and…prove that I belong there, and that everything I get is earned. Never expect that anything is given to you — you’re not better than the next guy unless you prove it. There’s a lot of growing that needs to occur, and I’m ready for that.”

But whether or not Laing walks away with the prize on Friday, or the hefty professional contract, the Rensselaer community will be grateful that Joel was a part of their lives.

“I hope that they say that [I] was a nice guy. Not only a good player on the ice, but a quality guy off the ice. I try to do things that are not only right for the hockey program but for other programs around the school. It’s something that I have taken some pride in trying to fit in as a student, and not just as a hockey player.

“I walk around here and no one knows who I am. That’s how I want to be remembered, not somebody that walks into a room and has all the focus. That’s not what I want. When I go somewhere I would rather not be noticed. I don’t mind that someone talks to me, but I feel that when I walk into the room, I want to be a regular student. That’s who I feel I am — Joe Schmoe, the management student at RPI.”

Frozen Four Notebook: Wednesday

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St. Lawrence coach Joe Marsh referred to his team as being “absolutely giddy” after the third overtime of his team’s NCAA quarterfinal game against Boston University in Albany, N.Y.

Apparently, the giddiness hasn’t exactly left Marsh just yet. Just another one of the repercussions of the longest NCAA tournament game in history.

Marsh took the unofficial prize as the comedy relief of the Wednesday news conference at the Frozen Four, cracking jokes on just about everything.

Among the best…

On the aftermath of the NCAA quarterfinal: “A small school like ours, to be on CNN Play of the Day the next day is probably akin, for all you photographers, to getting a real good snapshot of the Loch Ness Monster.”

On his team heading to Providence: “It’s a little tough to leave on a Tuesday. Some of the professors are maybe not big hockey fans and wonder why the guys are gone. I think they knew after we had a rally at the school.”

Responding to a question about the debate about width of rinks, North Dakota coach Dean Blais had just mentioned his school’s new building: “Well, St. Lawrence is not going to build a new rink unless, of course, we get another ice storm and we can practice on the football field.”

DUELING GOALIES: The Karl and Andy show will continue for one more day.

North Dakota coach Dean Blais didn’t tip his hand as to who would start — Karl Goehring or Andy Kollar — in goal for his team in its semifinal matchup with Maine at 2 p.m. ET on Thursday.

His reason for not divulging that information was the man sitting two chairs to his right.

“My decision between now and (Thursday) at 2 is which goaltender to start,” Blais said. “And I’m not going to tell Shawn (Walsh, the Maine coach) because I know he has something up his sleeve.”

Goehring went down with a concussion the week before the Western Collegiate Hockey Association Final Five, and Kollar led the Sioux to wins over St. Cloud State and Wisconsin at the Final Five and the win over Niagara that sent the Sioux to the Frozen Four.

Goehring appears to be back to where he was before the concussion, Blais said, whereas Kollar still has some neck pain from being hit in the game against Niagara.

“We’ve seen both of them play and they have a very similar style and they both win a lot, so it’s doesn’t really matter (which one plays),” Walsh said. “If you look down the stretch, Kollar played well against Wisconsin and Niagara, so he’ll be ready. Either way, they will be real strong.”

CONFERENCE PRIDE: You have to give credit where credit is due. And, according to Walsh and Boston College coach Jerry York, credit is due to Hockey East, which prepared its teams well for the NCAA tournament.

“I really think our league prepares you well,” Walsh said. “Last year, the last regular-season weekend we got swept at New Hampshire and it was probably the best thing that could have happened to us heading into the NCAA tournament.

“This year, we played Providence our last four games prior to the Hockey East Final Four, and believe me, those games could have gone either way. They just toughened us up, they exploited our weaknesses and showed what we needed to improve on.”

For York, it helped in facing the best of the West.

“People ask me about Wisconsin and Michigan State, and those are two great programs, how did you rise up to that level?” York said. “Well, that level has existed in Hockey East. Our competition between Maine, New Hampshire, BU, Northeastern, really prepared us to go to the Western Regional.”

SECOND TIME AROUND: Maine is looking to become the first repeat national champion since Boston University did it in 1971 and ’72.

A little added pressure, maybe?

“I think it’s an opportunity at this point,” Walsh said. “In the middle of the year, it might have been a hurdle, that can put a little bit of pressure on you, especially when you’re not playing up to expectations…. You compare this year’s team to last year’s quote-unquote perfect team, well last year’s team got swept on occasion, too. It ended up with a perfect ending, and one of us is going to have a perfect ending this year.”

ON THE RADIO: Stuck in Honolulu with no place to listen to the Frozen Four? Not anymore.

KGU radio in Honolulu is one of 78 radio stations in 31 states set to broadcast college hockey’s showcase event this season. Boston University broadcaster Bernie Corbett will provide play by play for the event, distributed by the Continental Sports Network.

YOUR PASS, PLEASE: Evidence of college hockey’s popularity may be best evidenced in the number of media personnel credentialed for the event.

According to John Painter of the NCAA, there were more than 300 media members credentialed for the Frozen Four.

2000 All-America Teams Named

USCHO Staff Report
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Rensselaer goaltender Joel Laing, the winner of this year’s U.S. College Hockey Online Vote for Hobey contest, leads the list of 24 players selected to the 2000 Division I All-America teams, as selected by the American Hockey Coaches Association.

Laing, who had a 1.82 goals-against average and a .947 save percentage in the regular season, was named East First Team goalie, while teammates Brad Tapper and Brian Pothier were named to the Second Team. Other schools with three selections were Boston College (Jeff Farkas, Brian Gionta, Mike Mottau), North Dakota (Karl Goehring, Jeff Panzer, Lee Goren) and Wisconsin (Jeff Dessner, Steve Reinprecht, Dany Heatley).

North Dakota’s junior netminder Goehring was named to the West First Team after helping to lead the Sioux to a WCHA Tournament championship and a trip to the Frozen Four. Junior Ty Conklin of New Hampshire and junior Jayme Platt of Lake Superior were East and West Second Team picks, respectively.

The East defense is dominated by seniors, including First Team selections Mottau and Justin Harney of St. Lawrence, whose teams will square off Thursday in one of the national semifinals, and Pothier, who was a Second Team pick. Boston University sophomore Chris Dyment rounds out the East Second Team defense. It was the second straight First Team honor for Mottau, who, along with Conklin, was this year’s co-Hockey East Players of the Year.

In the West, the First Team defense contains underclassmen Dessner and Jeff Jillson of Michigan. St. Cloud sophomore Mike Pudlick, who recently signed a free agent contract with the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings, was named to the Second Team along with Michigan State senior Mike Weaver, who was also a Second Team pick a year ago.

The First Team forwards include four seniors and two juniors. Colgate senior Andy McDonald joins the senior Farkas and junior Gionta in the East, while senior Reinprecht is joined by Michigan State senior Shawn Horcoff and junior Panzer. Reinprecht led the nation in points during the regular season (61).

The East Second Team forwards include Hockey East top scorer Cory Larose of Maine, St. Lawrence sophomore Brandon Dietrich, and Tapper, who led the nation in goals (30) and game-winning goals (seven) during the regular season. In the West, Second Team picks were Michigan sophomore Mike Comrie, Goren and Heatley, the only freshman on this year’s team.

2000 JOFA/AHCA Division I All-America Teams

First Team

West                                     East
F Steve Reinprecht, Wisconsin    SR   F Andy McDonald, Colgate         SR
F Jeff Panzer, North Dakota      JR   F Jeff Farkas, Boston College    SR
F Shawn Horcoff, Michigan St.    SR   F Brian Gionta, Boston College   JR
D Jeff Dessner, Wisconsin        JR   D Justin Harney, St. Lawrence    SR
D Jeff Jillson, Michigan         SO   D Mike Mottau, Boston College    SR
G Karl Goehring, North Dakota    JR   G Joel Laing, Rensselaer         SR

Second Team

West                                  East
F Mike Comrie, Michigan          SO   F Brad Tapper, Rensselaer        JR
F Dany Heatley, Wisconsin        FR   F Cory Larose, Maine             SR
F Lee Goren, North Dakota        SR   F Brandon Dietrich, St. Lawrence SO
D Mike Pudlick, St. Cloud        SO   D Chris Dyment, Boston U.        SO
D Mike Weaver, Michigan State    SR   D Brian Pothier, Rensselaer      SR
G Jayme Platt, Lake Superior St. JR   G Ty Conklin, New Hampshire      JR

UMass-Amherst Names Princeton’s Cahoon New Head Coach

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Don Cahoon, who revitalized the Princeton hockey program during a nine-year stint, was named head coach of the University of Massachusetts Wednesday at a press conference in Providence, site of this year’s Frozen Four.

“I think I can speak for my family and all my good friends in Massachusetts and say it’s an honor and a privilege to coach and lead the UMass hockey program into a new chapter,” said Cahoon. “I’m looking forward to getting the program headed in the right direction.”

“We’re pleased to have a person of Coach Cahoon’s stature in the hockey world as a part of our program,” said UMass athletic director Bob Marcum. “He has a proven record of success everywhere he has coached. We had several outstanding candidates for the position, so it’s evident that the head coaching job at UMass is a very desirable one. We feel confident Don is the person who can instill the winning tradition of UMass athletics to the hockey program.”

Cahoon, a 1972 graduate of Boston University, won 102 games at Princeton since taking over in 1991-92, guiding the Tigers to their only four winning seasons since 1967. Included were three 18-win campaigns, a 20-win season, and, in 1998, Princeton’s only ECAC Championship and trip to the NCAA Tournament.

Princeton had never been to the final four of the ECAC tournament until Cahoon came along. He then led the Tigers to four trips there in five years, never losing a quarterfinal series until this season’s two-game sweep at Clarkson.

A 1972 graduate of Boston University, Cahoon was instrumental in winning three national championships with the Terriers. He played left wing on BU’s 1971 and 1972 championship teams and served as an assistant coach when the club captured the title again in 1978. Cahoon returned to his alma mater as an assistant on three occasions — 1974-79, 1987-88 and 1990-91.

As a player, Cahoon represented the United States at the 1972 World Championships in Bucharest, Romania, helping the national team to the silver medal. He also signed a contract to play professional hockey with the New England Whalers of the World Hockey Association after graduation.

Cahoon also held the position of head coach at Norwich University (1979-82) and Lehigh University (1973-74). At Norwich he posted a 48-39-1 record and qualified for the ECAC Division II playoffs all three years. In 1974 he led the Lehigh Engineers to the Mid-Atlantic Conference title with a 10-5-2 mark.

Following his stint at Norwich, Cahoon joined the Austrian Ice Hockey Federation as the director of hockey operations and head coach of the Vienna Ice Club, guiding the team to a 23-13-2 record in 1982. He returned to the United States the following year as an assistant at the University of Lowell, remaining there until 1986.

New Hampshire coach Dick Umile and Niagara coach Blaise MacDonald, who were also considered for the UMass post, took themselves out of the running after further consideration.

“It has been a privilege for me to be part of building the Niagara University hockey program,” said MacDonald in announcing his withdrawal from the field of candidates early on Wednesday. “I am looking forward to the future at Niagara and especially next season.”

Umile, meanwhile, pulled out of the field last week, citing a desire to finish out his career at New Hampshire.

“I am very excited that UNH has made the commitment to me personally and to the hockey program,” Umile said. “I have every intention of completing my coaching career here at UNH.”

The UMass job was opened when the school opted not to renew the contract of head coach Joe Mallen after his seven-year stint with the Minutemen.

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