Critter, Broncos create new generation of IF hockey history
Anytime International Falls reaches the state high school hockey tournament, it stirs the rich memories of past Bronco powers. The names of Tim Sheehy, Oscar Mahle, Huffer Christiansen, Peter Fichuk, Gary Wood, Jim Amidon, Lefty Curran and Larry Ross, and dozens of others, are the stuff of legend.
After this year’s International Falls team defeated Marshall 4-3 in the Section 7A championship game, a large Bronco winger, appropriately named Critter Nagurski, tried to sum up the feeling of tradition from the standpoint of a 17-year-old junior wearing that familiar purple-gold-and-white jersey.
“It’s a part of history for us to even put on these jerseys,” Nagurski said. “We had to come through because we haven’t been to the state since 1995.”
So, modern history goes back only five years, which is plenty for a teenager, who is too young to recall anything other than the tales of 16 trips by International Falls teams to the state when there was only one tournament, from 1945-1991, and for the championships won in 1957, ’62, the marvelous string of three straight in ’64, ’65 and ’66 — the latter two with perfect, undefeated records — and the final one-class title in 1972.
But this is a different time, a different era. And the 1995 trip that Critter remembers resulted in the only previous Falls trip to the Class A title, and another state championship. Until this year. The Broncos are primed and ready to put their 18-7 record on the line in Wednesday night’s final first-round state tournament game against Hutchinson (12-14) in a game that won’t start until nearly 10 p.m.
But that’s OK. Staying up late on state tournament week is another tradition.
Hopeful Class A hockey schools such as Hermantown, Marshall, Proctor and various others were left at home after sectional playoffs, but International Falls came through to give the Northeastern corner of the state’s Up North region solid representation in the state Class A tournament. It shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, the Broncos demonstrated the precisely disciplined coaching of Kevin Gordon and his staff to develop good team balance to go with an experienced defense and stout goaltending, and it was good enough to overcome all opponents, large and small, and win the prestigious Iron Range Conference title.
That means traditional powers who have large enough enrollment or chose to play up to the larger Class AA level, such as Greenway of Coleraine, Hibbing, Grand Rapids, and all the rest finished behind the Broncos. The pivotal factor for Falls winning the IRC was a pair of victories over AA power Hibbing, 3-2 at Hibbing and 3-0 at Falls. But all that Falls tradition can be a weight on the new players, and assistant coach John Prettyman said it was important to turn it into a positive.
“Before the section final, we didn’t practice, we just talked,” Prettyman said. “The players seemed to think they had a lot of pressure to succeed from the people in town. So we talked about it and told them that they were not alone inside those jerseys. A lot of other players have worn ’em, and they’re all inside there with them.”
Gordon credits a tremendous work-ethic that helped return the Broncos to the tournament, turning last year’s disappointing season to a springboard to this season.
“Last year, we won six games and lost 11,” Gordon recalled. “We were 1-11-1 going into playoffs, and these kids started working out right after that to get ready for this year. We play all three lines and all six defensemen, and Jayme Fisher has been outstanding for us in goal. We have a kid like Kalan Wagner, who broke his leg as a ninth-grader, and broke his other leg as a sophomore, but he’s come back and played as a junior.
“Brady Fougner has been our top scorer. He centers the first line, with Chad Baldwin and Critter Nagurski on the wings. Travis Bernard and Derick Zirups start on defense, and play in the key situations. Bernard has played for three years, and he doesn’t ever get rattled.”
Gordon’s approach is thorough enough to have things in place all season, but a couple of fine-tunes helped put the Broncos over the top.
“We had Critter on the second line for a while, but in the last game of the regular season we moved him back up with those two,” said Gordon. “That line has been big, but we play all three, and because of that, the third period has usually been our best.”
In support of his claim, the other two Bronco lines came through. In a tough, 3-2 victory over Cinderella team Ely, sophomore Tom Biondich, who plays with Charlie Schuman and Mike Jensen on a line, scored a shorthanded goal to open the game, Ross Johnson scored the second, and Johnson and Mitgch LaVern set up linemate Wagner for the third goal.
In the section final at the DECC, the Broncos trailed Marshall 2-0, but held their poise and came back behind a goal by Baldwin, two by Nagurski and the game-winner by Fougner, as the top line clicked for all four goals.
In defense of Nagurski’s more recent scope of hockey history, his name evokes history. He is the son of former Bronco star Kevin Nagurski, and the grandson of the fabled Bronko Nagurski. His sister, Erin, plays on the UMD women’s team. And his real name is Christopher, but, he asks, call him Critter.
“I hate the name ‘Christopher,’ ” he said. “It’s too long. I guess when I was 2 months old, my dad called me a little critter, and the nickname stuck. I’ve tried to convince my mom to let me change my name to Critter.”
There’s still time. As a junior, Nagurski is 6-foot-1 and 180 pounds. Just a growing boy, with time to add a colorful new chapter to the proud state tournament tradition of International Falls.
NCAA hockey tournament would look good with 16 teams
Great move, to shift the NCAA men’s hockey tournament back a week. That gives the NCAA basketball tournaments time to get over, and college hockey can step into its own media spotlight.
North Dakota (27-8-5) carries the hopes of the West against defending champion Maine (27-7-5) in Thursday’s first semifinal in Providence and on ESPN, while St. Lawrence (25-7-2) goes against Boston College (28-11-1) in the night semi. Winners meet for the title on Saturday.
Hockey’s final four should be a close, wide-open series of games, unlike basketball’s anticlimactic semifinals and final of the Final Four. You’ll notice the difference: Basketball gets to capitalize Final and Four, according to NCAA copyright, but when we mention hockey, we can only say final four as long as we use the lower-case letters. They’ve now started calling the hockey final four the “Frozen Four,” if you so choose, but to me it still seems incredible that the NCAA thinks it can patent such generic terms as Final and Four.
Let’s examine the hockey finalists and how they got there, which leads us directly to what we can hope the NCAA will do next year in expanding and equalizing the fairness of selecting the hockey teams. In hockey, 12 teams are invited to the tournament, with six each at two regional sites. At those regionals, two teams get byes while the remaining four play off, with those winners coming right back the next night — or day — to face a bye team, which is rested and ready. In this year’s case, Maine, North Dakota and St. Lawrence were all teams with byes, while only Boston College came through to knock out one team, Michigan Stae, then beat a bye team, Wisconsin in this case.
It doesn’t seem fair to go through all the preliminaries and reach the national tournament, then face the steep odds of having to beat another very good team for the right to face a better team, which also is rested. But that’s the way the NCAA does it in men’s hockey. In basketball, where there are so many teams invited that we didn’t even know some were colleges, the NCAA would never consider allowing a team to play one night and come right back to play the next night against a team that had been off for a week.
But there’s hope of change a-comin’. The NCAA has talked about expanding the hockey pool to 16 teams, which would be much more logical and would allow for equal play with no byes for teams that could be divided into four regionals. Because college hockey is mostly grouped into four major leagues, it has made sense to focus on those four — Hockey East, ECAC, CCHA and WCHA. Each year, however, the selection committee struggles with its at-large picks, and with the tradition of the ECAC being considered weaker.
I think the ECAC does very well, considering it starts almost a month later than the other conferences, and therefore absorbs some beatings from teams in those other conferences in the early part of the season. As far as self-fulfilling prophecies go, inviting only two teams from the ECAC greatly lessens the odds of either of them making it to the final four, compared to one of four Hockey East teams advancing. After a couple of years of that, it traditonal to say Hockey East is stronger and the ECAC is weaker.
This year, two new conferences leaped into the picture, and the NCAA committee chose to invite Niagara from College Hockey America, at the expense of a third ECAC team, and it also invited four Hockey East teams, at the expense of a third CCHA team. So we shouldn’t be surprised when two Hockey East teams made it to the final four, and no CCHA team. The WCHA got the traditonal three berths, and one team advanced. The ECAC got one team to the final four, although St. Lawrence needed four overtimes to subdue Boston University in the quarterfinals.
The best thing about Niagara’s controversial invitation is that Niagara beat New Hampshire in a first-round game, silencing all those who thought no independent had the right to invade the sanctity of the normal four leagues, while also silencing Hockey East zealots and ESPN commentators who actually suggested the likelihood that all four teams at the final four might be Hockey East teams.
At any rate, here’s how all of those wrinkles can be ironed out. Start with four regional sites, and make them somewhat common to each of the four major conferences — Boston as Hockey East’s site, Lake Placid as the ECAC base, Detroit as the CCHA site, and, possibly alternating, St. Paul or Madison/Milwaukee as the WCHA site. The project here is to have a No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 seed at each site, and a team from each of the four conferences (usually) at each site. The No. 1 seed from a particular conference would be the host team at the site assigned to that conference. So in St. Paul, you’d get the No. 1 WCHA seed, with, say, the No. 2 Hockey East, No. 3 CCHA and No. 4 ECAC team. In Detroit, you might have Michigan as the No. 1 CCHA team, then a similar rotation so that all conferences and all ranges of seeds are represented.
With the new conference springing up, it means that the fourth seeds in each conference would be vulnerable to being replaced by anywhere from one to four at-large picks, and those bumps could be accomplished according to the power index concepts now being used. That way, each regional site would see two great games the first night, with a final game the next, and that winner advancing to the national final four. And if one conference is stronger than the others, it should prove it by getting more than one team to the final four.
All of this is not to criticize the NCAA’s operation of the hockey tournament. It used to just bring in four teams for a final four and that was it. Going to eight, and then 12 teams made sense. There was a lot of talk about how there are too few schools playing hockey to expand to 16 for the tournament, but that was before it proved it could make money. This year’s regionals at Minneapolis and Lake Placid drew record crowds, with Mariucci Arena doing very well in drawing fans from North Dakota and Wisconsin, mostly, without having the home-team Gophers around. Now that hockey has proven it can be profitable, the NCAA undoubtedly will consider a new format, and the Slippery Sixteen seems destined to be the next step.
Meanwhile, we can look forward to next year when the NCAA will take over the women’s national hockey tournament. There were various indications that the sponsoring USA Hockey was not fond of UMD’s upstart program doing so well this season. Whether it was ratings, individual awards, off-the-record discussions, or various other snubs, it caused even non-paranoid types to get the feeling USA Hockey was greatly pleased when UMD’s bid ended in the semifinals.
As for the women’s hockey pairings, the luster of going to the final four was dulled considerably when UMD won the WCHA, and the WCHA playoffs, then sat idle and with great anticipation before learning that at the final four, it would have to meet Minnesota for the sixth time, while Brown faced Dartmouth for the fourth time, in the semifinals. The NCAA comes out and states that once it selects its participants for the national tournament, it will do everything in its power to prevent teams from playing teams from the same conference, or who have played during the season, from meeting again right away. USA Hockey didn’t use that policy.
In the men’s tournament, Hockey East’s four teams — Maine, Boston University, Boston College and New Hampshire — all were seeded into different brackets. That way they could have all advanced to the final four, or none of them might have made it. But at least they went off to the regionals full of excitement and with the traditional “butterflies” because they all were facing teams that were new to them.
So, those who would criticize the NCAA for how it operates any tournament got a first-hand look at how a tournament can be run without the NCAA’s involvement.
UMD’S PUCK BREAKDOWN
One final perusal of the UMD men’s hockey season. I found a statistical sheet issued in January, after 22 games, at which time UMD was 11-11. We all know that the Bulldogs ran into some scoring shortcomings, but this sheet indicated how severe the dropoff really was. The team finished 15-22, meaning a dismal 4-11 finish after the hopeful 11-11 start.
When they were 11-11, the Bulldogs scored an average of 2.91 goals per game, and yielded an average of 3.32. Pretty close. But while going 4-11, the Bulldogs averaged only 1.93 goals per game while giving up 4.87. You don’t win many games when you’re outscored 5-2.
Only three players ended up in double figures for goals — Colin Anderson with a career-high 18, Jeff Scissons with 14 and Derek Derow with 10. But in that closing 4-11 stretch, Colin Anderson and Scissons scored five each, Drew Otten and Tom Nelson scored three each, while Derow, Ryan Homstol, and defenseman Mark Carlson scored two each. That leaves Jon Francisco, Mark Gunderson, Judd Medak, Shawn Pogreba, Richie Anderson and defenseman Andy Reierson scoring one apiece in that stretch, while nobody else got any.
Graduation will claim Scissons, Colin Anderson, Pogreba, Richie Anderson, Ryan Nosan and goaltender Brant Nicklin. The impact of losing the scoring impact of Scissons and Colin Anderson, and Nicklin’s goaltending, makes a large rebuilding challenge. As Scott Sandelin returns from this week’s final four, and his final duties as North Dakota’s assistant coach, to take the UMD helm from Mike Sertich. One bright spot is he Bulldogs, who went a miserable 6-11 at home in the DECC, had a very impressive 9-11 record on the road. It takes strong character to win on the road, and the Bulldogs showed that character frequently. Now if they just can score some goalsÂ…
New UMD coach needs to make changes to succeed
College hockey has changed over the years, both in concept and impact. Always captivating from a competitive standpoint, the sport that thrived on its simplicity in the early 1970s is now a highly-promoted, fund-raising sports endeavor. That’s particularly true at colleges like UMD, North Dakota, Colorado College, Denver, Michigan Tech, St. Cloud State, and Minnesota State-Mankato, where hockey is the primary sport — the only Division I sports attraction.
At UMD, the changeover in the sport will be underscored by a change in coaching, as Mike Sertich was pressured to resign as his 18th season as UMD’s head coach came to an end. For the incoming coach, it may seem comparatively easy to improve on the last two seasons, when the Bulldogs finished eighth this year with a 15-22 record and ninth a year ago, at 7-27-4. However, the last two years leave a misleading impact. Counting those last two years, Sertich’s teams had an overall winning record, at 350-328-44, for a .515 winning percentage. Without the last two years, Sertich’s record was a glowing 328-279-40, for a .538 winning percentage, in his first 16 years, a standard that will be difficult to duplicate in the new millenium.
Sertich’s tenure dates back to a purity of the game, when a coach could be considered outstanding if he was tactically sound and ran a clean program. Sertich excelled because he was a master tactician and student of the game who never tired of studying new training and practice techniques and deploying inventive systems and counter-systems that turned hockey games into something more resembling chess matches. When he had the properly attuned talent, the Bulldogs soared.
However, in the modern era of college hockey, coaches’ tactical abilities account only for about one-third of their work. Another third is recruiting that is close to pampering prospects, and the other third is public relations. A coach who is sharp in P.R. and adequate in recruiting could do well even if only mediocre in his tactical strategies on the ice.
After winning WCHA championships in 1982-83 and 1983-84 – – his second and third seasons as head coach – – Sertich was surprised and hurt by criticism he heard from fans when the team failed to win a third straight championship. A witty, outgoing personality, Sertich’s sensitivity and stubbornness caused him to close himself off from the crowds, and he virtually went underground when he sold his house in eastern Duluth and moved up near Island Lake. If Sertich’s tactical ability was beyond question, he also was an excellent, personable recruiter, but he prefered to not be involved in that. And from a P.R. standpoint, Sertich is by far the most witty, unpredictable interview in the WCHA, but he seemed to prefer avoiding such media interviews.
Assistant coaches Jim Knapp and Glenn Kulyk were also his close friends, and were with him throughout his 18 years. Neither is loud and forceful, with Knapp a quiet and skillful developer of individual defensemen, and Kulyk mostly a recruiter. The specialization worked for a long time, with Knapp primarily recruiting Minnesota prospects and Kulyk recruiting in Western Canada.
In the last decade, Knapp became an instructor at UMD and was available less for recruiting, and Kulyk’s favorite Western Canada recruiting ground developed fewer and fewer blue chip Tier II prospects as Major Junior teams started offering scholarships to convince the top Tier II players to move up. The resulting dropoff in talent caused several programs — notably North Dakota, Colorado College, Denver, Northern Michigan and Michigan Tech, along with UMD — to sink in the standings. Colorado College and North Dakota were the first of those to realize that the USHL was developing prospects equal to or better than Western Canada, and they rebounded more quickly and won six straight WCHA titles between them, until this season.
UMD continued to get some exceptional players, but in fewer numbers. Judged on personality and potential, all of the prospects have been winners; evaluated only on production, however, provides a blueprint for struggling. But Sertich never considered altering his staff or even changing the dynamics of it, and admits now that loyalty to his assistants was more important to him that even a move that might have saved his job.
So the new coach must make some mandatory changes to lift the Bulldogs up to a contender. Some of the necessary changes include:
CEMENTING RELATIONS with area high school programs. Some schools felt a disinterest bordering on indifference from the UMD coaching staff. Teams that came to the DECC for Saturday afternoon games, whether from the Twin Cities or the Iron Range, were never invited to stay for the UMD games that night, a common practice at places like Minnesota.
DEPENDENCE ON Western Canada as the primary source for talent must be balanced and blended with the USHL and top high school prospects as the core talent. UMD must become the easy choice, or at least a finalist, in the minds of top regional prospects, whether they are attracted right out of high school or agree to spend a year or two in the USHL after high school.
DYNAMICS OF THE new coaching staff must include high-visibility impact in the area, at high school games, in the media, with boosters, with alumni, and with key businessmen and supporters of the program.
PUBLIC RELATIONS must become a major entity. UMD’s success in the 1980s made it self-supporting from a P.R. standpoint. That’s changed now and promotional endeavors must be implemented to win back the departed fan support, to make it routine for UMD hockey games to be the place to spend Friday and Saturday nights.
DECC THE HALLS by taking advantage of the enormous opportunity for creative ways to enliven a night at the DECC, such as greater emphasis on the pep band and mascot, which once were prominent highlights of every game. The garbage-truck-replica Zamboni is great, and the between-periods bits are fun, but there must be new tricks beyond canned, loud music.
TELEVISION IMPACT is mandatory. Wasn’t it only a couple of years ago that a minimum of 20 UMD hockey games were televised each season, encouraging fans to come to future games, and giving those fans who don’t buy tickets a chance for constant exposure to the product? In the last two years, there have been a half-dozen or fewer UMD games televised, while fans at home have become comfortable watching cable broadcasts of nearly every University of Minnesota game.
BLUELINE CLUB support must be regenerated. With the uniting of all sports support groups under one umbrella, the hope was to let the other sports hook onto the popularity of the Blueline Club. The shift in emphasis, however, has seriously eroded the participation of the hockey followers.Turning your computer to the UMD website, for example, you could click onto the Booster Club site and find all sorts of hyperbole about how wonderful the club is, but you had no chance of finding out when or where the next meeting would be. For the first time in 25 years, there was no fan bus to Grand Forks when the Bulldogs played at North Dakota. There were, however, fan buses to road basketball games a week later.
SEASON TICKET holders must be recultivated and treated as something special, instead of being taken for granted.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST, the new coach must be given the full and genuine support of the administration, staff and student body. When the team does well, it deserves to be applauded by everyone connected with the school. A healthy and well-supported men’s hockey program at UMD benefits all the other sports.
The irony, of course, is if those steps were already in place, there wouldn’t need to be a coaching change. The new regime will need some time, but fans Up North are ready and waiting to be entertained.
Hibbing’s Sandelin named new UMD hockey coach
Hibbing native Scott Sandelin was named Friday night as the new head hockey coach at UMD, where he replaces Mike Sertich to become the 12th coach in UMD history and the sixth since the school became a Division I program.
Sandelin, who is completing his sixth year as an assistant and current associate head coach at the University of North Dakota, drove from Grand Forks to Duluth late Thursday night after being informed that he would be offered the job, and he returned to Grand Forks Friday morning after details were worked out. His timing was an issue because the Fighting Sioux are finishing preparations before playing in the NCAA hockey final four in Providence, R.I., next week.
“I believe in allowing the players creativity,” said Sandelin. “I’m not a big believer in that ‘trap’ stuff, especially at this level, because I don’t think that’s the best way for players to develop. I’m strong on defense, with everyone being accountable, but offensively, I like to let the kids go. I’ve done a lot of the ‘Xs and Os’ but I think it’s important to not over-coach, and to not force the players to over-think.
“I want to create an atmosphere of the kids wanting to go to the rink, and they’ve got to enjoy it. Winning, of course, can create more enjoyment.”
Winning, of course, has become second-nature to the Fighting Sioux, which helped make Sandelin an attractive choice for UMD. Under Dean Blais, Sandelin worked with the defense and helped with the power play and penalty kill, and was chief recruiter throughout Minnesota, the USHL and Western Canada. The Fighting Sioux won three straight WCHA championships until slipping to second, behind Wisconsin, this season, but the Sioux are the lone WCHA team to survive the regional playoffs and reach the final four, where they face defending national champion Maine on Thursday.
Sandelin and his wife, Wendy, have a 15-month-old son, Ryan, and while he has no prior connection to UMD, he is an Iron Ranger who is totally familiar with the region. He was a star player at Hibbing, and became a second-team All-America defenseman at North Dakota and a Hobey Baker finalist before graduating with a marketing degree.
He was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens on the second round of the 1982 draft and served as captain of the 1984 U.S. Junior National team. He played for the 1986 U.S. National team in the World Tournament in Moscow, and spent six years in the pro organizations of Montreal, Philadelphia and the Minnesota North Stars, from 1986-92.
He started coaching with the Fargo-Moorhead Express of the American Hockey Association in 1992-93, and coached the Fargo-Moorhead Sugar Kings in the Minnesota Junior Elite League in 1993-94, after which he returned to his alma mater at North Dakota.
Sandelin beat out UMD alumnus John Harrington, who currently coaches St. John’s, as well as former Bulldog Norm Maciver, current Calgary coach Tim Bothwell and Troy Ward, recently fired assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
As the primary recruiter for the Sioux, Sandelin focused on Minnesota, the USHL and Western Canada. The current Sioux team has 11 players from Western Canada on its roster, but Sandelin noted that his current crop of recruits is all U.S. players, including five Minnesotans. “I like the mix, and I think it’s important for our program to have a mix,” Sandelin said. “I’m sure that will be important at UMD, too.”
Sandelin, who is comparatively soft-spoken, described himself as “quietly intense” when he was interviewed by the UMD players. “I learned to be mellow around Blaiser,” Sandelin joked.
Blais said: “Scott is more laid-back, which complements me, because I’m more intense. But Scott can blow, and when he does, it’s a good one.
“On the ice, Scott worked with defense, power play and penalty kill, and he likes that part of the game. I’m more of an offensive type. But our players all liked him and felt comfortable talking to him about anything.
“It’s a huge loss for me — because not only am I losing a coach, but he’s a good friend. We always hunt and fish together.”
And raise championship trophies.
Overlooked Reimann arises to lead Maine’s NCAA hopes
The first time I ever saw Tom Reimann play hockey was in the Midwest Summer College hockey league at Roseville Arena, where I was coaching a team. It was an interesting progression, where first Dan Reimann played on the team, and suggested he had a cousin named Mike Reimann who could play too, and Mike said he had a brother named Tom who played the following year.
Summer hockey is a time for high-spirited, low-intensity fun without the drill-sergeant yelling of in-your-face coaches. The Midwest College League at Roseville is fast-paced and tightly officiated but with full contact and the kind of competition that can be a real boost to a developing player. Tom Reimann had left Blaine High School to go out to Billings, Mont., and play junior hockey, leaving behind a spotty reputation as a lousy student who didn’t fit into the team very well and had a bad temper.
A fast skater who also was quick and agile, he could turn on a dime and be at full speed, which was considerable, within two strides. He could handle the puck, and he loved to run into people. The next fall, Reimann went back to Billings for another year of junior. I asked numerous college coaches about him. Some never heard of him, quite a few had. They all offered the same assessment: “Can’t get into college.”
In the summer of 1998, we won the summer league title and Reimann was even better. His temper flared once in a while when he was antagonized on the ice, but we got along extremely well. You can take a player full of fire and channel that fire into positive energy, but you can’t instill fire in a player — even a great player — if it isn’t there. I’ll take fire.
As summer league was starting the summer before last, I got a phone call from Grant Standbrook. You might remember Grant Standbrook as the coach at Greenway of Coleraine High School back in the ’60s. Or, back in the days when Wisconsin was a dominant national power, and Standbrook was the Badgers chief recruiter. He was like a phantom when he recruited — quiet and pensive when other scouts were loud and gregarious, friendly enough, but keeping his observations private rather than sharing his feelings with other scouts.
For about as long as Standbrook has been out at the University of Maine, coach Shawn Walsh’s Maine Black Bears have been among the Hockey East elite, along with Boston University. As Walsh’s top recruiter, Standbrook called to ask what I thought about Tom Reimann. I told him that in my opinion he was an outstanding talent, that I didn’t believe there were many college hockey programs that had any players with more pure skill, and that it was a shame he couldn’t get into any college. Standbrook’s response was that maybe he could. He had noticed Reimann while scouting the national junior tournament, where Billings had made a strong showing.
Standbrook told me that when he was informed Reimann wasn’t much of a student and couldn’t qualify in college, but he investigated further. Among some poor grades, he found some interesting spikes of good grades in Reimann’s transcript. He checked with some of his teachers back at Blaine, and he played a longshot hunch. Sure enough, Reimann had a learning disability that made it tough for him to learn in a lot of classes, and, like most kids, he found ways around it, to avoid the embarrassment of under-achieving. Standbrook helped coordinate Reimann with some teachers with whom he had done well, and he passed his college entrance tests.
Standbrook always had been one of the most thorough evaluators of hockey players, college or pro, but how could he possibly have made such a guess about Tom Reimann? “Because,” Standbrook said, “I had a similar learning disability when I was young.”
Incredible. I told Shawn Walsh that if Reimann went to Maine, he would win a national championship and call me back to tell me how big a part Reimann had played. As it turned out, Reimann went to Maine, and Maine won the national championship last year, but Reimann didn’t play. He redshirted to get his academics in order.
When last summer came around, Reimann went out to California to work out in a special program, but he came back to Minnesota in mid-July and called me up. My team was having one of the worst years of any team I had coached, because of players not showing up and injuries, so we were allowed to add Reimann to our team for the last four games.
In Reimann’s first game, he hit the ice and scored. The team got going, and he scored again. Late in the game, he raced up the right side of the rink, caught a long pass and flew up the boards into the offensive zone. With one defenseman retreating, lining him up for a big bodycheck, Reimann, a left-handed shooter, suddenly turned left and headed directly for the goal at full speed, with the defenseman right in his path. In my mind, I thought he had lost his mind. As the defenseman lunged for the hit, Reimann snapped his wrist and flipped the puck straight up, 10 feet up toward the rafters. The defenseman stopped abruptly to look up, and in that moment Reimann ducked around him on the right side, and, without missing a stride, and timing the puck’s downward trajectory perfectly, he swung his stick and drilled a waist-high line-drive past the startled goaltender. Hat trick.
My eyes popped. So did the goaltender’s. So did the referee’s, and he skated over to our bench, laughing and shaking his head. “I’ve done a lot of small college and high school games for a lot of years,” he said. “But I’ve never seen a goal like that in my life.”
Later, I suggested to Reimann that he must have practiced that move a million times to pull it off so perfectly. “I only tried it once before,” Reimann said. “It was in practice last season at Maine, in the defensive zone. It didn’t work, and Coach Walsh blew his whistle, chewed me out, and the whole team had to do pushups because of me. So I never tried it again, till today.”
I talked to Standbrook later last summer, and explained the goal to them. I also told them that we had won our last four games, and swept all three playoff games to win the playoff championship, and that Reimann had scored 20 goals in the seven games.
Flash forward now to last weekend. I had just returned home from Boston, where the UMD women’s team ended their first season by not winning at the final four, and I turned on the cable TV to watch St. Lawrence beat Boston University in a four-overtime thriller at the East Regional in Albany, N.Y.
Next came the Maine-Michigan quarterfinal, and Michigan was leading 1-0 in the third period. Sure enough, there was No. 22, a freshman winger named Tom Reimann, out there on the power play in the third period, where his quick passing relay set up a teammate at the crease for Maine’s first goal.
Later, with the teams deadlocked, Reimann hustled to an outlet pass up the right boards and chipped a perfect backhanded pass to send a teammate flying in to score on a breakaway. That proved to be the winning goal as Maine scored five times in the third period, including an empty-netter. And the Black Bears are headed back to the NCAA championships, next weekend in Providence, where they’ll play North Dakota in the semifinals.
It would be great for the WCHA if North Dakota could win the national championship. But it also would be part of a fantastic story if Tom Reimann — the kid nobody thought could get into college — came through for the Black Bears. Just don’t expect him to try his mesmerizing, puck-flipping, waist-high goal trick. He wouldn’t want to risk making the whole team do pushups. Besides, he can save it for summer league.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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