At Shattuck-St. Mary’s, hockey was the gateway to a gift gathering

For 25 years, Shattuck-St. Mary’s has gone national (and occasionally international) with its hockey program. The undertaking was a survival tactic after overall enrollment dipped to perilous lows, so much so that a full team of SSM students was not possible. Since the turnaround, hockey has remained a microcosm of Minnesota’s lone boarding school’s fortunes, and perpetually holds a standard that eight programs in other fields are emulating around campus.

On a crisp Good Friday in 2007, St. Louis Blues captain Doug Weight entered a two-sheet arena and stood solo in the open space to the right of the home bench. He was a healthy scratch for practice on the eve of the playoff no-go team’s season finale in Minnesota.

Along with fellow veteran Dallas Drake, radio analyst Kelly Chase and play-by-play man Chris Kerber, Weight had spent the first part of the reprieve speaking to the student body at Shattuck-St. Mary’s in the small town of Faribault. At midday’s approach, he strolled from the prep school’s auditorium to the SSM Sports Complex with the rest of the guests and hosts.

Structurally and size-wise, the rink the Blues utilized for this one day is on a par with top-notch NCAA Division III venues. A four-sided scoreboard hangs over center ice, bleachers that seat at least 600 spectators face opposite the benches while added standing room brings the conceivable capacity to a four-figure range.

Across from Weight’s view in those geothermal bleachers, 250-plus students marveled at the craft his teammates honed each day. Weight, in return, marveled at the facilities — both this newer and larger of the two campus ice houses and the academic buildings that hosted the preceding assembly — the students utilized each day.

When the active Blues adjourned to the dressing room, the captain met a Comic Con-length line of autograph and photograph seekers. Finishing that row was the campus newspaper’s sports specialist pursuing an exclusive.

In the ensuing chat, Weight unwittingly spoke more to the future of the institute than what he was soaking in at that moment.

“It’s a mini college campus,” the then-15-season NHL veteran told that student-reporter.

A decade later to the week, Dr. Maren LaLiberty vouches for that comparison. The seventh-year SSM science instructor coached women’s rowing at the University of Wisconsin from 1997 to 2003. That entailed working at a Big Ten institution in a town that Best College Reviews ranked third among America’s top 50 college cities.

But while Madison’s population of over 240,000 dwarfs Faribault’s populace 10 times, and while UW’s undergraduate enrollment is nearly 60 times greater, LaLiberty was drawn to SSM by its sixth-sense similarities.

Passing through the hallowed Whitney Arch, the main entrance to the main campus, one sees a slew of Collegiate Gothic architecture dressing the academic and residential buildings. Three of those buildings are part of the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

Together with an Episcopal chapel, those structures flank one of the school’s three regulation soccer fields. The other two pitches are on the other side of the academic facilities, situated behind the rinks to comprise the Sports Complex.

“There is no doubt that driving through the Whitney Arch for the first time is a spine-tingling experience,” LaLiberty told Pucks and Recreation, “much the same as entering many college campuses for the first time. The SSM campus — with its distinctive architecture, expansive green spaces and adjoining athletic complex — can easily be mistaken for a college campus.”

As the founder and leader of the school’s selective bioscience studies program, LaLiberty has aimed to lend that feel to the campus’ insides her own way. The exclusively accessible lab boasts everything from beakers and skeletons to models of human organs and DNA helixes.

Much of the lab’s activity requires full surgical regalia. Ditto the road trips students often take to the much-heralded Mayo Clinic in Rochester, to the University of Minnesota or to Medtronic’s operational U.S. headquarters, all within an hour’s-drive radius from Faribault.

“We are incredibly fortunate to ‘rub elbows’ with leaders in in all different areas of health science on a regular basis,” LaLiberty said.

Those opportunities are the product of a program that, along with seven others, emulated a school-saving experiment that the hockey specialists undertook in the early ’90s. Within a year of the Blues’ visit, SSM was celebrating its sesquicentennial with six established or fledgling pieces of what it dubs the Centers of Excellence. Besides the three athletic programs — hockey, soccer and figure skating — there were two academic bodies and one performing arts-oriented guild.

With the exception of the hockey program, all were far from their fifth respective anniversaries at the time. Today, as they all plunge deep into their second decade of existence, they have the company of three other specialized societies for elite students, athletes and artists.

As of the current academic year, the athletic Centers of Excellence encompass hockey, soccer, figure skating and golf. Vocal performance and pre-conservatory music cater to arts prodigies.

In academics, the school inaugurated its rigorous bioscience program under LaLiberty’s direction in 2010. An engineering center came along in 2014, followed by a customizable academic regimen program known as “The Major.” As school president Nick Stoneman explained to Pucks and Rec, the latter is meant “for those students interested in developing a specific area of academic interest for which we do not have an existing COE. It has led to some fascinating areas of study.”

As the Major program’s web page states, it is geared expressly toward affording its beneficiaries “the flexibility to explore and develop new areas of passion and interest as they also meet the rigors of our core college preparatory program.”

By that logic, Weight’s statement is all but a retroactive overstatement. The full and explicit higher-education simulation on the compact campus was still to come when the Blues dropped by. But first, SSM had to get away with ostensibly running a reverse on the “school comes first” dogma.

Starting from the rink out

SSM was merely tapping into its A-list connections on the occasion of the Blues’ visit. A near-spontaneous event born out of serendipity catered to a hockey-dominated student body. But it also intrigued other community members and set a tone for the school’s future elite programs with comparable connections.

Then-St. Louis head coach Andy Murray had led the SSM Sabres’ top-level team to a USA Hockey national title in 1999. Two of his children had subsequently graduated there, and his youngest son, Jordy, had just helped the same program to its fifth national crown as a junior on the 2006-07 team.

At the other end of Jordy and company’s crowning week, the Blues happened to be passing through en route to the next night’s engagement with the Wild in St. Paul, a straightforward 45-minute commute up north.

Besides borrowing the second-year state-of-the-art rink for their pre-game-day practice, they cut into the middle of the day of classes for an all-school guest lecture at Newhall Auditorium. The auditorium, tucked into the second floor of the main academic building, was famously the site of the assembly scene in D3: The Mighty Ducks. And earlier in the week, it had hosted another all-school gathering to toast both the SSM’s boys’ 18-and-under and girls’ 19-and-under national championships, clinched on the preceding Sunday.

The events matched the makeup of the student body as it was constituted that year. With eight travel hockey teams in total — two girls’, two boys’ Bantam and two boys’ Midget — roughly two-thirds of SSM’s enrollees were pucksters with professional aspirations. All of the teams played schedules hovering around 70 games from September to March, and five were eligible to compete at USA Hockey’s national tournament.

In addition, an equivalent athletic brethren in the form of four soccer teams and a cluster of figure skaters had just taken root. Then there was the contingent of overseas imports with an American academic experience at the forefront of their incentives. They and others joined the student-athletes in settings of modernized mystique every school day, and were on hand for the NHL-flavored assembly in the auditorium and at the Sports Complex on that typically Minnesotan first-week-of-April day.

Prep-school purists would have likely winced at such a scene. They could have framed it as proof of an administration disproportionately feeding its fancy facilities at the expense of essentials for the classroom.

Such complainants are quite real, and ordinarily manifest themselves when the subject is an illustrious NCAA Division I school. Putting that another way, from a Shattuck-St. Mary’s standpoint, external (and occasionally internal) accusations of becoming a sports specialty school come with the territory that is the “mini college campus” Weight spoke of.

In reality, the campus’ young residents are still student-athletes, just ones who are subject to more rigor in what they juggle. Former coach and administrator John Sumner, who retired after a 40-year tenure in 2011, had little trouble justifying the hockey program’s upgrade in its formative days.

As Sumner recalled, one skeptic opened an exchange of dialogue by asking, “Geez, seven or eight months of hockey?”

Sumner nimbly replied, “If you want to be a good piano player, what are you doing every day? You’re practicing three or four hours a day. So why can’t a hockey player do that?”

The comparison sank in like a soda tablet. “I guess you’re right,” the conversationalist consented.

SSM’s advocates, especially the internal ones, have never spared any energy in their effort to inform the outside world that they are not merely running a “hockey school.” The place has never taken after the National Sports Academy, a place for winter high school-aged athletes that shut down in 2015 after a 38-year run in Lake Placid, N.Y.

With that being said, Stoneman does not shy away from acknowledging the prolonged special focus the hockey experiment needed before anyone planted equivalent seeds.

A decade before Stoneman himself arrived in 2002, the “Shad pucksters” mutated with intent to outgrow Minnesota’s interscholastic ranks. As the state’s sole boarding school, and as the product of a merger between a bygone military academy and neighboring girls’ school (which still serves as a smaller SSM campus), it needed a new way of reeling in recruits from afar.

Under former Wisconsin Badgers and professional veterans Craig Norwich and Mike Eaves, shuffling to the auspices of USA Hockey was the first step. The top boys’ team (classified as “prep” rather than “varsity”) and those that followed it would soon be in season from September to April. Some teams would be eligible to represent the Minnkota District at the national tournament, at times going uncontested through the travel sport’s equivalent of a primary season.

Boys’ prep had three national championship banners to its credit by the time Stoneman stepped in. Future NHL staples Zach Parise, Patrick Eaves, Sidney Crosby, Jack Johnson and Drew Stafford each had a hand in one or another of those title runs.

Within another year, Stoneman oversaw the groundbreaking for the second ice arena, plus one outdoor and one domed soccer field. The first priority, though, was reaffirming the school’s regal position on the hockey map in multiple tones.

“It was essential for SSM to, first of all, further its dominance in its hockey program through leadership recruitment for both the boys’ and girls’ programs, through facility enhancement and through strategic planning,” Stoneman said. “We did not want to assume anything as ‘given’ in the hockey program as we considered other Centers of Excellence, and knew we needed to continue to examine and further that which was established.

“We also knew that the school needed to grow, so we identified what we thought were the six essential elements that played a role in the success of the hockey program – leadership, program design, facilities, merit aid, recruitment and placement.

“We felt that if we could bring each of these to bear, we would be able to launch other (Centers).”

Spreading the fever

No elements of Stoneman’s starting point took long to burgeon. In 2004, he and SSM’s hockey program director — the late J.P. Parise — moved to shuffle the coaching staff within the girls’, Midget and Bantam divisions. In those reconfigurations, fourth-level boys’ bench boss Gordie Stafford moved to the head post behind the girls’ 19-and-under bench.

All he did for a first impression in his new gig was assimilate two future Olympians in Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux, a pair of freshmen who helped the team to its first national title in 2005. By the week of the Blues’ visit, the 19-and-under girls were SSM’s first representative to win two, let alone three, USA Hockey crowns in succession.

That 2006-07 school year also saw the soccer and figure skating programs running full-fledged for the first time. The go-ahead to open additional avenues in academic and arts was as clear as a newly Zambonied sheet of ice.

By decade’s end, the same student body that had welcomed the Blues to its home and, one year prior, invaded the Minneapolis-area Blake School Ice Arena for a doubleheader of rivalry hockey paid a similarly purposeful visit to Minnesota Orchestra Hall. One of their pianist peers from the pre-conservatory program — the German-born Magdalena Müllerperth — was giving a solo performance that evening. Müllerperth has since taken her talents to a host of halls in Berlin and New York City.

Student-musicians soon started sharing the stage with their puck-centric peers for national championship shindigs as well. In 2011, the Music Teachers National Association named Russian-born SSM sophomore Osip Nikiforov the top senior pianist at its signature competition. On his triumphant return to campus, Nikiforov performed amidst a ceremony honoring a double crown for the 18-and-under boys’ and 19-and-under girls’ hockey squads — the first such pair of coinciding titles since 2007.

Previous victorious installments of those teams had been serenaded with canned renditions of Queen’s “We Are the Champions.” This time, the ostensibly obligatory standard for the occasion gave way to Nikiforov’s renderings of Schubert and Bach masterpieces.

“What an amazing mix of talent we saw that day,” said LaLiberty, who was finishing her first year in Faribault at the time.

“Concluded with a standing ovation,” Stoneman noted.

More recently, student-athletes have commonly transported themselves to watch their arts counterparts on campus, and vice versa. Stoneman remembers one instance that had a combined clique of hockey and soccer players passing by his office on their way upstairs for a girls’ night out at the auditorium.

“I overheard one who was speaking to her mom on her cell phone say that she had to go because she was heading up to Newhall to hear her friend’s senior violin recital,” he said. “This is a Saturday night, and this was classical music! They knew how hard he worked and how good he was and they were going to honor him.

“And, of course, you can see the musicians and engineers and scientists banging the glass at the prep boys’ and girls’ games on any given weeknight.”

Such sights and sounds were inconceivable before the likes of the Lamoureux twins, Müllerperth or Nikiforov came into existence. If Stoneman had yet to see a “given” with the hockey program circa 2003, his forebears faced sweatier specters for the school altogether in the late ’80s.

Stability through skates

For as long as Sumner has been associated with Shattuck-St. Mary’s, dating back to one year before its merger and name change, hockey has been the ultimate microcosm of the school’s fortunes. And earlier on, Lady Livelihood, to say nothing of promising prospects or established celebrity guests in any field, had no incentive to explore SSM’s quarters.

Total enrollment numbers by the late ’80s were south of what the student body’s puck-crazed population would be by the mid-’00s. Shattuck’s long-defining military program had vanished in the wake of the merger with St. Mary’s Hall and of the unpopular Vietnam War. The place’s formerly time-honored signature sport, football, had evaporated from campus for a decade.

“We had a combined enrollment that was close to maybe 140, and the hockey program depended on what came through the arch in September,” Sumner recalled. “We were at the mercy of the admissions department and what families in those days were looking for.”

The Collegiate Gothic architecture that today exudes a historical charm was then holding and discharging a deathly vibe. In response, the administration placed a house call to Dr. W. Rodman Snelling, the founder and longtime consultant of Independent School Management.

As Snelling walked through and around those seemingly ancient structures, then down the same path Weight walked in 2007, he happened past a forlorn football field en route to an equally lonely ice barn. The rink had no partner, no pro shop, no concession stand, no adjacent soccer field and no bubbled dome peering from behind. Trees were the only backdrop.

For that matter, for the better part of the ’80s, the arena had no tenant to call its own. As few as four, five or six SSM enrollees were playing hockey in a given year, which meant forming a unified team with Faribault High School.

Amidst the evaluation visit, Sumner stood in Snelling’s company, watched as he “literally scratched his head” and listened to the obvious statement-question tandem: “You have your own rink. Why don’t you have your own hockey team?”

In the ensuing discussion, Sumner remembers, Snelling said the school needed to enlist “Pied Pipers” from extracurricular fields. In 1989, SSM turned to Norwich, two years removed from his final game as a player and hailing from the Minneapolis suburb of Edina.

Under his direction, and soon with Eaves at his side, vacant dorm beds and cold classroom seats were filled with locals, out-of-staters and Canadians seeking the only available boarding-school experience in the State of Hockey. In turn, Y2K came to SSM a decade early, and for the better, as the number of registered hockey players went from four in 1989 to 22 in 1990.

“The turning point was the hiring of Craig Norwich,” said Sumner. “He brought some good players in, and he said, ‘You come and play for me, and I’ll try to get you in Division I programs.’ And, in most cases, he delivered."

The puck population started to swell all the more when Norwich pursued the program’s reclassification from scholastic to travel, effective in 1992. As it was, the state high school league’s restrictions and SSM’s unique status as a boarding school still inhibited the admissions ambitions.

“We were going to start in November and play a 20-game schedule,” said Sumner, “which in our case, at the end of the fall term we’d go on a fall break, come back and go on Christmas break, then come back, so the season was chopped up.”

“The key was to drop out of the state high school league and become a part of USA Hockey,” he continued. “Every team was playing at least 65 games and starting in September rather than November, so the kids were given the opportunity to follow their passion, playing more games and playing longer. That was the secret.”

The added sense of purpose kept several students on campus more consistently, and in turn drew enough applicants to start multiplying the number of teams. For some of those teams, the two-week Christmas vacation entails an excursion to Europe while others have gone to Canadian tournaments over Thanksgiving. Soccer has since reasserted the merits of this practice by fielding seven U.S. Development Academy-sanctioned teams that are assembled and active for up to 11 months per year.

When Norwich and Eaves left their own vacancies on campus in 1996, former North Stars captain J.P. Parise inherited their creation. By that year, the program had produced its first NHL draftee in Peter Ratchuk, a Colorado Avalanche first-rounder bound for Bowling Green State that fall. Another future pro, goaltender Ty Conklin, had also come through.

Parise would spend the next dozen years as the SSM Sabres hockey godfather. He oversaw the icebreaking one-year wonder that was Andy Murray’s championship-winning coaching stint, then hired former Minnesota Gopher Tom Ward to replace Murray as the top Midget team’s head coach.

Ward, who majored in education at Minnesota, won eight titles in 17 seasons and took on an extra assignment as SSM’s new director of hockey when Parise relinquished the post in 2005. Ward relayed that role to Stafford this past summer upon accepting an assistant coaching job with the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres.

All the while, to ensure no one looked back in the new millennium, administrators conceived and carried out the plan to make the puck the mere bottom layer of a royal wedding-worthy, nine-flavored confection.

Making sense from scratch

SSM’s use of extracurricular activities as a hook for hungry minds was not met without its share of skeptics and cynics. Brian Libby, who retired last spring after teaching history for 38 years, was a leading internal example of that group.

At the outset of the new century, Libby went so far as to pen a satirical novel, And Gladly Teach, loosely adapting the real-life ’80s-to-’90s storyline. The third chapter’s title: “Puck is a Four-letter Word.” In it, the fictitious St. Lawrence Academy tabs a washed-up journeyman who “now reveled in grandiose dreams of a hockey empire: not just one team but half a dozen” as both a coach and admissions officer.

“He admitted only hockey players,” Libby’s narrator notes of St. Lawrence savior Lance Vance. “The call went out: if you can play hockey, SLA is the place for you.” Vance is subsequently described as a sports management savant “who could barely read and write” and whose prized recruits will not have much to write home about, academically speaking, when they arrive.

By 2004, with SSM’s real-life blueprint for the second ice facility and two adjacent soccer pitches in place, Libby was participating in a faculty meeting to address the vision for pluralizing the Centers of Excellence. Stafford, who has also taught several English courses, recalls sitting in on that meeting himself.

As the teacher-coach recalled, Libby argued, “So…we’re trusting the future of the school to programs that don’t exist, in facilities that haven’t been built, run by people who have not been hired?”

“And the answer was ‘Yes,’” Stafford told Pucks and Rec. “The Center of Excellence model, growing out of the hockey template, made sense, and I think the people they hired to run the centers, specifically Diana Ronayne and Tom Hickey (in figure skating), as well as Tim Carter (soccer), really breathed life into the program. The same is true for Maren LaLiberty in bioscience and in Mike Boone in engineering.

“It’s as much about the passion, character and competence of the people as the creation of the programs. This certainly includes J.P. Parise and Tom Ward.”

‘…build on tradition’

Stoneman rattled off multiple ways in which other COE departments plan or hope to add new elements in the near future. In LaLiberty’s bioscience lab, he said, “We will be adding a cancer research center component with a full-time cancer research PhD on staff.”

Soccer is still working on its bid for its first national title. But in the past year, it formally allied with Minnesota United FC, a former North American League franchise now in its inaugural Major League season. In addition, it has already produced a deluge of Division I talent, plus MLS mainstay Teal Bunbury and 2012 Canadian Olympian Chelsea Stewart.

At the ice houses, which now include a smaller studio rink for extra informal practice, an expansion figure skating team is in the works.

Meanwhile, the cohabitating hockey program has recently dropped its second-tier Bantam team, leaving seven squads in total. But with 142 individuals in 2016-17, the puck population still comprises nearly 30 percent of the student body.

When Blues color commentator Kelly Chase spoke to a prior incarnation of that body in 2007, he touched on a few top NHL pugilists, an area of expertise for the former on-ice ruffian. Through hand gestures, he explained that such figures were “done growing,” height-wise, but not finished building their brawn and power.

For Stafford, the SSM hockey program is kind of like that as it rounds out the first quarter-century of its modern form. While the school’s new-wave trendsetter is done growing its participation figures, it will not be a complacent king on his watch.

“Hockey remains the highest profile sport at SSM,” Stafford insists, “and it’s important to, as Coach Ward said it, build on tradition rather than rest on tradition. With the profile we have, new programs are copying us, even call themselves ‘the Shattuck of…’

“We need to stay ahead in terms of players we accept, programs we run and facilities we offer. We are constantly working at that.”

This week marks the school’s next chance to reap rewards from that endless endeavor. The five Nationals-eligible teams will look to tie, if not top, last year’s unprecedented collection of four championships in a single season. Any banner will add to the all-time collection of 23 and secure 13 consecutive years of at least one SSM representative conquering its age and gender group.

All the while, some stick-wielding Sabres have made headlines by crossing into the school’s academic stratosphere. Hockey teammates Maddie Mills and Brette Pettet will both begin their tenures as Division I student-athletes next season, and Pettet is a prospect in Team Canada’s national program. But until June, they are enrolled in the SSM engineering program, where they have been designing a prosthetic arm for a local 14-year-old since last year.

“It is an impressive undertaking by high school students,” Stafford offered.

Granted, Mills and Pettet will not garner the same glamour through engineering as they might if they brush their long-term ceilings at the rink. That is unless the recent GE commercials spotlighting the late Millie Dresselhaus turn out prophetic.

But in the compacted college-imitation confines of their adopted Faribault home, they savor no shortage of symbiotic support.

“It is always beneficial to get to know people outside your familiar group of friends,” said LaLiberty. “Recognizing and acknowledging that other people hold different beliefs, goals and ambitions is the first step toward breaking down stereotypes.”

Stereotypes along the lines of the clueless, careless jock who literally and figuratively skates through St. Lawrence Academy? Pointing to Mills and Pettet — two of his own players — as an example, Stafford thinks so.

“The reality is that most kids who come here are not going to make a living at the passion they pursue here,” he said. “But chances are they will find something in one of their modules to spur them in a direction they never knew about, allowing the basic principle of intrinsic motivation to steer them.

“I’ve always believed that the lessons one learns in sport translate to what they do in other areas, and I really believe that is put into practice here.”

Scott Sudikoff eager to break more ice with the Women’s Frozen Four

The Family Arena in St. Charles, Mo., is barely a half-hour drive west of America’s ultimate tribute to tackling new territory.

When the Gateway Arch’s construction crew finished their project in 1965, the Associated Press stated that the structure “…symbolizes the pioneer spirit of the men and women who won the West, and those of a latter day to strive on other frontiers.”

Count the Women’s Frozen Four in with those latter-day seekers, and sportscaster Scott Sudikoff along with it. Both the entity and its presenter will make Missouri the newest location in their respective lifetime logs this weekend.

Sudikoff will put in his second consecutive appearance at the event when he calls Friday’s semifinal doubleheader for the ncaa.com live stream. Coming off of last year’s edition in Durham, N.H., the lifelong Northeasterner is poised to record a few more business miles than usual.

“Yeah, I’ve mostly been working in the Northeast with my affiliations with schools/conferences like Harvard, the Ivy League, UMass-Lowell, America East,” he told Pucks and Recreation. “But it’s been great getting to do some extra travel recently, like St. Louis coming up. I think it’ll be a great place for the event, as hockey is a very popular sport in the area, and it’s fun to have the event in different places each year.”

“Different” applies to this year’s host site with more emphasis than normal. St. Charles will be only the third city to host its first Women’s Frozen Four in this calendar decade. The likes of Erie, Pa. (2011) and Hamden, Conn. (2014) have been the other icebreakers in recent memory.

By bequeathing Missouri the hospitality privileges, NCAA women’s hockey is also acknowledging one of its newer programs. St. Charles is home to the Lindenwood Lions, who entered the sport’s varsity ranks in 2011. Only Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., has joined the Division I family since.

To date, other than the aforementioned Erie and Lake Placid, N.Y., the Frozen Four has rotated exclusively between Minnesota and New England. With this year’s tournament, the game’s quintessential collegians will cater to a locality mixed with as-yet unestablished and unacknowledged devotees.

“Getting the game in front of new eyes is always important,” Sudikoff said. “I’m sure there will be plenty of youth groups and teams coming out to the games, and it will show these young players that the sport of women’s hockey is a fantastic game to watch and play.”

That statement comes from a broadcaster with the broadest possible sports horizons. Sudikoff has lent his voice in virtually every capacity — play-by-play, public-address, talk radio, TV hosting. In one or more of those roles, he has covered baseball, basketball, field hockey, football, hockey, lacrosse, soccer, softball, track and field and volleyball.

With that resume, it is plain that unchartered territory does not faze him. Although, pressure can come from the personnel he is assigned to partner with. As it happened, another women’s hockey gig has been the epitome of that fact so far.

After calling games at Harvard and Northeastern, Sudikoff got a breakthrough in 2015 when the New England Sports Network (NESN) began televising select Boston Pride games. To no one’s surprise in the sport’s community, the network enlisted AJ Mleczko as his color counterpart.

By that point, the Harvard-educated two-time Olympian had been a decade-long analyst. She has been in the booth for NBC at the last three Olympics and at most Frozen Fours. In addition, Mleczko has worked with NESN elder statesman Tom Caron at most Women’s Hockey East playoff finals.

Of his Pride assignments, Sudikoff reflected, “Probably the only time I've been nervous for a broadcast based on my color commentator, since she’s used to working with someone like Doc Emrick.

“She was incredibly easy to work with, and obviously brings the knowledge. I’ve been lucky to stay in touch with her over the past year, and got to catch up with her last year in Durham for the Frozen Four, and hope to see her again in St. Louis.”

For every enriching nugget Mleczko dished up at his side, Sudikoff witnessed equal revelations with his first helping of firsthand exposure to world-class women’s hockey.

“The big realization when doing some NWHL games last year was just how good some of these women are,” he said. “Seeing the best talent in the world on the ice together was incredible to see, and very eye opening. I’ve watched on TV before, but when you're there in the building with a front row seat, you have a much greater appreciation.”

When he ventured north of his home state border to New Hampshire last March, the NCAA’s elite programs refreshed that realization.

“I had called numerous women’s hockey games over the years, and watched previous Frozen Four games,” he said. “But I still don’t think I anticipated how good the action would actually be to see live. I think that’s one of the striking things when you get to a final four situation like that; seeing matchups like Minnesota versus Wisconsin and Boston College versus Clarkson. When you get that many good players together, the competition is amazing.”

That competition translated to a pair of semifinal overtime decisions, with both victors coming from behind. The subsequent title game saw Minnesota defend its crown while spoiling BC’s bid for a perfect 41-0-0 run.

In turn, while Sudikoff referenced the business incentive of building “relationships with the NCAA and the production company responsible for broadcasting the event,” the subject matter stood strong enough on its own to bring him back for 2017.

“They were three of the best games I’ve ever had the privilege to do play-by-play for — in any sport, men’s or women’s,” he said, “and I no doubt think I’ll see similar games this year.”

More viewers are likely to notice, and therefore catch, this year’s grand finale. The Big Ten Network will carry Sunday’s championship, giving the Women’s Frozen Four a live TV abode for the first time since 2010. (The 2016 Minnesota-BC bout aired on a CBS tape delay one week after the fact.)

As of this writing, Sudikoff is unsure whether he will get the call to give the call for BTN. But he is already enthralled by his immersion into the game’s play-by-play club, concomitant with milestones at multiple levels.

First, it was NESN’s pounce on the NWHL’s inaugural season. Now, it is the college game’s main event expanding to new venues.

The achievements and aspirations those developments speak to are nothing shy of relatable for Sudikoff.

“It’s fun being around a sport that is growing and getting better and better,” he said. “I take pride in helping to grow the game in my small way, by giving it the proper broadcast coverage it deserves.

“Selfishly, in five, 10 or 15 years, whenever, when the sport is regularly on TV and a pro league is flourishing, I want to be able to say I’ve been on the train the whole time.”

Kirk McCaskill, master baseball convert, savors hockey’s desert deluge

Kirk McCaskill spent up to five hours a day practicing hockey and baseball at the University of Vermont. The work translated to a stint in the AHL and a fulfilling decade in the "other" American League. (Photo by UVM Athletics)

Kirk McCaskill was reached this past Saturday in the wake of his fifth season opener as the Torrey Pines High School baseball coach in San Diego. A 9-1 romp over Murrieta Valley was the cathartic culmination of a wet and windy week that prompted painstaking efforts to remedy the field.

Had the Canadian-American dual citizen stuck to his motherland’s favorite (or favourite) game, he might have handled those soaked sods differently.

Perhaps he would have sought a creative means of freezing the field for a late-winter skatearound. Or, if nothing else, he might have proposed a diversion at an established ice house until nature made baseball more practical, a la The Sandlot gang’s cooling-off day at the town pool.

On the surface, that approach would have made sense for a former puck brat whose own hockey career culminated in a full AHL season. But McCaskill is also a former longtime Major League pitcher imparting his hardball knowhow to one of California’s top scholastic programs. When it comes to the rink, he now swears by Homer Simpson’s “better to watch stuff than to do stuff” philosophy.

“I’m just a fan,” he told Pucks and Recreation. “I still watch a lot of hockey, but I’m not nearly as tuned in as I was in the ’90s.”

With that said, he has a rare firsthand perspective on how the sport’s presence has changed in his adopted region. Born in Kapuskasing, Ont., McCaskill subsequently lived in nine other North American cities with his family during his upbringing.

Ted McCaskill played for his hometown Kapuskasing G.M.’s of the Northern Ontario Hockey Association for his son’s first year of existence. Afterwards, throughout the’60s and ‘70s, the elder McCaskill’s playing and coaching endeavors took the family to Tennessee, Minnesota, Vancouver, Phoenix, Los Angeles and Upstate New York.

Kirk McCaskill recalls getting his own first crack at organized hockey in, of all places, Phoenix at age 10. At the time, the thought of being drafted by an NHL team all but consumed his mind. But few thought any franchise — let alone the one that eventually selected him — would one day transfer to the Arizona capital.

The same went for the notion of a Division I college in the state — let alone the one McCaskill declined a baseball scholarship from in order to keep pursuing pucks — one day fielding varsity hockey. Ditto the prospect of a natural-born Arizonan one day going first overall in the draft.

Yet the old Winnipeg Jets have been the Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes for two decades and counting, the same timespan McCaskill has devoted to his post-MLB life in suburban San Diego.

Meanwhile, Arizona State just finished its second NCAA hockey campaign, and its first on a full-fledged Division I schedule. And Scottsdale native Auston Matthews is in his rookie year with the Toronto Maple Leafs, who made him the NHL’s No. 1 pick last June.

“Interesting. I thought I’d never see that,” McCaskill observed. “Hockey was just kind of getting going (in the area during my youth). But I’m still pretty shocked that the college level has moved out west like this, but what a great opportunity for the players…more and more guys are playing well and getting the opportunity.”

Rebound on the mound

McCaskill was first drawn to his second home country’s game of choice while in Nashville, his family’s first stop after leaving Kapuskasing. As it happened, though, Phoenix was later the epicenter of his belated baseball breakout.

He was returning from his senior year at Trinity-Pawling School in New York, where he had “almost played tennis” as his spring sport. But after representing the Fighting Gentlemen on the diamond, he opted to extend his try at baseball in a local legion league at his father’s behest.

“The coach had no idea who I was,” McCaskill said, though he made an exceptional first impression after they met.

“I pitched one inning, and the coach called me and said, ‘Hey, can you pitch Friday night? Scouts want to see you,’ because I was not scouted in prep school. So I showed up to that game and there were a lot of scouts in the stands. It was pretty wild.

“That was the first time I realized that I had any sort of baseball talent.”

But McCaskill — whose youth athletic repertoire had also included basketball, high jump, soccer and track — was still not ready to specialize. And because ASU would adopt D-I hockey 36 years too late for him, he opted for a two-sport regimen the University of Vermont. There, he provided a beacon for a struggling squadron of skaters and fostered his pitching arm under future Clemson coaching legend Jack Leggett.

“I can remember going from hockey practice into the hockey locker room, changing into my baseball gear, going into the fieldhouse next door and practicing baseball,” he said. “So, four or five hours a day. I loved it.

“I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I had a great time and made lifelong friends at UVM.”

McCaskill led the Catamount icers in goals and points as a sophomore and junior. He capped the former campaign as Winnipeg’s fourth-round draft choice, then the latter as a 1982 Hobey Baker Award candidate.

Not to be outdone, his dexterity on the diamond derived equal recognition. The California Angels tabbed McCaskill as their fourth-round selection in the 1982 amateur draft. From there, he entered the pipeline at the short-season Single-A level, helping the Salem (Ore.) Angels to the Northwest League title under manager Joe Maddon.

He would return to UVM for an abbreviated senior season on the ice, then signed out for what would have been his final semester to focus on spring training.

“That was an eye opener,” he said, “being around Reggie Jackson and Rod Carew and Tommy John and Freddie Lynn and all these guys at camp.”

Equally real and equally tempting was the chance to rub elbows with Dale Hawerchuk, Paul MacLean and Thomas Steen in Manitoba the ensuing autumn. In turn, McCaskill would sandwich one winter of professional hockey with stints at all of California’s development bases. He dressed for nine games in Winnipeg’s 1983 preseason before being reassigned to the American League.

On his AHL pact, he charged up 10 goals and 12 assists for the Sherbrooke Jets in 1983-84. Despite being a comparative ironman, missing only two out of 80 games, his output was dwarfed by that of 14 teammates. Afterwards, a postseason call-up to the parent club failed to yield any ice time.

He was simply contending with a different species than he had in Burlington.

He could have continued to copy his father’s path, which had finally granted regular major-league action in the WHA after a decade in the minors. Instead, he capitalized on the more immediate chance to mingle with the A-listers of the “other” American League.

 “The Jets offered me this contract, and at the time I was making $600 a month playing for the Angels,” McCaskill recalled. “It was just an opportunity I couldn’t turn down, to see if I could fulfill my dream of playing NHL hockey.

“But the bottom line was I was not good enough, remotely, to be a National Hockey League player. I struggled in my American Hockey League career that one year. But I was moving up, moving forward as a baseball pitcher, so in the end it was a pretty easy decision for me to choose baseball.”

Thus ended the Canadian-American answer to the Bo Jackson juggling act. Ironically, as one of the perks of his decision, McCaskill would become teammates with Jackson on the 1993 Chicago White Sox.

For the better part of 12 seasons (1985 to 1996), McCaskill was a rotation staple for the Angels and for one season with White Sox. Chicago shuffled him to the bullpen for his final four Major League campaigns.

McCaskill’s MLB highlights included helping the 1986 Angels and 1993 White Sox to playoff appearances, even securing the final out to punch the latter ticket. Although, his claim to fame among U.S. baseball buffs may be the dubious honor of surrendering Ken Griffey, Sr. and Ken Griffey, Jr.’s set of back-to-back home runs Sept. 14, 1990 at Anaheim Stadium. But as far as he has suggested, a dubious honor is still an honor at that level.

When the younger Griffey was selected for enshrinement in Cooperstown last year, McCaskill told mlb.com, “I’m not embarrassed talking about it. I’m not embarrassed that it happened…To me, it’s truly a singular event in the history of baseball. It will never happen again. So when you look at it from that perspective, how many things in the history of the universe have happened one time?”

Come what may, he garnered some historical recognition in his own right. His MLB resume — featuring a 106-108 record, 30 complete games, 11 shutouts and seven saves — was good for Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame induction in 2003.

And his original top sport of choice still had an active place in his life. While in Chicago, he skated in a recreational hockey league on Sunday mornings. He did the same for another five years in California.

“But I got away from it, got old and kind of crotchety,” he said.

Still, McCaskill has made no effort to suppress a genuine grin upon witnessing several stages of hockey’s SoCal groundswell. He was in his fourth season with the Angels when the Los Angeles Kings acquired Wayne Gretzky, and responded by purchasing season tickets the day of the deal.

He had been to the Forum before, when the Kings were in their formative years and competing for fanfare with his father’s employer — the WHA’s Los Angeles Sharks. But the up-close exposure to the so-called “non-traditional” locations clouded his crystal ball for the region’s NHL and AHL presence.

“I didn’t think about it much,” he said. “I was so involved in hockey that I didn’t necessarily know they weren’t growing markets.

“I guess when Gretzky got traded to the Kings…that was really the launching point for the boom that we see today.”

Nesting in Gulls country

Life does not produce chronicles quite like McCaskill’s nearly as often anymore. He did not even seek a sequel or remake of his sports-brat narrative for a new generation.

His pitching career had him representing a total of eight cities in five states, plus Edmonton, Alta. But the majority of those chapters preceded his fatherhood.

“I’m mostly happy about that for my kids, that we’ve lived here in San Diego for 20 years now,” he said. “It’s been a very steady environment, so I mostly think about my kids, because I didn’t mind moving and traveling, you get used to it. But I’m glad that we’ve been able to settle here the way we have.”

Some elements of the life he knew as a nomad have resurfaced, though. The chance to lead the Torrey Pines nine restarted the daily routine he had always “relished” in his second-life sport. But other aspects have blossomed to his delight as a onetime hockey dreamer turned unremitting fan.

The original San Diego Gulls were a rival of Ted McCaskill’s Phoenix Roadrunners and Vancouver Canucks in the old Western League. It was an equivalent of the Triple-A level Kirk played at in Sherbrooke, as was the original IHL, which briefly housed another Gulls team in the first half of the ’90s.

But by the time McCaskill hung up his cleats and settled in the area, San Diego was newly lacking in top-tier minor pro hockey. Two more incarnations of the Gulls came and went at lower rungs in the West Coast League and ECHL. There were also two short-lived junior squads.

The IHL was the continent’s last primary development circuit to coexist with the AHL before it folded in 2001. After ditching San Diego in 1995, the league took several final gasps in such cities as Long Beach, San Francisco and Las Vegas.

For the first 14-plus years of this millennium, America’s Pacific Time Zone lacked the sport’s second-highest ranks. That changed, in part, to fulfill the desires of the Anaheim Ducks.

As part of a wave of relocations to create a Pacific Division, Anaheim resurrected the Gulls brand and restored San Diego as its top minor-league base. With that, the third-largest U.S. city to never harbor an NHL franchise got back the next-best thing after a two-decade hiatus. As of this writing, the Gulls rank third in league attendance.

For their second AHL season, the Gulls have gained a border rival in Arizona’s affiliate. The newfangled Tucson Roadrunners bear the same name as Ted’s former Western League Phoenix team.

Then there is the imminent arrival of the NHL’s expansion Vegas Golden Knights, plus recent rumors of UNLV following ASU into the varsity ranks.

All the more reason for McCaskill to stay put and soak in the best of both sport’s worlds.

“I love it,” he said. “It makes sense to me to have your minor league affiliate as close as possible. And I know the fans love their sports out here in San Diego, and the Gulls are doing great, generating a lot of interest.

“I’m excited for San Diego and the Southwest to have the opportunity to watch more hockey.”

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.”