OSU assistant taught US player shootout move that won gold medal
As soon as he saw Jocelyne LamoureuxDavidson skate toward the goal for the shot of her life, Peter Elander knew what was coming.
After all, the Ohio State women’s hockey assistant coach had taught her the move.
Elander coached Jocelyne and her twin sister, Monique, at the University of North Dakota. The Lamoureux twins’ work ethic was off the charts, and that included perfecting penalty shots — one in particular.
Elander dubbed the move “Oops, I Did It Again,” after the Britney Spears song, which was popular with his son’s youth team in the early 2000s. Now the world knows about it.
After Monique scored a tying goal late in the third period for the United States in its gold-medal game against Canada, the game went to a shootout. After five rounds, each team had scored twice.
Enter sudden death. Jocelyne got the puck in the sixth round. She slowly approached Canadian goalie Shannon Szabados — “the best in the world,” Elander said — faked a quick shot that got Szabados off balance and quickly moved the puck to her backhand. Szabados went flailing, her stick falling to her side, before Lamoureux-Davidson shifted back to her forehand and tucked the puck into the open corner of the net.
When goalie Maddie Rooney stopped Canada’s Meghan Agosta, the U.S. secured its first gold medal in 20 years, snapping that country up north’s streak of Olympic gold medals at four.
To those who stayed up until almost 3 a.m. Thursday to watch it, Lamoureux-Davidson and her move became instantly famous. But the work behind “Oops I Did It Again” was laborious. Elander said he worked with the Lamoureux twins for probably 200 to 300 hours on it, and that they worked on it by themselves for about the same amount of time.
For him to see the move decide the gold medal was especially gratifying.
“Stressful but good,” he said. “It’s easy to watch on TV and be a couch coach.”
Elander was the associated head coach at North Dakota for seven years before the program was discontinued. He knew OSU coach Nadine Muzerall and appreciated how the Buckeyes handled the fallout from that.
“When we folded, OSU was really, really good,” Elander said. “There were some vultures on other clubs, and Ohio State handled everything with North Dakota folding with grace and empathy, so I knew there were good people here.”
Elander said he and Muzerall, a recordsetting goal-scorer during her playing career at Minnesota, share coaching duties on Buckeyes penalty shots.
But he is willing to share his expertise with the NHL team in town as well.
“I’m a little surprised that some of the NHL teams with all the coaching staffs they have don’t have a designated penalty-shot coach to work with the guys,” Elander said. “If you look at all the overtime games it goes to now, that extra point for the shootout win, that’s going to take you into the playoffs.”
Are you listening, Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen?
“Tell Jarmo to give me a call,” Elander said. “If they need some penalty-shot help, I’m ready.”