Hockey Columns
Connolly calls it “puck luck” but Minnesota Duluth’s star has skills
Minnesota Duluth coach Scott Sandelin looked past Jack Connolly’s size when he recruited the hometown center. He was playing for a small private school nearby. “[Jack] had skills, a head for the game,” Sandelin said. “I thought he could be a player for us for four years and I hoped we could build around him.” Five years later, Connolly, who spent one season in the USHL, is a senior at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He is still only 5-8, 170, but Sandelin’s hopes have turned… Continue Reading
Hockey award winner Lamoureux puts the wraps on a “storybook career”
In a perfect storybook world, Jacques Lamoureux would’ve spent sunny summer afternoons in his family’s backyard in North Dakota, watching the jets and bombers from the nearby Grand Forks Air Force Base fly overhead. He would’ve dreamed from a young age of using his skills as an athlete and an airman. And he would’ve skated from the pancake-flat prairie directly to the foot of the jagged Rocky Mountains to play for the Falcons at the U.S. Air Force Academy. But life, as we know, has a… Continue Reading
Hockey star Chase Polacek plays big despite his early critics
Throughout his youth hockey career and into high school, Chase Polacek kept hearing that he was too small, that he would never succeed at the next level of hockey. He never made an A team in any age group his first year of eligibility. He always had to wait a year. Even in his one season immediately before high school, Polacek was placed on a B team. Polacek’s last rebuff came before his senior season at the Academy of Holy Angels, a Catholic prep power in Richfield, Minn. After tryouts… Continue Reading
The fog of injury has lifted for North Dakota’s Chay Genoway
Ice hockey, especially at the college level, is a game played with the hands and the legs and the body. But mostly, it’s a game played with the head. The lightning-fast on-ice action requires the reflexes of a cat, and the ability to think fluidly, and make decisions that can change the nature of a game in seconds, and mean the difference between winning and losing. So what is a student-athlete to do when the doctors tell a thinking man’s hockey player to stop playing hockey, and, for the… Continue Reading
Hockey winner Greening approaches leadership role with business in mind
As a co-captain of the Big Red with Michael Kennedy his junior year in 2008-09, Cornell University forward Colin Greening couldn’t have asked for a better transition from his junior year to his senior year in 2009-10 both on and off the ice. And to cap off his senior season, Greening is the recipient of the 2010 Lowe’s Senior Class award. “The only real transition was from last year’s class to this year’s class both on the ice and off,” Greening said. “Mike had a very similar… Continue Reading
Fatherhood doesn’t deter hockey star from his duties on ice and in classroom
As the Quinnipiac University men’s ice hockey team prepared for its regular-season opener against Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, last October, one of its star players was noticeably absent. It wasn’t because of an injury or anything on the ice. Senior captain Jean-Marc Beaudoin simply had a more important place to be – at home, with his wife, Candace, for the birth of the couple’s son, Roderick. If one would think that the new addition to the Beaudoin family would affect the new father… Continue Reading
St. Cloud State hockey standout has waited patiently for his turn
Bob Motzko was in his first season as head hockey coach at St. Cloud State University when he recruited Garrett Raboin. “We wanted to add some depth and we told him to trust us,” Motzko said. Raboin did, joining the Huskies as a walk-on paying his own way. He was undersized for a college defenseman even at 5-11, 175 pounds, which he is listed at, but he wanted a chance. He was 21 then, finishing his third season with the Lincoln (Neb.) Stars of the U.S. Hockey League. Most players in the… Continue Reading
Hockey leaders from different coasts “meet in the middle” for success
Along a stretch of Interstate 25, in the region of Colorado known as the Front Range, two of college hockey’s most electrifying players toil less than 60 miles apart. What’s most notable about that distance is that the University of Denver’s Rhett Rakhshani and the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Matt Fairchild could hardly hail from father apart, but they’ve “met in the middle” so to speak. Rakhshani hails from the seaside Los Angeles suburb of Huntington Beach, while Fairchild comes… Continue Reading
Four C’s or One?
The Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award is presented to a player who makes achievements in four C’s – classroom, character, community and competition – but in the end, it all comes down to just one. Certainly, we want our student athletes to reach their potential in the classroom, excel in competition, and be active in the community. However, for the college athlete, it is strength of character that serves as a driving force behind the other three C’s. It doesn’t always take strength of… Continue Reading
The message could not have been clearer … or timelier
Preparing to write this column this week, an article appeared on the front page of the sports section of my local newspaper trumpeting the accomplishments of this season’s Michigan State hockey team. The Spartan hockey team, which won the national championship in 2007, isn’t having a banner year. In fact, MSU is in the midst of its worst regular season showing in more than 30 years and is battling to stay out of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association cellar. Instead, the article detailed… Continue Reading
