Penguins coaches reflect on epic win
Played on NCAA champion 20 years ago
J.D. Forrest and Ty Hennes sat stunned and silent inside the locker room at Pepsi Arena in Albany, N.Y., waiting to see how the upperclassmen would respond.
The Boston College Eagles were back at the Frozen Four in 2001 after crushing playoff defeats the previous three years. That Saturday night, they let the elusive NCAA championship slip through their mitts again. They blew a late 2-0 lead to North Dakota, which had defeated them in the NCAA final a year earlier.
Hennes and Forrest, current Penguins coaches, were wide-eyed freshmen then. “We had such a great group of seniors,” Forrest said. “I clearly remember sitting there in the locker room thinking, ‘We can’t let it happen to these guys again.’ ”
Finally, Rob Scuderi and other seniors spoke up. One of them was Marty Hughes, whose emotional words still give Hennes goose bumps all these years later.
What happened next would end a 52-year drought for Boston College, solidify Jerry York’s reputation as one of the greatest coaches of all time and give college hockey fans one of the most memorable moments in Frozen Four history.
That championship run and the rest of their time at B.C. also instilled leadership lessons and a winning mentality in four young men who over the next two decades would help the Penguins win the Stanley Cup three times.
Meeting the team
Growing up outside Seattle, Hennes watched the Frozen Four, which he calls the “Mecca of college hockey,” on television every year. As he started getting interest from colleges, one coach who kept showing up on his TV screen was York.
During the 1999-2000 season, York invited Hennes to Boston for an official visit. “It was a rainy day and he had the trench coat and the top hat and the umbrella,” said Hennes, who is now the Penguins skills development coach said. “It was like walking around campus with the Godfather.”
Hennes and Forrest have vivid memories of their first dry-land workouts with the Eagles, whose crew of upperclassmen included junior Brooks Orpik, the bruising blue-liner who had been drafted by the Penguins in the first round in 2000.
“I remember the first day, when we got on the track to run. It was a hot day. We had to do our 300-yard shuttle test. And all of the older guys took their shirts off,” said Hennes, starting to chuckle. “I remember all of us freshmen at the back of the line thinking, ‘Holy [expletive]. Is this the football team or the hockey team?’ ”
The Eagles were stacked. Forward Brian Gionta was a Hobey Baker finalist. Orpik and Scuderi were their top defensive pair. Scott Clemmensen, a future NHL player, started in goal. Future Penguins Ben Eaves and Chuck Kobasew were on that team, too.
“We had some very high-end college hockey players that season,” said Scuderi, now an assistant coach for the Nashville Predators. “We were consistently very good the entire year. I can’t remember us going through any extended slump.”
In February, B.C. beat Boston University to win its first Beanpot tournament since 1994.
“Looking back on it, I still think some of the Boston guys were more excited to win the Beanpot than when we won the national championship,” Hennes said.
The tipping point
The Beanpot title propelled the Eagles into what Hennes called “trophy-hunting season.” They powered into the Hockey East championship and punched their ticket to Albany. It was their fourth Frozen Four in a row.
In the previous three years, the Eagles couldn’t get over the hump. Twice, they lost in the championship, including an overtime heartbreaker in 1998.
In the semifinals, they avenged that loss to Michigan, setting up a title game rematch
with North Dakota. After a scoreless first, B.C. jumped to a 2-0 lead with second-period goals scored by Kobasew and Mike Lephart.
“We get a couple. And I guess with our history you’re still kind of nervous,” Scuderi said. “Just like they say in the [NHL] playoffs, the clock is everyone’s enemy. That’s certainly what it felt like. They get one and you’re thinking, ‘All right, stay with it.’ They just kept coming. They were really coming on late.”
With Gionta in the box and the North Dakota net empty, the Fighting Sioux scored with 3:42 left in regulation to get within a goal. They pulled their goalie again and got the equalizer with 1:23 on the clock. The game was going to overtime.
The locker room was silent at first as the Eagles processed what had happened. Scuderi was one of the seniors who finally spoke up, saying, “Hey, we need a goal to win a national championship. Who cares about the past?”
Then Marty Hughes had something to say. Hughes, a senior forward, had lost his mother weeks earlier. York loaded the entire team onto a bus and drove them down to Long Island for her funeral.
Hughes, according to Hennes, told his Eagles teammates: “This isn’t challenging. This is a hockey game. We’ve got this. We’ve been the best team all year. This is nothing. I lost my mother. But I’m not going to lose this with you guys.”
Hennes, his voice cracking while recalling those words, said: “It was a pretty special moment. From that moment on, there wasn’t a lot said in that locker room before going out for overtime. That was the tipping point.”
Making history
The Eagles didn’t wait too long. Krys Kolanos charged down the left wing with the puck on his backhand, pulled it around a flatfooted defender and, while getting hauled down, tucked it past the goalie 4:43 into overtime.
The coaching staff mobbed York on the bench as Hennes, Forrest and the rest of the Eagles players raced to the far corner to pile on top of Kolanos.
“Jumping over the boards, you felt like you could have touched the sky,” Hennes said. “We were excited, but to see the excitement of that senior class it was very easy to get caught up in the emotion and follow their lead with the celebration.”
It was Boston College’s first men’s NCAA hockey championship since 1949.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen the picture, but I remember the guy in the corner up there in Albany,” said Forrest, now the head coach for Wilkes-Barre/Scranton of the American Hockey League. “He was holding a sign that said, ‘Now I can die in peace,’ or something like that. It was nice to be a small part of that history.”
Scuderi and Orpik would soon leave Boston College for WilkesBarre/Scranton, teaming up again years later to win the Stanley Cup with Pittsburgh in 2009.
Hennes, after getting his doctorate from Parker College of Chiropractic Medicine in Dallas, was coaching the Penguins during the Cup runs in 2016 and 2017.
Forrest joined the organization as a coach before that 2017 title and the Penguins last offseason promoted him to be head coach for their AHL club. He admits it is “crazy,” whether it is coincidence or not, that four kids from that 2001 title team put their fingerprints on recent Penguins history, too.
“The impact of Brooks and Scud is pretty incredible, their playing careers here and how they helped us win Cups,” Forrest said. “It’s a little different, the imprint Ty and I get to put on it. But hopefully we impact the future in a positive way.”