Meet the Press: Jake Brandt goes the extra miles to insure lasting UND connection

Uh, headphones?

Skates?

A two-billed hat that reads insurance agent by weekday and hockey analyst by weekend?

Jake Brandt never tires of the inevitable banter that comes with plastering his name on his own State Farm insurance office in Brainerd, Minn. In fact, he embraced the 2011 advent of the long-running ad campaign, concomitant with the time he established his office.

“I get a lot of ‘what are you wearing, Jake from State Farm’? questions,” he confessed between chuckles during an exclusive phone chat with Pucks and Recreation.

“I actually enjoy it. I have a lot of fun with it. I have some ‘Jake from State Farm’ T-shirts that I give to a lot of people, and a pair of khakis.

“It’s been something that I’ve used to get some free advertising. It’s great.”

Leave to a former college hockey goaltender to guzzle the nectar of a good-natured occupational jesting. Entering the fraternity of crease custodians has a way of preparing one for that.

It also let Brandt enter a spontaneous side gig at the Midco Sports Network with less anxiety than he might otherwise. A 2005 graduate of the University of North Dakota, he saw action in 60 games for the squadron formerly known as the Fighting Sioux. That included the majority of the workload as a sophomore, then a virtual 50-50 split with Jordan Parise the next season.

Yet despite majoring in communications as an undergraduate, he admits to having no formal broadcasting experience prior to the fall of 2015. His continued involvement in hockey as a Bantam AA coach one state over, not to mention his ties to the proud UND program, were the attraction when Midco needed a new color commentator.

A domino phenomenon in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks helped to precipitate the opportunity as well. When native son Tyler Palmiscno, who overlapped with Brandt at UND for three years, left his post as the East Grand Forks High School boys’ coach, fellow alumnus and EGF athletic director Scott Koberisnki filled his skates.

As it happened, Koberisnki had been complementing play-by-play voice Dan Hammer in the Midco booth. But with ample scheduling conflicts ahead, he unplugged that gig.

“So they kind of brainstormed at UND and thought, ‘Who could we get that would maybe me colorful or would maybe come and enjoy doing this?’” Brandt recalled.

Distance would be the ostensible obstacle to dangling the offer before Brandt. Per Google Maps, the shortest drive from Brandt’s Brainerd office to Ralph Engelstad Arena covers 219 miles and takes an estimated three hours and 34 minutes.

That notwithstanding, Brandt said, “I am very passionate and loyal UND fan, and I thought it would be a great way to get reconnected back in and go to a bunch of games.”

Adjustments and tradeoffs

On no less than a half-dozen occasions in each of the past two seasons, Brandt has abbreviated his Friday at his Brainerd office. Covering a two-game series in Grand Forks entails taking off between 11 and noon, ensuring one hour to kill and check into a neighboring hotel before entering “The Ralph” and full broadcaster’s mode.

Brandt credits the men’s hockey programs sports information contact, Jayson Hajdu, and Grand Forks Herald beat reporter Brad Schlossman with supplying ample information for him to hit his analyst’s pond sprinting. He also cultivates firsthand information through a phone chat with Fighting Hawks bench boss Brad Berry on the Wednesday or Thursday before a home series.

Working with first-year play-by-play announcer Alex Heinert, he proceeds to mold the material into a fast-paced session of on-the-fly puck talk.

“The greatest thing about it is, depending on what happens on the ice, we kind of get paid to talk and have fun with it,” he said.

But there is also a symbiotic dependency between the duo. Heinert, who stepped in when Hammer pursued other opportunities, needed a commentator of Brandt’s background for his first wave of exposure to the UND hockey community.

“I’m always taken aback at how he knows everyone we come across,” Heinert told Pucks and Rec. “Parents of players, old teammates, lifelong UND fans…Simply put, Jake knows everybody and everybody knows Jake, and in most cases, it’s not just on the surface level. To me, that level of investment in a place over nearly two decades is special.

“In terms of hockey sense, Jake’s brilliant. He breaks down what happens in a play, tells you why it happened and usually tells you what could’ve been done to prevent it.

“It’s only his second year in an analyst role, so he’s still working on telling that to the viewers in the most concise manner possible, but it’s still pretty impressive to hear him digest everything’s that happening on the ice and on the benches in real time.”

Brandt, in turn, admits that he is still grasping the finer protocols of live game telecasts.

“It’s way more difficult than I think people think just because when you watch someone, people that have been doing it on the networks make it look so easy because they’re so good at it,” he said.

“The hardest thing is when you have your headset on and they’re talking to you in your ear but you have to continue talking and that was a little bit of a learning curve, just because you’re taught not to talk when someone’s taking to you. You have to listen to what they’re saying, because they’re telling you how time until a commercial break, and not try to lose track of your thought process.”

This season, there is at least no longer the nag of imminent commitments elsewhere. Weather conditions have tended to dictate how soon Brandt reverses his commute. If the forecast prompts caution, he may depart at 2 a.m. Sunday following the second installment of the series. Otherwise, the itinerary calls for a more leisurely return to reality.

He had more to consider, and less time to build up to the Saturday tilt the way one would on the Hockey Night In Canada crew, when he also wore the Brainerd Bantam AA coach’s cap. In 2015-16, he occasionally squeezed a morning game elsewhere in the state or across the border between Parts I and II of the UND weekend. He usually followed his hasty return to Grand Forks with another bolt to another Brainerd commitment before finally hustling home. 

Just like Koberinski the year before him, Brandt had to choose between the coach or commentator bill on his second-job lid.

Unlike Koberinski, he kept the latter. That choice, combined with the grueling commute it entailed, “speaks volumes of the place North Dakota hockey has in his life,” Heinert said.

Blue-paint patriotism

Brandt, originally from Roseau, Minn., still holds a pair of less consuming puck positions in his home state. He sits on the Let’s Play Hockey magazine’s Minnesota Minute Men club, which votes on the scholastic Mr. Hockey and Frank Brimsek Awards. In addition, he keeps his skates sharp for Monday night shifts as a goaltending instructor for various Brainerd teams.

If the Midco job underscores his devotion to his alma mater, the other rink-based gigs he retained for 2016-17 speak to his loyalty to the clan that every former and current goaltender comprises. The Brimsek Award is Minnesota interscholastic hockey’s answer to college hockey’s Mike Richter Award.

Both honors have, at one time, gone to Zane McIntyre (nee Gothberg), a Thief River Falls product and UND alumnus. Brandt had coached McIntyre in the Bantam ranks, but barely missed out on calling any of his college career. McIntyre inked a professional contract before what would have been his senior season in 2015-16, Brandt’s first in the Midco booth.

But that twist also allowed Brandt to witness a storyline that hit home. McIntyre’s exit left a vacancy to be filled by one of three successors who combined for a paltry 43 minutes and 19 seconds of prior collegiate experience.

All of those minutes and seconds belonged to Cam Johnson, but fresh off a draft selection by the Philadelphia Flyers, Matej Tomek was an eye-catching candidate. Lone upperclassman Matt Hrynkiw was raring to finally earn his stripes as well.

But Tomek’s preseason injury bumped Johnson from his presumptive backup post. He would need to shake off an October injury of his own to ultimately wrest the No. 1 job back from Hrynkiw.

By season’s end, after back-to-back Frozen Four semifinal losses failed to consummate McIntyre’s ornate tenure, Johnson was an NCAA champion backstop.

“That was the big question mark coming into last year,” Brandt said. “Zane had left, they needed goaltending and it turned out that with Cam Johnson, there was no falloff from when Zane left.”

He added, “Cam Johnson’s been brilliant this year in my eyes. (The team) just lost a lot (of skaters) from last year. Defensively, they lost a lot as well, so his job is a lot tougher.”

Brandt cited “not being a homer” as the toughest aspect of his current job at Engelstad Arena. While he was referring to the need to tame his built-in loyalty to his alma mater, he could just easily be talking about lifetime goaltender’s fraternity membership.

Putting it another way, he is as much a member of what the Twitterverse dubs #goalienation as he is a part of UND’s all-time roster.

Brandt believes those in UND’s annals got hooked on the hashtag through Karl Goehring, who backstopped the program’s previous national title in 2000 and now volunteers on Berry’s coaching staff. Both masked men, who missed overlapping at the school by one summer, regularly post original stick salutes to their successors or retweet comparable content.

“I think the goalie nation thing is one of those things where everyone is kind of obsessed with being on our own,” Brandt said.

On their own in body, yet unified in spirit. And it is not exclusive to the crest and colors on one’s jersey, either. Case in point: Atte Tolvanen’s recent bid to break Blaine Lacher’s NCAA shutout streak record.

The Northern Michigan contemporary matched one mark of five straight 60-minute goose eggs. But the former Lake Superior State standout’s run of 375:01 without a setback remained on top when Tolvanen’s streak ended at 339:05.

There was added excitement around Grand Forks when Johnson went on his own lengthy tear of perfection last winter. Johnson’s streak of 298:25 enveloped four straight shutouts between December 2015 and January 2016.

In both cases, ex-netminders were hanging on every second, as it meant positive publicity for the position.

 “We all want to see goaltenders succeed and do well and make us proud,” said Brandt. “So the fact that when you wear the pads and you’ve been a part of that, you can appreciate when you see a goaltender who is having success.

“You make sure to watch it just because you gravitate towards goaltenders and success. We pay attention to the success that they have. The goalie nation thing is just that, we are a little bit single out, people tease us and joke about us. We kind of embrace it a little bit. We’re a little different and a little odd because we take great pride in the position that we play.”

Only the best

Despite the experiential discrepancies between his past and present roles in “The Ralph,” Brandt insists that playing net “was a more stressful job.” But having now catered to a home arena mass and a home television audience for roughly the same number of games, he appreciates the sustained pleasure of catering to Fighting Hawks (nee Sioux) fanatics.

Brandt likens the scrutiny of the Grand Forks fans to those of the Montreal Canadiens in that they “expect nothing but the best, and if you’re not, they let you know a little bit about it.”

Given that Montreal’s Bell Centre boasts the largest seating capacity in the NHL, the comparison has credibility. Engelstad Arena is an anomalous mansion of a college hockey venue that accommodates 11,643 spectators.

Those who have a share of the power over what happens between the boards aim to sustain a high volume and positive tone for two-plus hours. If all goes according to their plan, they will literally set off fireworks at the final horn.

For those working the booth, the task is merely sustaining concentration and talking over the clamor. No worries about talking down to the viewer in this market.

“When we do our broadcasts, we know we’re going out to a lot of people just because of the fan base that UND does have,” Brandt said. “It’s not like we are telling the audience anything they don’t know because they are so knowledgeable, so there’s no way to go sugarcoat it when they’re playing poorly, because they know.”

Because of that, not unlike the skaters who service them, Hawks fans will pounce on any elevated challenge beyond their turf. Besides a slew of Frozen Four appearances in recent years, they have flocked to NCHC road games and regular-season neutral-site contests in other time zones.

Madison Square Garden hosted three games hosting a combined six college hockey programs this season. Of those six teams, North Dakota made the longest trip. Yet the crowd of 11,348 for its bout with Boston College eclipsed the 10,148 that took in New Hampshire-Cornell and dwarfed the 5,002 that turned out for Wisconsin-Ohio State.

Early this February, tickets went on sale for an Oct. 27, 2018 date with the Minnesota Gophers at Las Vegas’ Orleans Arena. With another 20 months left before that game, all 7,773 seats have already been claimed.

“Not many college programs can go out to New York and pack as many people in a Madison Square Garden venue and have it be a success like UND can,” Brandt said. “Not many people can go down to Vegas and literally sell out a 7,500-seat building in seconds on Ticketmaster, and that’s because of the Champions Club and the fan base.”

One’s objectivity is perfectly intact after one makes that statement. Still, as is relatively common among regional network color commentators, the inner ex-player is not always so inner.

Then again, that is what draws a man of Brandt’s ilk to a job of this nature. It will take more than a semimonthly seven-hour round trip to keep him away from Engelstad’s allure.

“We’re very proud at UND of what we put out on the ice as a product,” Brandt said. “We feel we have the best coaching staff in the country, we have the best facilities in the country, we have the best trainers in the country, we have the best sports information directors in the country, the best beat writers in our college area.”

“We gravitate toward the team,” he added. “We put a lot of pressure on the UND hockey team, but in saying that, we recruit guys that we feel can go in and have success at that level.

“I say ‘we’ (even though) I’m not a part of the team, but I’m a part of the past and tradition, and I’m one of the most loyal alums that there are, and there’s a lot of them out there.”

As far as Heinert is concerned, in the words of Prymaat Conehead, that assessment “sounds most appropriate.”

“Of course, if he wasn’t on the air, he’d be in Ralph Engelstad Arena for the majority of these games as a supporter,” Heinert said. “But we’re certainly happy with his choice to remain in the broadcast booth. He’s a great combination of a former player, proud alumnus, knowledgeable coach and passionate fan, and it shows in his call on game days.”

Life After Hockey: Karen Thatcher reaching delayed grad-ification in physical therapy

Karen Thatcher does not hesitate to initiate a change of course if she sees the need. She transferred from one Division I hockey program to another in both her playing and coaching endeavors. In between, she modified her preferred landing spot in the healthcare sphere on the fly.

So when, at age 26, the 2010 U.S. Olympian sensed that others were pushing her retirement clock too quickly, she took action.

The proverbial war of attrition that was the tune-up tour and culminating Vancouver tournament left Thatcher in need of spring back surgery. As she transitioned to her rehabilitation regimen that summer, a chance to upgrade her silver medal to gold in 2014 was the obvious beacon.

Obvious, that was, to her. Not so much to her first physical therapist.

“I like to say that he helped me rehab back to my mom’s life, but not to mine,” Thatcher told Pucks and Recreation. “I could have worked a desk job and walked around the block, but I was not prepared to play hockey. It was very frustrating and upsetting.”

With that, she effectively fired her therapist and found a replacement who agreed to collaborate with her strength and conditioning instructor. The move, not unlike the prolonged detour on the ice that precipitated her injury to begin with, cemented another new long-term aspiration.

“The teamwork of care I received that finally helped me recover was inspiring, and quite literally changed my life,” said Thatcher, who had previously planned to pursue a career as an orthopedic surgeon before her big break with the national team.

“I vowed to study physical therapy so that I could help bridge this gap between athletic training, strength and conditioning and physical therapy to help all athletes recover and pursue their dreams to the best of their physical ability.”

Thatcher, who will turn 33 at the end of February, is now three months away from obtaining her doctorate at The Ohio State University. She intends to shuffle to a position in sports medicine next year while continuing to chase a Ph.D. in health and rehabilitation sciences at the same school.

With her dual degree, she hopes to take to her new field what she had brought to the rink earlier this decade. That is, the energy to practice and preach the game simultaneously.

Persistence produces new passion

Raised in Douglas, Mass., a suburb of Worcester, Thatcher tallied numbers and accrued accolades that inevitably exuded top-notch potential on the ice. In 2002, she finished her scholastic career at Noble and Greenough School with 222 points. That same year, the Boston Bruins bestowed the John Carlton Award on her as the region’s top girls’ player.

When she arrived at Brown University, the Digit Murphy-led program had just seen three of its four 1998 Nagano gold medalists return for the second women’s hockey Olympic tournament in Salt Lake City. The Bears were also coming off their first (and still only) NCAA tournament bid.

Thatcher would stick to the Ivy League institution for one season, retaining a 4.0 GPA all the while, before transferring crosstown to Providence College, which had produced an unmatched seven 1998 and four 2002 U.S. Olympians. As a junior, she posted a college career campaign with 58 points and piloted the Friars to their fourth consecutive conference postseason pennant.

She topped the team charts again as a senior in 2005-06, good for a share of Hockey East MVP honors and Patty Kazmaier consideration. Nonetheless, she presumed nothing in the way of a long-term international or lucrative professional playing gig.

With her eye still on a career in orthopedics, she joined the British Columbia Breakers semipro team with intent to fill a gap year before launching her graduate studies. But fortune broke a friendly grin that fall when she was placed on the national team.

“I decided to put my academic aspirations on hold while I pursued my athletic dreams, knowing that I could always return to school but I could only be an elite athlete for so long,” she said.

Three nomadic, back-and-forth seasons between the international ranks and the Western and Canadian Women’s Leagues culminated in regular action at the Vancouver Olympics. America’s 2-0 gold-medal loss to Canada, followed by the effects of her back ailment, only whet Thatcher’s appetite to rerun the four-year sequence.

“I felt very strongly that I could not retire while injured, because that would be giving up on myself,” she said.

In late May 2010, the Colgate Raiders brought Thatcher closer to home through an assistant coaching vacancy. She would last barely 12 weeks there before pouncing on an equivalent opening at her alma mater.

Between her return to Providence and the concurrent advent of the CWHL’s Boston Blades, Thatcher prolonged her formal involvement in the game for three more seasons. Serendipity had extended her playing days. It had allowed her to reunite with head coach Bob Deraney at PC and with her former Brown bench boss, Murphy, in the Hub.

And it laid the groundwork for her next change of heart.

Thatcher admitted that, over time, orthopedic surgery “felt too impersonal to me, and, more importantly, I discovered I don’t really care for the operating room.”

Conversely, she continued, “Through the many injuries sustained over a 25-year career in hockey, I discovered a love for physical therapy. I loved learning about how the human body moves and how to manipulate this movement to facilitate recovery.

“Each time I sustained an injury, it was always my physical therapist that helped me heal both physically and emotionally. I knew this was how I wanted to help others.”

New schools of thought

The last of Thatcher’s injuries aborted her bid for a passport to Sochi one year ahead of the 2014 Games. In a Blades road bout with the Calgary Inferno, she endured what she characterized as “the third time I had sustained a concussion where I lost consciousness.”

Two months later, the Olympic team began its first phase of preparation by assembling its candidates for 2013 summer tryouts. When Thatcher got the call that April, she reluctantly declined the offer.

“It’s been four years since that concussion, and I still notice lingering deficits,” she admitted. “While I never wanted to retire while injured, I didn’t feel that I could take that risk with my brain given the new information begin released regarding concussions and long-term consequences.”

Having procured more money as a personal trainer and as a nanny after leaving her two-year coaching stint at PC, Thatcher eased into the off-ice life she had resolutely resisted in 2010. By the time her ex-teammates were resetting after yet another Olympic heartbreak, she was answering her revised call to Columbus.

Eight years removed from leaving Providence with an undergraduate degree in biology and Summa Cum Laude distinctions, Thatcher chose OSU’s DPT/Ph.D. dual degree program as her next academic challenge. Students complete their clinical degree in a three-year period, then carry on with the longer road toward certification to teach the field at a university.

The latter will be Thatcher’s primary focus after she finishes the former in May. As the department’s website explains, “It requires you to conceive and successfully complete an original investigation to develop original knowledge in your field. At the completion of the Ph.D., you write a dissertation, which may be the equivalent of a few published research articles. Hence, the Ph.D. prepares you to become an independent scientific investigator in your field of study. In our program, it also prepares you to become a leader and effective teacher in your profession.”

Critical thoughts are already brewing in what will soon be a patient-turned-therapist and student-turned-master’s head. A more assertive pitch for the profession is at the forefront of her agenda. Behind it, she hopes to help unearth more methods of healing that can substitute for surgery.

“As Americans, we tend to want the quickest and ‘best’ fix, and we have come to believe as a society that for many musculoskeletal injuries, this must be a surgical procedure,” Thatcher said.

“However, I’ve learned over the past three years that surgery isn’t always the answer. An appropriately administered course of physical therapy can often help individuals avoid surgery. I’ve come to really value the ability of physical therapy prior to surgical interventions to alleviate pain, correct abnormal movement mechanics and potentially avoid surgery.”

‘…an incomparable preparation…’

The what-ifs from the journey to Russia that never was still roam around Thatcher’s quarters like a pocket-size pachyderm. The unfulfilled mystery loiters, but she values the existing gains as they apply to her new ambitions.

“After the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, I felt I had more hockey in me,” she said. “I knew I wasn’t done yet. It was my dream to complete my hockey career in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, and it is still disappointing that my concussion in 2013 kept me from competing for that opportunity.

“While I will never know whether or not I would have made that Olympic team, I am able to look back and know that I did everything I could and that I gave all that I had. This means everything to me. To be able to move forward in my life with no regrets, knowing that I gave everything within me to work toward my dreams.”

To that point, other IIHF jamborees in China, Finland and Sweden sandwiched her 2010 Olympic excursion. She credits those opportunities with prolonging the pleasure of full-fledged hockey involvement while expanding her interpersonal horizons, which she will value in her next occupation.

Ditto the knowhow on how to handle “working in a fast-faced team environment” and “the intangible characteristics of determination, hard work and enthusiasm which high-level sport cultivates.”

She added, “Couple all of this with an intense appreciation for physical activity and the capabilities of the human body, and my career in hockey provided an incomparable preparation for my career in physical therapy."

The 2011 and 2012 Four Nations Cup, where the Americans took first place in Scandinavia, proved to be Thatcher’s last go-around in the Star-Spangled Sweater. But they were also part of the extension on her playing days she had proactively ensured by changing the personnel on her rehab regime post-Vancouver.

As she nears her clinical certification, she is itching to return a favor to the next athletic generation. When she relives the restoration scenario on the other side of the partnership, she aims to get the objective right the first time.

“It is imperative that patients trust their physical therapist,” she said. “With my background as an athlete, I am able to empathize with my patients, which helps them trust that I truly do understand how they may be feeling and thus trust my treatment a bit more.”