“That’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing hockey for sure,” said Marshall, who was a junior defenseman on that groundbreaking squad. “Some of those guys I consider my best friends, so it was a special time.”
Miami hockey has changed dramatically in the last two decades. The Redskins are now the RedHawks. Goggin Arena has been replaced by state-of-the-art Steve Cady Arena at the Goggin Ice Center. The program is now an annual national championship contender.
Enrico Blasi was a junior forward in 1992-93. Now he’s in his 14th season as Miami’s head coach.
“Oh God yes, that was a long time ago. But a lot of those memories are still pretty vivid in my mind,” Blasi said. “I can picture the guys and some of the games still.”
George Gwozdecky was the head coach 20 years ago. His first two seasons produced 12-24-4 and 5-29-3 records. In 1991-92, he pushed the Redskins to an 18-16-6 mark and their first appearance in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association semifinals at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.
Things were looking up. But it wasn’t enough.
“It was nice. Everybody could feel good and take their hats off and say, ‘That was excellent,’ ” recalled Richard Shulmistra, a junior goaltender in the 1992-93 campaign. “Coach took his hat off and said, ‘OK, you have two weeks off. Then we’re going to get back to work and take the next step.’ ”
Ask players from that era and everyone points first at Gwozdecky when talking about the ascension of the program. He’s now the head coach at Denver and, like Miami, a regular in the NCAA tournament.
“He came to Miami with a plan and had the approach that he wasn’t going to lose,” said Chris Bergeron, a senior forward in 1992-93. “He pushed us hard every day. Around my third year or going into my fourth year, he kind of handed it over to the players and said, ‘OK, this is your deal. You’ve got to take it to the next level.’ It was pretty amazing to see it play out.”
The Brotherhood theme that’s so prevalent in present-day Miami hockey started back then. It’s more refined now, but the seeds were planted in the Gwozdecky era.
“In those days, team building was starting to be in vogue,” Blasi said. “I remember George brought somebody in to help us with it. We broke into small groups in the old locker room and kind of came up with a mantra and tried to put some meaning to what we were saying.
“One of the things that came out of those meetings was this theme called the Brotherhood. Respect Everyone, Fear No One, The Brotherhood — that was our mantra, and that’s how we played. When George left to go to Denver after my senior year, it kind of went by the wayside. When I came back here to coach, I had it in the back of my mind that we were going to bring the Brotherhood back out.”
Shulmistra said the culture of the program evolved during his time in Oxford.
“Taglines and catch phrases and writings on the wall all started coming in, and we had a group of kids that really wanted it,” he said. “That was George’s first place as a (Division I) head coach. He was recruiting people that wanted to be winners, that all thought the same way.”
The 1992-93 unit won the first CCHA regular-season title in school history. Miami was 17-0-2 at home. One of those victories came on Feb. 6 when Michigan invaded Goggin Arena.
When the players showed up at the rink, the line of fans seemingly went on forever. Thousands got turned away.
“That’s something we had never seen before, so it was pretty exciting,” Marshall said. “It wasn’t a huge building, and it could get pretty loud and pretty raucous in there for sure. That was probably the loudest I ever heard that place.”
The Redskins won 4-3 in overtime that night. When Jason Mallon scored the game-winning goal, it marked a turning point in the players’ minds.
“We finally felt we could play with the big boys,” Shulmistra said. “We knew what the standings said, but here’s a powerhouse team like Michigan that drubbed us 11-1 two years ago and now we’re taking them in overtime … now I guess we can play with anybody.”
MU failed to win the CCHA tournament, but made history with its NCAA berth. The third-seeded Redskins played No. 6 Wisconsin before a small crowd at Joe Louis Arena. Stephen Rohr tallied a goal for Miami, but the Badgers and goalie Jim Carey prevailed 3-1.
“Rohr broke loose on the wing and came in and sniped — I think maybe he was falling,” Blasi said. “I can tell you I hit the crossbar at 2-1. I can tell you George yelled at us after the second period. I remember it being dead at Joe Louis. I remember walking after the game with George to the press conference in the old Olympia Room. It still smells the same.”
Shulmistra recalled getting beat on two breakaway goals.
“The styles were different,” he said. “They were fast and had quick counters. It was different than what you might see in the CCHA. I think we were as ready as we could be. We were just a little inexperienced as a group. You could read about it in the paper or get it on TV, but until you actually experienced it, you really didn’t know.”
Marshall said his primary memory centers on Carey, who went on to play in the National Hockey League. “He stood out because we couldn’t score on him,” Marshall added. “I think we played probably as well as we could’ve. We just couldn’t seem to put the puck in the net.”
Added Bergeron, “It felt like it was one of those games where they’d been in that situation before and we hadn’t, and that’s the way it played out. It wasn’t a blowout by any means, but we didn’t seem to play our best game. It felt like we ran out of gas.”
It would take Miami four years to get back to the NCAA tournament under Mark Mazzoleni, but the foundation had been laid. The 1992-93 team had two All-Americans, forward Brian Savage and Marshall, who totaled two goals and 43 assists that season.
“I was on a power play with some pretty good guys,” Marshall said. “All I had to do was pass it off and I seemed to get an assist with Chris and Rico and Brian and Joe Cook.”
Blasi described the squad as “a lot of guys that understood their roles. We were hungry, and the nucleus of that team two years previous had only won five games.”
Said Shulmistra, “We had guys from winning programs, and we believed that we could be champions. One of the things I remember most is just how close we were. When you have blood, sweat and tears like that and you eat, breathe, sleep and drink hockey, you become close. When games got tight, we could look at each other and pick each other up, and we knew we were going to get it done.”
Added Marshall, “We were always together. Whether we were in the dining hall or in the rink or uptown enjoying some social activities, we were a big, close group.”
The players have scattered since leaving Oxford. Shulmistra lives in Raleigh, N.C., helps out with the Raleigh Youth Hockey Association and works as a credit portfolio analyst for First Citizens Bank. Bergeron is the head coach at Bowling Green. Marshall lives in suburban Toronto, coaches a teenage boys team and works for Atlas-Apex Roofing.
Blasi, of course, is still here. He’ll take his squad to the Huntington Center in Toledo to face Minnesota State Mankato in the NCAA Midwest Regional on Saturday.
This season marks Miami’s 11th trip to the NCAA tournament and its eighth consecutive berth. But that tradition started 20 years ago, and the players that were there are still smiling.
“We were able to pump our chest out because the program was changing, and we all felt like we were a part of it,” Bergeron said.
“It’s a special group because it’s the first time we won a championship. It’s the first time we did a lot of things,” Blasi said. “No one can ever take that away from us.”
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