The Penn Stater Magazine

Gadowsky is the Guy for Nittany Lion Hockey

April 26, 2011 at 12:03 am Ryan Jones Leave a comment

The last thing I wanted to do was bum out Penn State’s new hockey coach.

I was in the room Monday for the introduction of Guy Gadowsky, the new — and first — head coach of Penn State’s Division 1 men’s hockey team. My question, which ended up being the last of the afternoon, was whether Gadowsky was mindful of the high expectations for the program, and whether — at a campus where a third-year wrestling coach just won a national championship — he might want to temper those expectations.

“You’re killing my buzz,” Gadowsky said.

The coach was joking, and in truth, I’m not sure anything could’ve dampened Gadowsky’s mood Monday afternoon. The man who rebuilt struggling programs at Princeton and Alaska-Fairbanks has been tasked with building the Penn State program virtually from scratch—and he couldn’t have been more confident about succeeding.

“I don’t look at it like we’re building from scratch,” Gadowsky said. “We’ve got a great tradition here. The club tradition is phenomenal. We’ve got a great fan base. We’re way ahead of the game.”

Gadowsky's son Mac models the season's hottest t-shirt

In Penn State hockey, Gadowsky sees a future so bright it’s almost blinding. He talked about all the selling points — the school spirit, the Icers’ rich club hockey tradition, the draw of a soon-to-be-built arena, even how Penn State’s geographic isolation will appeal to kids who grow up, as he did, in rural Canada — and about how excited he is for his family (including three young children and a sister-in-law, Kelsey MacDonald, who is a Penn State sophomore), to be a part of it all. It’s not that I didn’t expect him to be happy to be here, but Gadowsky is really happy to be here.

He does know it won’t be easy. Back to my buzz-killing question, Gadowsky was blunt. “The reality of it is, we’re going to face the best programs in the nation, and they’ve had a bit of a head start on us,” he said. “But I think we’re going to catch up sooner than people think.” Just how long will it take Gadowsky to lead a program that will enter D-I play with a roster full of raw recruits and players pulled up from the club ranks to a place among the nation’s elite? The coach is too smart to put a time frame on it. But it sounds like he doesn’t expect to wait all that long.

Ryan Jones, senior editor

Entry filed under: Other Penn State sports. Tags: Guy Gadowsky, hockey, Kelsey Macdonald.