October 11, 2007
High Hopes and High Expectations
by Brad Salmen/CHN Reporter
HOUGHTON, Mich. — Come winter, folks in Michigan's Copper Country are nothing if not eternal optimists.
For one, it often takes a good dollop of optimism just to get out of bed in the morning.
Perhaps this will be the day it didn't snow another foot overnight, and the snowplow did not completely cover your car again. Perhaps you might be able to drive more than 35 miles per hour to work, on roads that are at least partially bare. Perhaps the sun will peak through the gray skies, if only for a moment ... well, you get the idea. Winters are dark, snowy and long.
The biggest reason for optimism come winter, however, is the Michigan Tech hockey program — and the hope that maybe, just maybe, this is the season the Huskies turn things around.
To get a grasp of this optimism, one must consider the long and proud hockey tradition of this tiny hamlet at the northernmost tip of the Upper Peninsula. The Copper Country is the birthplace of professional hockey — in 1904 — and has fielded some of the best high school teams in the nation. The most storied program of all, however, is at Michigan Tech, where under legendary coach John MacInnes the program was a collegiate powerhouse throughout the 1960s and '70s, with three NCAA championships and numerous WCHA championships.
But just as winter quickly darkens the skies every November, starting in 1983, Michigan Tech hockey suddenly became barren and lifeless. Between 1983 and 2006, a stretch of 23 years, MTU had exactly one winning season (17-15-5 in 1992-93). A total of six coaches had a record of 276-597-67. Friday and Saturday nights at the John MacInnes Student Ice Arena, which used to be the hottest ticket in town, were becoming dead zones, as attendance regularly dropped below 1,500.
Every year, die-hard Tech hockey fans still clung to the hopes that this was the year the Huskies rebounded. But going into the start of last season, those hopes were fading. Not only had the team managed a meager eighth-place in the WCHA with a 7-25-6 record the year before, but the team had lost over 60 percent of the scoring in its graduating seniors. A number of fans who had before expressed that eternal optimism greeted the 2006-07 season with a shrug at the prospect of yet another rebuilding year.
Then, a funny thing happened.
Tech started winning.
It started with a surprise sweep of North Dakota at Grand Forks, followed by a win at Denver, an improbable sweep of NCAA defending champions Wisconsin, and finally a 2-1 series victory at Colorado College in the first round of the WCHA playoffs, leading to the Huskies' first WCHA Final Five appearance since 1996.
While the MTU season was ended by the Badgers the following weekend, it finished the season with a record of 18-17-5, the first winning season in 13 years.
Now, at the dawn of yet another Michigan Tech hockey season, not only is that eternal optimism back, it's accompanied by something the community and campus hasn't had in nearly 25 years: high expectations.
After all, the Huskies lost just three players from last year's squad, and return over 90 percent of their scoring and both starting goaltenders in Michael-Lee Teslak and Robbie Nolan. Couple that with their strongest recruiting class in a decade, including third-round draft pick Casey Pierro-Zabotel (slated to join the team in December), and suddenly everyone is talking Tech hockey again.
"Certainly expectations are higher within the university, the athletic department and the community," said Russell. "When you walk through campus, the faculty is excited, the students are excited, ticket sales are up ... there's a real buzz around town. But nobody feels (the expectations) as much as these players, as a team they have welcomed the challenge and have worked really hard to take the next step."
Indeed, senior captain Jimmy Kerr said the difference was like "night and day" from his freshman year to this season.
"It wasn't necessarily terrible (my freshman year), it's just that nobody knew who we were. Not many people came to Tech games, you just never heard anything about hockey around campus," he said. "That changed last year. Obviously, winning is a big part of everything, once we started winning people started talking about Tech hockey. You go to Subway, people are talking Tech hockey with you and you aren't even wearing Tech hockey stuff ... people know who you are now."
"I was getting phone calls even last year from people saying, 'you guys put Tech hockey back on the map,'" agreed senior Peter Rouleau. "Everyone keeps asking how the team's looking and saying they can't wait for the year to start."
Kerr (10-9—19 last season) and Rouleau (7-23—30) are perhaps prime examples of typical Jamie Russell recruits.
The stark reality is that it is extremely difficult, if not nearly impossible, to convince a top-level recruit to come to MTU — what with its remote small-town location, cramped arena, smaller facilities and academic rigor.
It's a phenomenon not unique to Michigan Tech — storied programs like Clarkson and RPI also are no longer able to compete on the same level they once did, with Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc... — but it's perhaps most acutely felt.
Instead, most of the players are like Kerr, who may not possess top-notch athletic skills but works hard and has good hockey smarts and leadership, or Rouleau, who has tremendous stickhandling and playmaking skills but at 5-foot-7 was considered too small by most D-I programs.
To Russell's credit, however, he has implemented a system that maximizes his players' strengths and minimizes their weaknesses. Now in his fifth year, Russell endured his fair share of criticism in his first three seasons from fans who interpreted poor win-loss records as more of the same. But this season's seniors are his first recruiting class, and last season was the first he felt he could finally implement the schemes he felt his teams should ideally play, says MTU Blue Line Club Vice President Erik Nordberg.
"Last year at the beginning of the season at a 'Meet the Coaches' event, he told the crowd that basically we changed our whole defensive system and our whole offensive system ... we're going to be taking it to them in our offensive zone, and sticking it to them in our defensive zone, and it's going to be a hard-hitting, fast-paced game," said Nordberg. "There was an audible gasp in that room, because that's not the style of hockey Tech's been playing. And I don't think he could have pulled it off before last season, but he's been bringing in players who want to play to that."
Turns out, hard-hitting and fast-paced is just what was needed to bring some tallies in the Win column and fans back into the stands. The big question is, does that translate to turning the program around?
"I think it's possible, and Jamie certainly has the ability to do that," said MTU athletic director Suzanne Sanregret. "The history of the WCHA in general is that every year the bar gets raised at every institution, so it will be interesting to see how we come out. But I think it is a turning point for the program this year, and I think we can be successful."
The fans certainly think so as well, judging by the crowd at the season opener, a 7-0 exhibition win over the University of Toronto. Over 2,800 fans filled the 4,200-seat John MacInnes, an impressive showing for an exhibition game. Afterwards, a line formed up outside the box office for tickets to this week's games against fellow U.P. rivals Northern Michigan and Lake Superior St.
"I have several good friends at Tech who would ride me for sticking with them, (and) a lot of folks who had season tickets for decades did give up. But it didn't take much to bring them back," said Nordberg. "I think folks really want the team to do well, so it only took a little spark of sunshine to get them back."
Hopefully for Tech fans, that sunshine lights the Copper Country all through the winter.
