John Gilbert - Herb Brooks: The Inside Story of a Hockey Mastermind

THE INSIDE STORY OF A HOCKEY MASTERMIND

BY JOHN GILBERT

This ones for Herbie, and for a friendship Ill always cherish. He did it his way, and he did it well. Nobody can ever replace his dedication, honesty, and mystique, and I hope this helps keep him alive and forever young in our hearts and minds.

There are a lot of reasons I had to write this book. Mainly, though, I owe it to Herbie.

Watching, studying, and writing about hockey have been, and continue to be, an exciting and gratifying career. Trying to stay close to professional, college, and high school teams has been both challenging and rewarding, whether in the formative years of the 1960s, or in the highly sophisticated twenty-first century. Without question, the game will never be the same as it was in the late 1960s and through the 1970s. Among other teams Ive covered, the University of Minnesota hockey program has been near and dear to my heart since I was a journalism student at the U in the 1960s and John Mariucci was the coach. When I started at the Minneapolis Tribune in 1967, I covered the Gophers and Minnesotas fabulous high school hockey, as both skyrocketed to prominence through the 1970s. It was no coincidence that both Minnesota high school hockey and the University of Minnesota hockey blossomed in parallel. The University of Minnesota teams comprised homegrown players throughout that era, arguably the most important and exciting two decades in the sports history in Minnesota.

Having written about all the top high school players and teams, it was easy to be close to the Gophers, who were like a select team of the best prospects the high schools could produce. There was no Junior A United States Hockey League in the United States at the time, and no USA Hockey development program. Minnesota high school players were devoted to their communities, and equally devoted to go to the U, even as walk-ons, for the chance to take on the constant horde of skilled Canadian players imported by other prominent American colleges. True, there also were top players from small pockets in New England and Michigan, and for a while an allNew England Boston College team joined Minnesota in comprising 100 percent U.S. players. But a lack of national championships eventually drove BC to add a few Canadian imports. No other college could have even imagined being made up of 100 percent home-state players, a feat the Gophers pulled off for most of three decades.

Herb Brooks was still playing when I first got to know him, and the first time I ever saw him coach, he was a young assistant to Glen Sonmor at Minnesota. It was definitely a career highlight of my thirty years at the Tribune (and later the Star Tribune) to cover those Gopher teams for the seven years Brooks coached them, from 1972 through 1979. It meant apportioning my time, because I was also covering the National Hockey Leagues Minnesota North Stars, the World Hockey Associations colorful Minnesota Fighting Saints, regional small colleges, the national and Olympic programs, and the high schools. It was pure pleasure to try to capture and portray the color and passion of Gopher and high school games, because in those days, none of the players dreamed of playing beyond high school or college. And because there was little thought of careers with huge professional contracts, they played the game they loved with 100 percent intensity, for only their pride and their teammates. I treated college and high school games with the same passion as the Stanley Cup Finals, because they deserved it.

When Mariucci died, it was a stunning blow to all of us who knew and loved him. I was credited with being first to refer to Mariucci as the Godfather of Minnesota Hockey, although that hit a nerve with Louie Nanne, who played for Maroosh at Minnesota and apparently had referred to John as his Godfather, a nod to their common Italian heritage. That was before my time, but regardless, my christening of John as the whole states godfather was because his impact on hockey went beyond nationalityhe was most accurately the Godfather of U.S. Hockey. Mariucci was never against Canadian players coming to U.S. colleges. In fact, he recruited Canadians such as Nanne and Murray Williamson, both of whom became All-Americans at Minnesota, and others, Just to show I dont discriminate, he would grin. But he did fight to get the National Collegiate Athletic Association to restrict over-age Canadian recruits, who would play high-test Canadian major junior hockey through age twenty, then, if they didnt get an NHL offer, come to the States for a college scholarship. Mariucci saw that as exploiting U.S. hockey rather than helping it.

While fighting that fight, Mariucci cultivated the fertile but lightly seeded Minnesota youth and high school hockey fields, nurturing and finally generating a genuine movement. It was the same sort of craze that had afflicted his native Eveleth and first spread throughout Northern Minnesota, eventually reaching the Twin Cities and its fast-growing suburbs. That was about when I came onto the scene, in the mid-1960s, just in time to chronicle the rise of the Gophers and the upsurge in high school hockey. There were a lot of big-time sportswriters who knew every facet of the NHLand there still are. Fewer in the media pay attention to college hockey, and fewer still to the high schools. My determination, and pleasure, was to try to encompass all of them and watch as that unique Minnesota perspective ultimately became intertwined.

The enthusiastic Glen Sonmor had been Mariuccis assistant and protg, and he appreciated Mariuccis influence so much that when he succeeded Mariucci in 1966, he took Marooshs dream and ran with it. A native of Hamilton, Ontario, Sonmors colorful attitude spread to his teams, and the Gophers captured the interest of statewide hockey fans. Sonmor lifted the Gophers to a Western Collegiate Hockey Association title and an NCAA tournament championship game.

Then Herbie took over in 1972 and lifted the Minnesota program to unprecedented heights. That was shortly after the University of Minnesota-Duluth had gone Division I, and long before St. Cloud State, Mankato State, or Bemidji State even entertained such thoughts. To Mariuccis dismay, UMD chose to go mostly with Canadian imports, following the lead of other WCHA teams, and if it left the Gophers free to pick the best Minnesota high schoolers, not many thought Minnesotans were good enough on their own. Turns out they were, and it became a tradition that Mariucci had started, Sonmor expanded, and Brooks perfected.

From the time Brooks took the helm, I normally saw him, or at least talked to him, nearly every day. We also stayed in contact through the off-seasons. We exchanged tidbits of information from around the hockey world, talked about the numerous cars I reviewed for an automotive column I also wrote, and discussed other topics. It became common for Herbie to stop by my home in suburban Shoreview, or for me to drive to his place a few miles north to show him a particularly interesting car I was road-testing. We established a mutual respect that was everlasting.

Herbie demanded a high work ethic from himself and his players, and he appreciated that I worked beyond reasonable effort to study hockey and convey hockey news that went beyond the superficial. It didnt take long to realize he was something special as a coach who would try anything to extract the best from his players and teams. Sometimes he would invent psychological ploys, much the way Neal Broten might invent a move to get around a defender. Herbie had special confidantes, such as strength and conditioning coach Jack Blatherwick, but he seemed to appreciate an outside voice. He confided to me his innermost theories and ideas about the game, and I welcomed every opportunity to listen to his ideas. Occasionally, I challenged him with ideological questions based on observations I had made from watching NHL teams, or teams from the Soviet Union or Sweden. Even if my questions were simple, they were honest and they became more valid as I grew comfortable filtering such information through Herbies uniquely creative mind. Herbie later told me those brainstorming sessions served as a source of checks and balances for him, helped reinforce some of his ideas, and pushed him to try his more inventive concepts. While putting his own teams together, he followed existing traditional guidelines at first, but remained alert for new ingredients for his teams preparations.