MADISON, Wis. — 3 hours earlier than the Wisconsin Badgers have been i’m ready to apply on a Tuesday afternoon in overdue January, the most productive teacher within the historical past of girls’s school hockey used to be telling a tale a few deer.
“I’d like to get in the mindset of a deer,” Mark Johnson mentioned all through a coaches assembly throughout the workforce places of work at LaBahn Area.
He talked for a number of mins, looking to empathize with the deer that had jumped in entrance of his automotive — and nearest ran off — month Johnson used to be riding house from the rink a couple of days prior. He couldn’t reasonably determine why the deer did what it did.
Johnson, 67, is at all times looking to see issues from any other point of view, whether or not it’s a deer at the highway or the crowd round him.
“We’ve got these hockey players and we’re trying to figure them out,” he mentioned.
That function — looking to perceive his gamers’ mindset — by no means leaves the foreground for Johnson and his training personnel.
On that Tuesday, coming off a 2-2 fasten in opposition to St. Cloud Condition — certainly one of most effective 3 video games the Badgers didn’t win in legislation all season — Johnson determined to not split ill video with the workforce. “Look ahead,” he instructed them. The training personnel deliberate drills with their then opponent, the College of Minnesota Duluth, in thoughts. And figuring out it were an extended season with probably the most notable hockey nonetheless to return, Johnson mentioned the workforce would play games a number of mini-games to finish apply on a amusing — but aggressive — observe.
“He wants to make (practice) the best part of their day,” mentioned Dan Koch, an worker teacher on the College of Wisconsin. “If coming to the rink feels like work, or they’re getting bored, we’re not going to get anything out of it. … He has a great feel for (what the players need).”
It’s simply one of the crucial emblems of a teacher who has constructed one of the crucial biggest girls’s hockey methods the game has ever viewable.
In 22 years as head teacher of the Badgers, Johnson has develop into the winningest teacher in NCAA Category I girls’s hockey historical past and the one teacher to eclipse 600 wins. Disagree program has gained greater than Wisconsin’s seven nationwide championships, all celebrated with Johnson in the back of the bench.
And this age’s roster is likely one of the private and maximum professional in this system’s historical past, with 4 gamers nominated for the 2025 Patty Kazmaier Award, given to the most productive girls’s hockey participant within the country. The Badgers misplaced just one recreation in legislation this season — in opposition to the reigning champion Ohio Condition Buckeyes — and are coming off any other WCHA convention identify with a 4-3 win over the Minnesota Blonde Gophers.
Now, the Badgers input the NCAA Match, which starts on Thursday afternoon, because the Disagree. 1 workforce within the country — and the favourite to win any other nationwide identify. Can they ship on expectancies?
This system’s be on one?s feet to dominance starts with Johnson.
The son of mythical teacher “Badger Bob” Johnson — who constructed the Wisconsin males’s hockey program and led the Pittsburgh Penguins to their first Stanley Cup — Mark grew up in Madison and is likely one of the all-time biggest gamers to ever go well with up for the Badgers.
He’s widely recognized for profitable a gold medal on the 1980 Olympics and scoring two objectives within the “Miracle on Ice” semifinal recreation in opposition to the Soviet Union. He went directly to play games 11 seasons within the NHL earlier than retiring in 1992. Through 1996, then a couple of highschool training stints, Johnson used to be again in Madison as an laborer teacher for the Badgers.
Then six years, the pinnacle training task unfolded. Johnson implemented, however the task was at certainly one of his former teammates, Mike Eaves, in lieu. Johnson had a call to assemble: He may proceed as an laborer for certainly one of his buddies, or he may go back to the NHL to paintings as an laborer within the supremacy respectable league.
“I had kids at the time, and had been traded a few times in the NHL,” he mentioned. “I didn’t want to go back to that lifestyle if I had a choice.”
Because it grew to become out, there used to be a gap for the upstart Wisconsin girls’s hockey program that had simply performed its first season in 1999. On the past, the task used to be thought to be one thing of a chance. If Johnson left the boys’s recreation, would he be capable of move again over?
Johnson’s need to reserve his public in Madison and run his personal program gained out; he used to be named head teacher of the ladies’s hockey workforce forward of the 2002-03 season.
“It was this leap of faith,” he mentioned. “Like, I’m going to take this jump and I don’t know where I’m going to land.”
At an introductory information convention, Johnson laid out his seeing for this system and promised to lend balance for a workforce that had long gone thru two coaches in its first 3 seasons. Skeptics didn’t consider {that a} mythical males’s participant would stick within the girls’s recreation; they assumed Johnson would bounce on the first task at a males’s program or an NHL workforce.
Only some months into the task, Colorado Avalanche teacher Tony Granato presented Johnson a place as an laborer, which he declined. There were alternative alternatives over time, too, however since 2002, Johnson has been all in.
Over the primary few years, Johnson most commonly laid the base of this system. He established a team-first tradition and a powerful, slightly easy on-ice identification.
“He’s a teacher of the game,” mentioned Koch. “He’s somebody that feels if you can skate, pass, shoot, stick handle better than the other team, your percentages of winning are going to go up.”
Laila Edwards, who was the primary Dark girl to play games for the U.S. girls’s nationwide workforce at an international championship in April 2024, mentioned head teacher Mark Johnson is “hands off, but not too hands off to a point where we’re a mess.” (Ashley Landis / AP Photograph)
Johnson persisted recruiting and growing the ability he had inherited, akin to occasion Canadian Olympic defender Carla MacLeod, U.S. Olympian Molly Engstrom and Meghan Hunter, who’s now an laborer GM of the Chicago Blackhawks. He additionally challenged the varsity’s management to proceed the workforce from a folk rink within the suburbs to the Kohl Middle — house of the boys’s hockey workforce — till LaBahn Area opened in 2012.
“He just came in and provided stability,” mentioned laborer teacher Jackie Crum. “You had this startup program and this legendary Badger came in, everyone respected him, he knows hockey, and his style of coaching just fits for a female hockey player.
“He’s not a yeller, he’s not a screamer. He’s not a swearer. He’s not berating. You watch those inside the NHL documentaries and they’re all ‘bleeps’ and ‘bleeps’ and that’s not him. Nor do I think that would work for 18- to 22-year-old females.”
The Badgers made their first NCAA match look in Johnson’s 3rd season (2004-05), and gained back-to-back nationwide titles in 2006 and 2007 — the primary DI program now not within the climate of Minnesota to win an NCAA girls’s hockey championship.
Wisconsin temporarily was a vacation spot for elite hockey gamers, together with occasion Hockey Corridor of Reputation inductees Meghan Duggan, Hilary Knight and Brianna Decker, who all gained championships with the Badgers. It is helping the Badgers that such a lot of influential alumni have handed in the course of the halls. Younger gamers who glance as much as Knight or Duggan may wish to chart the similar trail that leads thru Madison.
However for those who ask the gamers, all of it is going again to the pinnacle teacher.
“(Mark has) built that program to where it is,” mentioned Knight. “It’s a dynasty.”
For those who get to a Badgers girls’s hockey recreation an month earlier than puck loose, you’re already overdue. A minimum of if you need one of the crucial easiest seats in the home.
At LaBahn — with common admission seating — the die-hard fanatics set in hours in progress to conserve their favourite spot.
“Sometimes they get here before I do,” mentioned Edwards.
Then video games, when gamers travel to look their buddies or public, they’ll mingle with the fanatics who’re ready within the concourse.
“It’s the most special thing,” mentioned captain Casey O’Brien. “It gives you something more to play for. You want to do well for them because they invest so much in us and we kind of want to pay it back.”
The Badgers have averaged the supremacy attendance in NCAA girls’s hockey this season with round 3,500 fanatics consistent with recreation — together with a vastly attended double-header with the boys’s workforce at Wrigley Ground in January. Outdoor of the College of Minnesota, disagree alternative program’s fan bottom is near.
Wisconsin has hosted the six most-attended girls’s school hockey video games ever, together with a report 15,359 at a “Fill the Bowl” recreation hosted on the Kohl Middle in 2017.
The fan bottom is only one a part of the Wisconsin revel in. The $34 million LaBahn Area used to be constructed to lend professional-level amenities for its sports activities groups. And when it used to be in-built 2012, it used to be most effective the second one girls’s hockey explicit rink constructed within the nation then Ridder Area in Minnesota.
The Wisconsin girls’s hockey facility has a fat storage room, coaching amenities, remedy swimming pools — scorching bath, chilly bath and sauna — and a workforce front room, which serves as a central spot for gamers to hang around between magnificence and practices. In recent years, the workforce has gotten into looking at “Deal or No Deal.”
“I don’t know why, but game shows are always on,” mentioned O’Brien. “And we get way too into it.”
At Wisconsin, the sources fit what may also be anticipated for a Fat Ten sports activities faculty that has a self-sufficient athletic section, because of this it finances its operation thru its personal earnings instead than depending on college cash. This season, the athletics budget used to be i’m ready at over $170 million, a report top for the section.
LaBahn is adjoining to the Kohl Middle, which lately underwent round $48 million in renovations. The 2 constructions are attached thru a sequence of hallways, which provide gamers direct get admission to to extra shared amenities with the boys’s hockey, basketball and volleyball groups, akin to school rooms, cafeterias and a brand-new 10,000 square-foot health club.
“The facilities are second to none here,” mentioned defender Caroline Harvey.
And nearest there’s the enchantment of taking part in for a extremely embellished teacher whose taste extends past his even-tempered demeanor. Wisconsin does smartly to hire elite gamers, and Johnson permits them to radiance at the ice.
“He’s hands off, but not too hands off to a point where we’re a mess,” mentioned Edwards. “His job, as he’s taken it on, is giving us the systems, trust and confidence and just letting us go out and play.”
The supremacy workforce within the land.
The #Badgers are the Disagree. 1 seed within the @NCAAIceHockey Girls’s Match! pic.twitter.com/b2MbLgWL3Q
— Wisconsin Hockey (@BadgerWHockey) March 9, 2025
That training taste has labored smartly for the 2024-25 Badgers roster that is filled with ability up and ill the lineup.
“It plays a lot into our playing style,” mentioned Harvey. “If he was more rigid, we’d probably be holding our sticks too tight. … You’re able to expand and grow and try new things here, and you’re not punished for that or any (mistakes).”
Naturally, not one of the 2024-25 Badgers have been alive when Johnson used to be scoring fat objectives at the world level. However it is helping that his gamers know Johnson has “been there and done that” at each point. That Crum used to be of their sneakers, taking part in for Johnson’s Badgers, is helping gamers too, giving them an used sister determine who is aware of precisely what they’re going thru. To not point out, the trio of Crum, Koch and Johnson are of their fifteenth age training this system in combination.
“Everything that happens with the team, we’ve been there, we’ve done it,” mentioned Crum. “We’ve been around the block. I know where they go on a Friday night because I was there once too.”
Edwards and Harvey have been learners the primary past they skilled profitable at Wisconsin in 2023. Closing season, the Badgers misplaced 1-0 to Ohio Condition within the championship recreation.
“We want to win it all,” mentioned Harvey, now a youthful. “We don’t want to be in the same position we were last year.”
The 2024-25 Badgers are the match favorites. They’re 4 strains deep, with admirable defenders and cast goaltending. 5 gamers had been named to the U.S. nationwide workforce for the later girls’s international championships. And on Wednesday, 3 gamers (O’Brien, Harvey and Edwards) have been introduced because the finalists for the Patty Kazmaier.
Mark Johnson, well-known for his position within the “Miracle on Ice,” may win his 8th nationwide championship with the Badgers this day. Closing age, Wisconsin misplaced to the Ohio Condition Buckeyes 1-0 within the championship recreation. (Mark Stewart / Milwaukee Magazine Sentinel / USA Nowadays Community)
O’Brien, Edwards, Kirsten Simms and Harvey are 4 of the supremacy 5 scorers within the NCAA. The endmost past the Badgers ruled the ratings like this used to be the 2010-11 nationwide championship workforce with Duggan, Decker and Knight going 1-2-3 in scoring.
Nonetheless, Knight shouts this wave roster a “super team.” And coaches will agree.
“Going off of the skill, it’s probably the deepest we’ve ever been,” mentioned Crum.
O’Brien particularly is hanging in combination a masterful season in her ultimate age on campus. She has scored a nation-leading 83 issues in most effective 38 video games and is the favourite to win the Patty Kazmaier Award. Closing year, she had 3 issues within the convention championship and used to be named participant of the match. She additionally was the all time main scorer in Badgers hockey historical past (males’s or girls’s) together with her 269 occupation issues.
“She’s been good for us for a long time,” mentioned Johnson then the WCHA Ultimate, calling her “the best player in college hockey this year by far.”
With such a lot ability, the expectancy for the Badgers, like maximum years, is to win. However Ohio Condition is ranked Disagree. 2 and is construction its personal dynasty beneath head teacher Nadine Muzerall, who has gained two nationwide titles within the endmost 3 years. Disagree. 4-ranked Minnesota can have home-ice merit as match host.
Some veterans in this age’s Badgers, akin to Edwards and Harvey, have skilled the highs and lows of profitable and dropping within the ultimate recreation. Others, akin to O’Brien, are looking to win a 3rd championship. And sophomores, akin to Cassie Corridor or Kelly Gorbatenko, will struggle to erase the edge of a loss.
“They’re on a mission,” mentioned Johnson.
If the workforce wins, it’ll be Johnson’s 8th nationwide championship and his fourth in six seasons. He mentioned he’s nonetheless ambitious by way of the problem of establishing and training profitable rosters, particularly this age.
“The team is talented, it’s deep, but how do you keep them hungry? How do you keep them motivated?” he puzzled. “Those types of challenges are why I get up and enjoy coming to the rink.”
There’ll come a past when Johnson gained’t be on the rink to run a convention or get up in the back of the bench. He doesn’t know precisely when he’ll abdicate, however he has been taking into consideration what the then bankruptcy of his future may appear to be.
Johnson and his spouse, Leslie, are making plans to unmistakable a healing horse ranch in Verona, a suburb of Madison. The couple, who’ve been married for over 40 years, hope it may be a playground of medication for youngsters and households.
For now although, Johnson’s focal point is at the trail to profitable any other nationwide championship. Because the Disagree. 1 seed, the Badgers gained’t play games at the opening time of the match on Thursday, however will look forward to their Saturday afternoon opponent for the regional ultimate.
With a win — in opposition to the winner of Clarkson vs. Boston College — the Badgers will head to their 3rd immediately Frozen 4, which starts March 21 in Minneapolis.
“We definitely have the group to win,” mentioned Edwards. “But it doesn’t mean we’re going to. There’s still work to be done.”
(Representation: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic; Gil Talbot / NCAA Pictures / Getty, Dave Kallmann / Milwaukee Magazine Sentinel / USA Nowadays Community by way of Imagn Pictures)
