Despite sitting at third in the conference, Minnesota Duluth announced recently that their head coach Shannon Miller would not have her contract extended beyond this season. Citing financial shortfalls, the university is reportedly unable to continue to pay the staff at the same rate.
Miller won five national championships over her 16 seasons as the Bulldogs’ head coach, and she is the winningest head coach in college women’s hockey.
Her team comes to Madison this weekend to take on the Badgers in what will be an important late-season, conference series. Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson knows Duluth is going through difficult circumstances.
“I think you wake up and you’re thinking about getting your team ready for this next practice and your next game against your opponent and you see that and you sort of take a step back.” said Johnson. “Usually during this time of the season, especially when that happened, you seldom see coaching changes or information that are going to create a coaching change.”
The way Miller built the Bulldogs into a national powerhouse is enviable, and Johnson acknowledged the impact she had on collegiate women’s hockey.
“In our business most coaches will attest that they don’t really want to see one of their peers lose their job, so it’s always a sad day,” said Johnson. “Certainly she has been a big part of our league, been at it for 16 years and has had some great success, but I’m not attuned to all the details of why they’re going to go down that path.”
In spite of the pending coaching change, the Bulldogs will still be ready to go and play their hardest. Last weekend, they came away with only one point, losing to North Dakota before taking them to a tie the next day.
Miller’s girls, especially her seniors, will play hard for the coach to the very last game.
The Badgers’ own seniors will have some extra motivation of their own this weekend. The team will be recognizing their soon-to-be graduates at this penultimate home series.
Coach Johnson would not have the success he had if not for the dedication of his seniors, saying “I look at the group, and that’s the biggest thing that sticks out is the commitment that each one of them made, and collectively all became good college hockey players because of it.”
Wisconsin seniors Brittany Ammerman, Katy Josephs, Katarina Zgraja, Blayre Turnbull and Karley Sylvester account for 40 of the Badgers’ 90 goals and 67 of their 173 assists on the season.
The seniors, along with the stellar play of freshmen forwards Annie Pankowski and Emily Clark, carry the team and are the main reason the team currently sits at second in the conference.
UW has already clinched a first-round, home playoff series and the final three conference matchups will make or break the Badgers’ final standings.
That starts Friday night at LaBahn with the Bulldogs. Both teams are trying to cement their conference standings, and it should be a playoff-like atmosphere as they put it all on the ice.
