Dave Goucher talks Rhode Island sports scene’s past, present, future

(Photo courtesy of Dave Goucher)

Dave Goucher is on the all-time roster of Pawtucket Red Sox announcers in much the same way David Ortiz is on the all-time roster of Pawtucket Red Sox players.

Both men had cemented their place in the top echelon of their respective fields when they came for a cameo performance at the home of Boston baseball’s Triple-A partner. Ortiz was coming off his second World Series championship when he made a three-game rehab appearance in July of 2008. He and the MLB Red Sox were on their way to a third title when he played six more Triple-A games in April of 2013.

Four months later, Goucher brought his skills to McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, R.I., coming off his 12th season as the Boston Bruins radio announcer. He showed up for a mid-August game against Louisville, then another versus Syracuse two weeks later.

But whereas Ortiz and a host of other Boston baseballers come to McCoy for restoration, Goucher’s guest gigs in the booth were a time for reflection. At that point, he was coming off a sprinting marathon in his full-time job. The Bruins had crammed 70 games into a five-month window between the end of a season-shortening lockout and the 2013 Stanley Cup Final.

Before that, he had called the team’s 2011 championship run. He had even worked a game at the home of the PawSox’ parent club, Fenway Park, when the Bruins hosted the 2010 NHL Winter Classic.

But as a former intern with Rhode Island’s minor-league ball club, he had a game in the McCoy booth sitting next to an unchecked box with no flexibility for substitutes.

“Going back to call a few games there in 2013 kind of brought things full circle for me,” he said in an email to Pucks and Recreation. “It was only a couple of months after the Bruins had lost in the Stanley Cup Final to Chicago, and I kept thinking about how much my life had changed from the time I worked at McCoy (1987) until then.”

Born and raised in Pawtucket, four miles north of Providence, Goucher was experiencing a homecoming of the highest order. “From the booth,” he remarked, “I could see past the right field fence to the old McLean Trucking building where my father worked when I was a kid.”

And he was calling the action for a franchise that has existed for almost as long as he has. The PawSox began as a Double-A team in the Eastern League in 1970, then were elevated to the International League in 1973.

In Goucher’s top sport of choice, the local sports scene soon reprised a practice of taking an associated Boston team’s uniform and simply substituting a “P” for a “B.” The Providence Bruins took root as the Hub’s new American Hockey League base in 1992. It marked the area’s first claim to a pro hockey franchise since the AHL’s Reds left for Binghamton, N.Y., in 1977.

By the time the P-Bruins were inaugurated, Goucher was a senior and a student-sportscaster at Boston University. Over his Christmas break that year, he opportunistically took in a game at the Providence Civic Center, but admits that “I never would have thought I’d actually be calling the games three years later.”

Yet after graduating and breaking into the broadcasting ranks with the ECHL’s Wheeling Nailers, he got that opportunity. He would man the Civic Center booth for the next five seasons before successfully pursuing an opening at the Boston Bruins radio network.

Since that time, Goucher has garnered his share of celebrity. Besides his play-by-play duties at the TD Garden, he has amused listeners on 98.5 The Sports Hub with his recurring “Dave Goucher Goes to the Movies” segment on a weekday talk show. There, he channels his vocational energy to lend unique commentary to classic film and TV clips. When the Bruins are out of action, he has enjoyed freelance NHL playoff assignments for Westwood One and college hockey for the NBC Sports Network.

All the while, key constants have stuck back home. The PawSox are in their 45th IL season, while the P-Bruins just finished their 25th campaign. Only Rochester, N.Y., with baseball’s Red Wings dating back to 1899 and the AHL’s Americans since 1956, has sustained the same Triple-A baseball-hockey combination longer than the Rhode Island market.

In addition, with their Boston ties, Providence and Pawtucket claim the longest active affiliations in their respective sports.

“The long run for both the P-Bruins and the PawSox is a great testament to how knowledgeable, caring and passionate sports fans are in Rhode Island,” Goucher said. “I think they take great pride in knowing that their respective teams are the last step on the way to big-league careers for players. I grew up within walking distance of McCoy Stadium and still remember seeing Wade Boggs, Marty Barrett and Roger Clemens all play in Pawtucket.”

Hoping for a Pawtucket perk-up

Given the decades of tradition, it jarred many local minds and even more hearts when an out-of-state relocation looked palpable for the PawSox. Just like Fenway, McCoy Stadium is the oldest baseball venue at its level, currently celebrating its 75th year. Attendance has steadily sagged despite general on-field success, and complicated renovate-or-replace tugs-of-verbal-war have erupted.

As the team’s previous lease was nearing its end, CEO Larry Lucchino of the parent club initiated a push for a park in downtown Providence. After that 2015 outline — which would have come to fruition this year — fell through within months, speculation proliferated over a slew of cities in neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut.

That notion drew natural upset from Rhode Island’s sentimental seamheads, but it is a more personal matter for Pawtucket citizens.

With a legacy from the cotton and textile boom that precipitated the Industrial Revolution, Pawtucket prides itself on its marked blue-collar heritage. Dwarfed by the cultured capital and county namesake in population by more than 100,000, it validates its status as its own city by harboring the state’s favorite ball club.

At the time of Lucchino’s Pawtucket-to-Providence proposition, even before the trajectory went from out-of-city to out-of-state, a sense of lost lifeblood took hold. Pawtucket mayor Donald Grebien told the local press that the announcement “just took the air out of the room.”

Goucher weighed in on Twitter by calling the occasion “An unnecessary, sad day for my hometown.”

Two years later, though, all earthshaking changes are on hold. The Triple-A Red Sox renewed their McCoy lease through 2020, and are now using the time they bought to seek a state-of-the-art facility in their lifelong town.

In late April, Lucchino unveiled a proposed multifaceted, year-round recreation district for downtown. If approved, the natural nucleus would be McCoy’s replacement, which would add punctuation to the Boston connection with its own version of Fenway’s hallowed Green Monster.

Other existing or proposed aspects of the complex would be geared toward keeping the historic Slater Mill neighborhood sleepless every summer day. To supplement the calendar, Lucchino’s group is including none other than a community hockey rink in the package.

For Goucher, a former youth puckster in town, that blueprint is all but his boyhood in one panoramic Polaroid. But he is more interested in his hometown’s future health.

“The new ballpark near Slater Mill would play a vital role in helping revitalize downtown Pawtucket,” he said. “The ice rink piece of it is an added bonus.”

Separate cities, similar stories

Goucher and fellow Pawtucket residents have seen the likes of this pattern before. During the franchise’s wee phases in the mid-’70s, the fan support and stadium conditions fueled and reeked of eventual bankruptcy. Relocation appeared inevitable until some arm-twisting convinced the late Ben Mondor to take a chance.

The affectionate expression “PawSox” did not even come to life until Mondor owned the team. But over time, he formed a revered front-office troika with club president Mike Tamburro and general manager Lou Schweccheimer. Throughout three-plus decades, they made McCoy an appealing choice for a family outing and gradually added more seats, modern amenities and extravagant murals dedicated to the on-field alumni.

By the second decade of that era, Goucher got in on the Mondor-Tamburro-Schweccheimer combination’s second-family feel as a high-school intern in the summer of 1987. Players of note that season included Brady Anderson, Todd Benzinger, Ellis Burks, Oil Can Boyd and Sam Horn.

“My fondest memories of working at McCoy are just the people involved, led by Ben and Mike and Lou,” Goucher said. “They took the time to actually learn your name.”

Goucher worked primarily in concessions, an ostensibly thankless position given its setup away from view of the field. But he was also on call for reinforcement with the grounds crew whenever inclement weather lurked.

“We had to be ready to pull the tarp if the skies opened up,” he recalled. “If they didn’t, we got to stand there and watch the game and get paid for it!”

Eight years later, not long after a pack of Providence investors followed the PawSox pattern, Goucher’s green came from standing, watching and describing quality minor-league action in Rhode Island’s other premier sports facility. In some ways, the establishment that granted that job did for Providence what he now hopes can happen for Pawtucket.

The old Rhode Island Reds bolted in the summer of 1977, ironically the first year of McCoy’s Mondor revival. It took 15 years for hockey to come back at the behest of the late Providence mayor Buddy Cianci. When it did, a multitude of new downtown attractions followed in a manner that cemented the capital’s “Renaissance City” moniker.

Having now finished their first quarter-century of operation, the P-Bruins boast the third-longest tenure of any AHL brand. Support has been sustainable through thick and thin, both of which Goucher witnessed firsthand during his stint. He called a 19-win, last-place season in 1997-98, followed by a Calder Cup championship in 1999.

“I think 25 years for the P-Bruins in Providence is an exceptional accomplishment,” he remarked. “During my five years there, the team routinely led the AHL in attendance, proving just how passionate hockey fans are in Rhode Island, dating back to the days of the Reds. And I think fans like the fact they can see a player in Providence one night and, theoretically, in Boston the next.”

With his own career chronicle, Goucher has added the precedent of potentially hearing a future NHL announcer on his last stepping stone. In the ’80s, he enjoyed watching Barrett’s and Boggs’ slugging and Clemens’ fireballing before the Fenway faithful did.

In the latter half of the ’90s, he more or less returned a favor. His fellow Rhode Islanders heard his thorough pre-faceoff descriptions of each team’s jersey and contrasting excitement for a Bruins goal and trademark deflated deadpan for an opposing tally before the rest of New England could.

‘Enormous pride’

Time will grade the merit of the perpetual curmudgeonly complaint that sportscasters are not what they used to be. For now, Goucher’s former haunts are proof that tomorrow’s top-level announcers are not groomed under the same conditions that he was.

P-Bruins listeners can no longer use a physical radio to take in the action, as audio and video webcasts are the sole method of dissemination. On the flipside, as long as they have Wi-Fi, fans need not be in Southern New England to stay up to speed.

The resultant outreach is greater in number, but the overall signal quality can be erratic. In addition, under league auspices rather than that of a local outlet, the personal flavor has wilted.

It is not what it was when Goucher was calling games on WPRO-630, the Providence market’s signature station. Those presentations were complete with a complementing color commentator, a half-hour pregame show and a postgame wrap. Today’s broadcasts are typically accessible from five minutes before faceoff until the immediate aftermath of the final horn, and the play-by-play voice usually flies solo.

The PawSox have pounced on the luxuries of the Internet as well, but still partner with a slew of stations throughout the region. However, the expressed kinship between the state’s two Triple-A franchises is a shell of its old self. (Although the P-Bruins did observe a moment of silence before their 2010-11 season opener, five days after Mondor’s passing.)

Six months after Goucher got his start in Providence, Pawtucket enlisted another play-by-play prodigy in Don Orsillo. A former employee of Springfield’s AHL teams, Orsillo found his long-term niche in baseball and began a four-season run with the PawSox in 1996. A year later, the team found a new flagship radio abode in WLKW-790, a sister station to WPRO and a backup channel for P-Bruins games at the time.

Goucher and Orsillo’s brotherhood as broadcasters came to reflect the sorority of their stations. The dreams of the two twentysomethings manifestly matched those of the various Boston prospects they covered.

“Occasionally we’d get together, have a beer and wonder if we were ever going to make it,” Goucher recalled.

By the turn of the century, both men’s ambitions were fulfilled. Orsillo was off to the New England Sports Network in the spring of 2000, Goucher to WBZ-1030 the subsequent fall.

Goucher’s elevation to Boston made him the second P-Bruins alumnus to find NHL employment in his field. Joe Beninati called the franchise’s first two seasons on WPRO before becoming the Washington Capitals’ TV play-by-play man in 1994.

The PawSox, two decades the P-Bruins’ senior, have a denser scroll of distinguished alumni. In their own sport, they have honed Major League personalities Gary Cohen, Dave Flemming, Andy Freed, Glenn Geffner, Aaron Goldsmith, Dave Jageler, Jeff Levering and Dave Shea.

Orsillo’s predecessor as NESN’s Red Sox broadcaster, Bob Kurtz, is another PawSox product, and has long since settled in with the NHL’s Minnesota Wild. Football has Dan Hoard of the Cincinnati Bengals and Bob Socci of the New England Patriots, the Bruins’ Sports Hub cohabitants.

But Goucher, the belated addition to that celestial roster, is one of the few who has known the team and the park since childhood. If he has any influence, there may be more of his kind to come. Last July, as part of Boston’s Play by Play Sports Broadcasting Camp, he took the campers on a day trip to see the PawSox host the Red Wings.

Whether any of those campers will one day call the team by the same name in the same town remains to be seen. Schweccheimer and Tamburro have gone elsewhere since selling the keys to Lucchino and company. Ample debate, both economic and emotional, among state officials and constituents will sway the proposed “Pride of Pawtucket.”

Four years after Goucher viewed elements of his childhood from the McCoy press box, he refrains from investing in crystal balls. Instead, the city’s most recognizable product in the sports world only hopes there is much more ahead for the city’s only pro sports entity.

“The team is part of the fabric of the city, something the city takes enormous pride in,” he concluded. “I don’t have a great understanding of the finances involved, but it’s hard for me to envision that team playing in another city.”

Meet the Press: Zack Fisch savoring the ‘Sweetest’ gig in the minor leagues

(Photo courtesy of Zach Fisch)

Zack Fisch and professional hockey are not in Kansas City anymore. The last team to represent the first-year Hershey Bears broadcaster’s native locality — the United League’s Outlaws — came and went when he was a mere 14 years old in 2004-05. Their predecessors, the International League’s Blades, started before Fisch was old enough to remember anything, then marred his memory bank by evaporating when he was 10.

Fast-forward a decade-plus, and Fisch is more understanding of those setbacks, not to mention inclined to count his blessings.

“I now know how much minor-league sports are a business,” he told Pucks and Recreation, “and at times, tough business decisions have to be made. It’s an unfortunate nature of this business that teams do come and go, and with that, so do some amazing people in this industry.

“I have seen friends lose jobs because a team they worked for folded or moved. While no one is immune to change, I have been very fortunate to have worked for the teams I have worked for.”

Considering their historical stature and the enviable stability that connotes, Fisch’s two employers through two seasons of calling pro hockey make an understatement of his remark. He spent 2015-16 with the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays, who will celebrate their 25th anniversary next year. Playing at the same Double-A level as the bygone UHL, the Stingrays are the longest living brand in their league.

This past season, Fisch was elevated to the AHL’s Bears, who will round out their full decade of operation next year. Playing at the same Triple-A level as the bygone IHL, the Bears are the longest living brand in all of minor-league hockey.

“While the Blades are long gone, it’s quite humbling to think that I am working at essentially the same level in the American Hockey League,” he said. “The level of play is top-notch, and I am lucky enough to work with the most historic franchise in the league.”

Native to Olathe, Kan., a suburb just across the Missouri state border, Fisch grew up an insatiable Heartland hockey enthusiast. As such, the Blades functioned like a fun uncle or family friend from the next county over.

Fisch went to games at Kemper Arena on a regular basis and played youth hockey in the Junior Blades program. On occasion, he combined those activities by joining his team for intermission mini-games. In one instance, he was even selected as the youth representative to lead the big Blades onto the ice for the main event.

Over their final four years of operation, the Blades and their league took on a terminal outlook. After peaking at 19 member clubs in 1996-97, the IHL lost teams exponentially over the next four seasons. It was down to 11 by 2000-01, and still more franchises were lingering in vain.

As a result, in a move reminiscent of the 1979 NHL-WHA merger, the late spring of 2001 saw the IHL’s few healthy franchises transfer to the AHL. The Blades could have been among them, theoretically, based on decent attendance figures. The trouble was they were owned by the same group, Richard DeVos and his family, as the league rival Grand Rapids Griffins and Orlando Solar Bears.

Because the AHL had a one-team policy for owners, the Michigan-based DeVoses needed to make a choice. The Griffins won out, and back in Olathe, 10-year-old Fisch was forced and “devastated” to watch the local news bulletins of the Blades’ demise.

Even today, he is preserving his first favorite team’s memory by keeping a jersey in the closet at his new home. It is a gesture worth more than nostalgia because in dying, the franchise later bequeathed a boost to his career, and a few perks still to come.

“Funny enough, the Blades helped me get my job in Hershey,” Fisch said. “Current VP of hockey operations Bryan Helmer played with the Blades during their final season, and his son Cade was actually born in Kansas City. I dropped a Blades reference during my interview with Hershey, and that was enough to get Bryan’s ears to perk up.”

In his field’s fraternity, the Bears broadcaster is not alone among those who used to frequent Kemper Arena. His childhood idol, Bob Kaser, called the Blades’ first 10 seasons before moving to the Griffins in 2000. He is still with the Grand Rapids franchise, and has won a combined three broadcaster-of-the-year awards from the two leagues.

Being in separate conferences, the Bears and Griffins rarely cross paths, last doing so in 2005-06. However, Fisch has learned that Grand Rapids will be on Hershey’s docket for 2017-18, which will equal his first chance to meet Kaser.

“I am excited to get a chance to share stories about his time in Kansas City and thank him for being an influence in how I call a game all these years later,” he said. 

Giant expectations in small places

In his effort to emulate Kaser and Hall of Fame Kansas City Royals announcer Denny Matthews, Fisch covered the short-lived Outlaws for a small-town paper while still a teen. Around the same time, he started venturing an hour west to his state capital to cover the Topeka Tarantulas of the Central League. It was there that he first saw a player-assistant coach named Troy Mann, who by 2009-10 had moved up to the AHL and is now in his third year as the Bears bench boss.

“That’s how small the hockey world is,” Fisch said.

With the exception of his first job out of college with the junior-level USHL’s Dubuque Fighting Saints in Iowa, Fisch has not experienced many small subsectors of the hockey world until now. His native city of Olathe has a population easily above fix figures. The same goes for North Charleston, S.C. where the locals enjoy Stingrays games at a 14,000-seat Coliseum. Neighboring Charleston checks in at over 130,000 residents.

The community at his alma mater, St. Cloud State University, boasts more than a combined 17,000 undergraduates, postgraduates, faculty and staff. Only one-third of that conglomeration can get into the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center on a given game night.

Hershey is a far numerical cry from each of those, although Fisch says Dubuque, where he met his wife, Krista, during his three-year run, had a similar feel. As a lifelong Iowan, Krista would find Hershey to her liking for that reason.

“Dubuque isn’t a huge city, and to us, Hershey is comparable,” Zack Fisch said. “Both towns are quaint, have some picturesque sights, and are rabid for hockey. The people here have made it a very easy adjustment. I met so many people who welcomed me to the area with open arms and gave me all sorts of tips and suggestions about the town and region.”

That region revolves around the Pennsylvania capital of Harrisburg, of which Hershey is basically a suburb. Harrisburg is a relatively small city in its own right with a population south of 50,000.

According to City Data, Hershey’s population spiked by 11.6 percent during the first decade of this century, but is still at a meager 14,257. With its 10,500 seating capacity, the Giant Center — which replaced the historic Hersheypark Arena as the Bears’ new home in 2002 — can accommodate more than two-thirds of the town’s residents.

On many game nights, it appears to be doing just that. In between, the team is a reliable topic for small talk among strangers in a town so small that the locals are barely strangers. In a community where season tickets have been passed down for two generations or more, tales from as far back as the 1950s are told first-, second- and third-hand.

“I often run into fans at the supermarket or while shopping,” Fisch said. “Everyone is so cordial and loves to talk hockey.”

The habitual hockey talk from Hershey’s residents has only amplified the sense of promotion and confirmed at least one common thread with the other franchises Fisch has worked for. In his first year at Dubuque, the Fighting Saints finished first in the USHL, then followed up by winning the 2013 Clark Cup, their second in three years. Their head coach, Jim Montgomery, subsequently moved to the University of Denver.

The Saints reached the semifinals in each of Fisch’s next two years in their booth. He left at the same time as second-year coach Matt Shaw, who joined Brad Berry’s staff at the University of North Dakota.

When he got to South Carolina, the Stingrays were coming off their fourth Kelly Cup Final in franchise history, and had fallen one win shy of their fourth championship. They went to the conference final in his presence, then reached the title round again this year.

“I love getting to work for a team that expects to be successful both on and off the ice,” Fisch said. “As a broadcaster and employee, it holds me to a high standard and makes me proud to put my passion toward a team that has already written so many chapters in the history books.

“From Dubuque to South Carolina to Hershey, I’ve landed in three organizations that are immersed in the community, are regular Cup contenders and are looked at as the gold standard in their respective leagues. If that doesn’t get you excited to come to work every day, I don’t know what will.”

Frantic and fanatical first impressions

With the Stingrays and Bears acting as Washington’s two development clubs, Fisch quickly formed a friendship with Capitals radio voice John Walton, who had called Hershey games for nine years before making his leap to The Show. Through that connection, much like the players he would soon cover, Fisch got a taste of preseason NHL action on Oct. 5 of last year.

Fittingly enough, the Caps were engaging the Blues at the Sprint Center in Kansas City. The St. Louis franchise’s effort to strengthen statewide support translated to a respectable mass of 11,781 at the 17,544-seat venue.

“That moment was a pinch-me moment,” Fisch said, “and something that I’ll never forget.”

The afterglow of the midweek homecoming soon gave way to a literal and figurative tempest. Fisch returned to South Carolina for the weekend when Hurricane Matthew slugged the state. And having been promoted to the AHL in late September, he was left with little time as it was to complete his relocation ahead of the Oct. 14 season opener in Rochester, N.Y.

Walton, his predecessor, helped him in that process, and he ultimately accomplished all of the necessary preparation within his control. Lo and behold, by game night, Blue Cross Arena’s Ethernet feeder malfunctioned in the visitors’ booth. In turn, Fisch spent his debut describing a game between the Bears (the league’s oldest and most storied brand) and the Rochester Americans (the league’s second-oldest franchise at 61 years and counting) over his cell phone.

“We got on the air, but it made for a heck of a story,” he said.

The Bears shuffled to Binghamton the next night, then held their home opener Oct. 22. “From the day I set foot in the city and at the Giant Center, you could tell that Hershey was its own piece of Hockey Heaven,” Fisch said.

He had broken into the AHL through those two away games. He had a full week thereafter to focus on the home opener. He had the added tune-up from the preseason gig in his hometown. And he had heard plenty from his predecessor and mentor, Walton.

But then he settled in and actually watched 8,045 announced attendees file in put the Hershey hockey culture on full display. Referring to Walton, Fisch remarked, “I had high expectations based on his thoughts, and many others, and that night just blew them all out of the water.”

If he had any plans, even of the most deep-down nature, to take an impartial approach, those went the way of the expectations. The crowd punctuated the Star-Spangled Banner with “Go Bears!” They spelled out the team nickname New York Jets style in the wake of the first goal, bringing “an ear-to-ear grin” to Fisch’s face. And coming back from a commercial break, which only let the atmosphere sink in all the more, he was temporarily speechless.

“The Giant Center is a building like no other,” he said. “But it’s the Bears fans, many who have been coming to games their whole lives, who make this experience here so invigorating.”

Embracing with a Bear hug

Indeed, there is no place like Hershey. Not if you love chocolate, and not if you love minor-league hockey.

Fisch suspected as much on the latter while he was still in the Heartland, though he admits there is no substitute for in-person confirmation.

“I never got far enough east to see a Hershey Bears game in person, but I was very aware of the significance of the team,” he said. “I always held them, and the Fort Wayne Komets, to such a high standard as teams that had such a special history. As I started to work in hockey as I got older, I heard more and more just how special of a place Hershey was.”

To date, the Bears have won a record 11 Calder Cup championships. They have been to 23 finals, most recently last year. Despite multiple affiliation changes and the inevitable revolving door on both sides of the building, the Bears have been a relatively consistent contender.

Since 1997, they have only once gone more than five years without at least one trip to the AHL conference finals. During that stretch, they have made five Calder Cup Final appearances and won four titles. Walton called three of those championships, while his predecessor, future Tampa Bay Lightning voice Dave Mishkin, chronicled the 1997 run.

The Bears’ dominance at the gate is even more patent. They have topped the AHL’s attendance chart for 11 years running.

“Every team in hockey claims they have the best fans in the league,” Fisch said. “However, I can say with confidence that Hershey has the best fans in the AHL, hands down.”

“It’s a fan base, and most of all a community, that has love and passion for their team like no other place I’ve been. No matter how the team is playing, no matter the weather, these folks will be there night in and night out cheering on their Bears.”

Technically an unincorporated community self-titled after chocolatier Milton S. Hershey, the town makes the most out of ostensibly the least. Nearly every major establishment in its epicenter shares the name of the famed candy company. (The Bears are not the least of those examples, their name being a natural pun on the company’s signature product.)

The aptly dubbed Giant Center is one of the few spots named after a separate entity, a chain of Pennsylvania grocery stores. But given the history of its tenant, it fits in more than it stands out.

The arena’s latest Stadium Journey review assesses, “this is one arena where you can make an entire vacation out of your trip for a hockey game. You could fill an entire week by spending a day or two at the amusement park, a day at the chocolate world, a day at the spa (complete with cocoa baths) and an evening at a Bears hockey game.”

With its theme park and boardwalk among the attractions in the shopping district, Hersheypark is like a real-life Wonder Wharf from Bob’s Burgers, but with more chocolate, less off-putting people and Bears hockey in lieu of Wonderdogs baseball. Perfect for a puck-centric sportscaster and a small-town product like Zack Fisch and Krista, respectively.

“Hershey is ‘The Sweetest Place on Earth’ and it really is a fantastic place to call home,” said Fisch. “What Milton Hershey built here, all based around chocolate, is pretty impressive, and there are so many people committed to carrying on his legacy and making Hershey a destination. The people in Hershey have been so kind and welcoming, and that’s something that really stands out to me. The kindness and generosity of the people in the area is second to none.”

More than enough that he is willing to, for the first time in a long time, settle down and wait for his next elevation up the broadcasting ladder.

“Obviously, every player or broadcaster has the goal of getting to the NHL, and I'm no exception,” he said. “However, I'm not in any hurry for that to happen because of just how fantastic Hershey is. This is a place where I am looking forward to growing personally and professionally, and really making myself the person and broadcaster I want to be. I’m honored to be part of the Hershey community and a member of the Bears. Hershey is a special place.”

Halli Krzyzaniak preserving a program’s all-round picture

(Photo courtesy of UND Media Relations)

Halli Krzyzaniak only needed to stand for her first Canadian national team portrait in 2014 to tell an as-yet-unfamiliar world what she was — and still is — all about. Her choice to keep on her eyewear for that particular shoot set her apart from her teammates, fashion-wise. Three years later, it retroactively symbolizes her status in the program, namely as a graduated, yet unfinished student.

Two months into her sophomore year at the University of North Dakota, and barely eight months after her country corralled its fourth straight Olympic gold medal, Krzyzaniak cracked Canada’s roster at the 2014 Four Nations Cup. This meant missing a weekend of intercollegiate action, plus a week of classes in Grand Forks.

But she did not ditch her best intellectual persona in the process. Trade the red and black for blue and red, and the maple leaf for an “S”, and one would think Kara Danvers neglected to complete her transformation out of haste. 

For the customary stickblade-in-the-camera and stick-behind-the-shoulders poses, Krzyzaniak proudly sported Hockey Canada’s 100th anniversary patch on her No. 25 jersey. Above all of the visible gear, she sported a pair of rectangular glasses with frames almost as bold and black as the shoulder caps on her jersey. 

The hockey equipment signaled that Krzyzaniak has the athletic potential of Meghan Mikkelson. The spectacles signified that she, both superficially and within, has the head of Alex Dunphy.

Six semesters and eight IIHF events later, she does not quite have the superstar ceiling of Hayley Wickenheiser. But she does bear the same basic, all-round aspirations as the five-time Olympic puckster who is now embarking on medical school after hanging up her skates earlier this year.

Krzyzaniak is chasing her first Olympic roster spot on the heels of obtaining the WCHA’s postgraduate scholarship. The scholarship entails a $7,500 grant toward continuing education, which Krzyzaniak plans to pursue en route to a career in orthopedics.

For her alma mater, which saw its final shift of NCAA women’s hockey action for the foreseeable future March 4, the scholarship makes for one last bragging-rights bow.

“Receiving this scholarship from the WCHA definitely helps my pride in coming from the WCHA and playing in such a great league against some of the best players in the world,” she said in a phone interview with Pucks and Recreation.

Krzyzaniak is far from the last bastion of the North Dakota women’s hockey program, which the university administration euthanized in late March. All players with remaining collegiate eligibility are free to disperse to other programs. At least nine have already transferred to another NCAA Division I school, while two others are going to the Canadian Interuniversity system.

Among the alumnae, twin sisters Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux are gunning for their third go-round with the U.S. Olympic team. Michelle Karvinen and Susanna Tapani could both represent Team Finland next February, as could undergraduates Anna Kilponen, Emma Nuutinen and Vilma Tanskanen. Amy Menke is an NWHL prospect for the New York Riveters.

But barring an eventual replenishment, Krzyzaniak will be a part of the Fighting Hawks’ last graduating class. She will be a part of their last cluster of captains, having sported an “A” over her heart her junior and senior season.

And whenever she resumes her studies, she will be the last student-athlete in the program’s run to attend school with financial aid that she earned as a direct result of contributing to UND.

 “Especially with everything that did happen with the North Dakota program,” she said, “it’s really nice to know that I can still be a continuing part of the WCHA even after my graduation and coming out of our hockey program.”

Krzyzaniak came into the UND women’s hockey program when it was coming off its first two NCAA tournament appearances in 2012 and 2013. (Both runs ended in quarterfinal losses to league rival and national dynasty Minnesota.) She came in with three years of experience with the Canadian U-18 national team, plus an ornate background with Team Manitoba already to her credit.

Krzyzaniak entered the rigorous UND pre-health studies program with a desire to emulate her mother, Kelly, a family physician in their rural Manitoba hometown of Neepawa. The same way a conventional Canadian catches a craze through the tales of their ice-going idols, she acquired her additional ambitions through her mother’s stories of medical school and getting to know a community through an essential service.

“I guess I kind of grew up around her and just seeing what she did…the day-to-day happenings and knowing what she does and having so much pride in her occupation is mostly what’s drawn me towards that,” she said.

Though the Fighting Hawks never returned to the national bracket with Kryzaniak’s input, they finished .500 or better overall in each of her four seasons. As a sophomore and junior, her individual impact translated to a spot on the all-WCHA third team. In each of those two years, the conference also recognized her as a scholar-athlete and an all-academic honoree.

In 2016-17, Krzyzaniak was one of only four Division I women’s hockey players to make one of CoSIDA’s academic all-district scrolls. She was her sports only representative in District Six, which covers all of the women’s WCHA’s territory except Ohio State.

Theoretically, that made it easier for the UND athletic program’s veteran faculty representative, Dr. Sue Jeno, to nominate the university’s candidate for the league’s postgraduate scholarship, which she has done in 11 years on the job.

Four other hockey players (two women’s, two men’s) had previously won continuing financial assistance with Jeno’s good word. With Krzyzaniak’s selection, she gave Jeno and her team a third, plus a repeat following goaltender Shelby Amsley-Benzie’s honor in 2016.

And now, along with 2012 OSU alumna Natalie Spooner, she joins 10 other WCHA ambassadors — all of whom represent UND’s perennial on-ice superiors from Minnesota, Minnesota-Duluth and Wisconsin — on Canada’s centralized roster. She does so as the only one with a selective league-issued academic scholarship waiting patiently on the backburner.

Head on a swivel

While working out with 27 other Olympic candidates in Fredericton, N.B., Krzyzaniak admitted her education will continue at a school to be named later. At present, she is tempted to return close to home by enrolling at the University of Manitoba. But the interim will be long enough for other enticements to emerge, and if there was ever a time that called for a gap year, the 2017-18 hockey season is it.

At the time of her debut with the national program’s big club, Krzyzaniak was one of 10 newbies joining the holdovers from the 2014 Sochi Games. In the wake of three straight silver-medal runs at the IIHF World Championship, her odds and desires for Pyeongchang have only emboldened.

But there are five cuts to come. At least two, maybe three of those will be among the nine centralized defenders Krzyzaniak stands with, including the Vancouver and Sochi veteran Mikkelson. 

As one of five blueliners without prior Olympic experience, she can ill afford an irrecoverable misstep in her protracted tryout. She cannot lose focus. With that said, if her retelling of the WCHA scholarship derby is any indication, she will have little trouble muzzling the scholastic hounds as necessary.

“I didn’t really think too much about it,” she said. “I was away at the World Championships at the time of the nomination, so for me it was kind of just an afterthought.”

Still, the same basic instinct that drew the syrup on her undergraduate sundae — multifold major in honors, biology and pre-health, 3.92 great-point average and all — can help her toward the big scoop she craves in her athletic dish.

Following a seven-week summer break, the Canadian women will reconvene in Calgary on Aug. 1, kicking off a six-month grind before the chosen 23 cross the Pacific. The broad timeline of the singular project resembles — if only vaguely — the senior thesis Krzyzaniak compiled over the last school year.

Per the program’s website, UND’s pre-health majors are expected to uphold following five pillars: “Complete any prerequisite coursework for the professional school or program of their choice as advised.” “Maintain a competitive cumulative GPA (3.0 minimum).” “Take the standardized entrance exam for their field of choice.” “Visit with the Health Sciences Advisor regularly.” “Visit with their major advisor regularly.”

One could liken all of those to, say, building and sustaining one’s Olympic candidacy through regular and visible involvement in the short-order Four Nations Cup and World Championship.

But after letting out an audible, contemplative, “Hmm,” Krzyzaniak singled out the colossal culmination as her defining stage in the pre-health program. Marathons of solitary research and one-on-one work with a professor would yield a page count in the triple digits on her thesis.

“Just having that self-discipline and time management and knowing that the due date wasn’t very close, but I still had to get this very large body of work done,” she said. “It really helped me to be disciplined enough to force myself work on it for a couple of hours every day make sure that I put aside enough time with my other coursework in order to finish the whole project.”

While her upcoming endeavor will not have the company of other commitments, but plenty of human company, it will consume Krzyzniak’s calendar in a comparable manner. In turn, she will again need to manufacture her own urgency in the opening month to prevent it from mounting on its own in the homestretch.

To put that another way, the willpower that fed the inner Alex Dunphy in the 2016-17 academic almanac must now go back to the Halli Krzyzaniak who made an impression at the Pursuit of Excellence Hockey Academy in Kamloops, B.C.

Prior to Krzyzaniak’s first Four Nations Cup, former POE coach Scott Spencer told Christine Ulmer of Hockey Canada’s website, “Halli’s work ethic is second to none. I’ve never seen someone as driven, determined and committed.”

But just as she balanced the Fighting Hawks and Team Canada with her course load, Krzyzaniak could still fetch a few breathers amidst the Olympic tryout. While she is in Alberta, she may take the opportunity to explore the University of Calgary, whose medical doctoral program has ranked among Canada’s top 10 by Maclean’s, the country’s premier college ranker.

As a 2016 draft choice of the NWHL’s Boston Pride, Krzyzaniak may also have long-term options below the 49th parallel. The Pride’s area code boasts three of U.S. News and World Report’s top 50 medical schools in Harvard (ranked No. 1), Boston University and Tufts.

“My main focus in hockey right now is training and competing to hopefully play in the Olympic Games,” Krzyzaniak insisted, before allowing, “That’s definitely something that I would look into, knowing that there are some really great medical schools out there. So if that was something that I would be able to work, so that I was able to play hockey and go to medical school at the same time, that’s something I would definitely look into.”

Plenty to ‘lean on’

Minus her mother, Krzyzaniak is not one to single out influences by name. The habitual team orientation that boosted her leadership credentials in the UND locker room also served to cut down the tales from the UND classrooms that ultimately yielded her scholarship.

“Really, all of the professors at UND were super great and super helpful,” she said. “Knowing the schedule that I had as a student-athlete, and then leaving fairly often for events with my national team, they were very supportive in helping me achieve the grades that I wanted to while missing so much time, and to be able to graduate within four years…I wouldn’t have been able to do it if they weren’t so helpful.”

The calls to give back some of that moral support have rang, if not early and often, then suddenly and harshly. On Nov. 17, 2014 — three weeks after Krzyzaniak traded her specs for her shield to skate in her first Four Nations Cup — North Dakota classmate and teammate Lisa Marvin sustained a multitude of gruesome injuries in a near-fatal auto wreck. 

As Pat Borzi of the New York Times articulated much later, “It would be three days before Marvin’s teammates washed the gasoline and blood out of her hair.” For months thereafter, Marvin lacked physical autonomy as she healed from a host of bone, ligament and nerve wounds.

But after missing the balance of her and Krzyzaniak’s sophomore season, then all of 2015-16, she returned to game shape and saw action in 24 contests this past year.

“With Lisa’s accident, it put a lot of things into perspective,” said Krzyzaniak, who in a future vocation may one day have a role to play in another athlete’s long journey back to game shape. “Most of us had never dealt with something of that magnitude before.

“So to see something like that happen firsthand and to be alongside Lisa for all of her stay in the hospital and then through her very long rehab process, it made us all be able to better see the big picture of life and to know that she was just so lucky to be alive after that.

“But, really, the experiences we were able to have as student-athletes and as teenagers and young adults, that’s just something that you can’t take for granted."

As though any of the Fighting Hawks needed to learn that lesson twice, they were literally taking the ice at Ralph Engelstad Arena for a postseason practice March 29 when the word leaked that their work would be for naught. Menke, the last team captain, subsequently wrote in The Players’ Tribune that she heard the news through classmate Gracen Hirschy, who had learned it via social media.

“It was very abrupt, there was no warning, there was really no indication that something like that was even a possibility,” said Krzyzaniak. “We were a very tight knit group, though, so we had one another to lean on.”

Eight days before posing with Hirschy, Marvin and Menke at their commencement ceremony — her wardrobe uniquely punctuated with an honors’ gold medal — Krzyzaniak had her own social-media missive on the matter. The university’s official Twitter account had quoted President Mark Kennedy as follows: “Our alumni love UND. We are looking to keep it that way.”

Krzyzaniak’s reply: “Really?? Are you sure??”

When she elaborated to Pucks and Rec, she first spoke like the House or Senate leader of an opposition party. Then she switched to a supporting tone for her former teammates who, while she aims to represent UND through a higher than higher education and participation in the five-ring festival, will round out their Division I eligibility on other campuses.

“The president of the university made it very clear that reinstating wasn’t going to happen without an absurdly large amount of money, which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to us,” she said.

“But it was more just leaning on one another and knowing that there are going to be some tough days, and that no matter where the girls end up, they always have our support to lean back on.”

Not that Krzyzaniak is dipping too broad a brush into the grudge canister. After all, the athletic department and everything it provided in her time put her in a position to become UND’s first representative on the Canadian women’s Olympic team.

However strong that springboard proves in the sporting world, she will have her league-sanctioned cushion to lean back on. Dr. Jeno and company put her on the path to the last academic scholarship anybody will derive directly from playing North Dakota women’s hockey.

“They were nice enough to nominate me for this award,” she said. “To actually be awarded the scholarship was kind of a surprise for me."

Nothing like a pleasant surprise to brighten the picture so soon after a darkening shock.