Shannon Miller is not just the head coach of the UMD women’s hockey team. She is the head, the face, the force, and the personality of UMD women’s hockey. She IS UMD women’s hockey.
There have been great coaches at UMD in various men’s and women’s sports. Still are some. But no coach has taken a program from its inception, and led it to the highest of heights, establishing a program at the pinnacle of Division I hockey schools at a Division II college. Miller did things her way for 16 seasons now, and she has never wavered from running things in an uncompromising quest for success.
Since venturing into Division I hockey, UMD had never won a national championship until Miller, in her second year after creating the UMD team, led the Bulldogs to the championship in 2000-2001 -- the first year the NCAA held a national tournament for women’s hockey schools. The year before, in the first year of the program, UMD was 21-1-2 under Miller and was invited to a national tournament at the invitation of the women’s coaching association.
When the NCAA decided to operate a women’s tournament in 2001, winning UMD’s first-ever Division I NCAA tournament was not enough for Miller. She led the Bulldogs to another championship in 2002, and another in 2003. That’s correct: In the first three years of NCAA tournaments, UMD won all three, against programs that had been competing for far longer than UMD’s fledgling four seasons. Wisconsin and Minnesota rose to UMD’s incredibly high standard during the last decade, but UMD also claimed the title in 2008 and 2010, giving the Bulldogs five NCAA championships before the men’s team won its one glorious title.
Along the way, Miller made some enemies, and may have helped give rivals reason to pile up mountains of envy and resentment. There was no question that UMD was treated harshly by certain individuals in the NCAA and hockey committees, but instead of whining, Miller chose to usually wear all black. If they were going to be considered the “bad guys,” why not turn that into an advantage?
She also may have earned some resentment from within the UMD athletic department because as a Division I program at a Division II college, women’s hockey represented a drain on the budget without drawing enough fans to pay all of the bills back. Never mind that establishing the best women’s college hockey program in the country lifted UMD to a pillar of respect and fame.
That is all worth something. If you could hire the best coach in the country, you know you’d have to pay her plenty.
“Her” is the operative word here. In the women’s WCHA, every hockey team but one has, at some point, had a woman coach. today, only one remains. Shannon Miller, at UMD. Rival coaches know they’re in for a tactical and emotional battle whenever they face the Bulldogs. Referees hate it when Miller summons them over to discuss a call, or the technicality of a specific rule -- because they knwo she’s got a good chance of being right.
So Miller kept getting contractual increases. She was up to $215,000 a year at this point. That’s more than any other women’s hockey coach in the WCHA, or in the country. Her status reminds me a lot of when I test drive a BMW; I always say BMWs are exorbitantly priced, and worth every penny.
In this time of budget restraints and cutbacks, however, even if the BMW is running smoothly, it’s time to trade it in for an economy car.
UMD athletic director Josh Berlo had UMD issue a release at 9:50 p.m. Monday that said the school would not be meeting the stipulations for a contract extension for Shannon Miller, and for her staff, when this season ends. Her 16th season will be her last at UMD, and she will leave what might be called large skates to fill for anyone who might consider replacing her.
“It was a tough decision we had to make, to not extend Shannon’s contract,” Berlo said. “We have unbelievable apprecitation for what Shannon has done for our women’s hockey program, but it was a financial decision. She’s making $215,000 a year, and it’s not sustainable to us. We took a real hard look at it, and we trimmed other budgets last year. I have the utmost respect for her and I know we’re losing a great coach.”
   If we were going to evaluate the primary reasons for dismissing a college coach, they might be: 1. Inability to win enough games; 2. Inability to win enough championships; 3. Inability to recruit enough quality players to compete intensely; 4. Violating rules and bring discredit to an institution; 5. Failure to apply coaching techniques in a system that develops players; 6. Failure to respect players and opponents, or to teach players to respect their opponents.
There are more, of course, but those will do for starters. And we have all seen coaches dismissed for some of those shortcomings.
What we have not seen, up until this week, is dismissing a coach who has fulfilled all those above obligations for the express reason that the institution can no longer pay that coach what that coach has earned by meeting and exceeding all those obligations.
Effectively, that is why Miller has been informed that her contract will not be renewed following this season. My thought was that if budget constraints were that serious, perhaps UMD could have come up with a counter offer, just to see if Miller might accept it and keep on running the show. Berlo said that based on the contractual stipulations, that couldn’t be done...although I remain unconvinced.
Miller has turned down offers to leave Duluth and take on women’s hockey programs at larger and wealthier institutions because she wanted to stay at UMD. She is comfortable in Duluth, and as a Canadian, she got her U.S. citizenship three years ago as a Duluthian. Without question she wants to continue coaching, and she will continue to coach this year’s improving UMD team through this season.
After that, I have an idea. When UMD issues the official opening after the season, Shannon Miller should apply for the job, at whatever contract is offered. Wouldn’t that be interesting? And wouldn’t that be the ultimate evidence about whether this decision was truly about the inability of a college to pay a contract for the best coach at any college.

Youthful Greyhounds Maturing Fast

There are some impressive high school hockey teams in the Duluth area this season. Hermantown is in a familiar place at the top of Class A entries, but Marshall and Denfeld are strong challengers for that honor. Then there is Duluth East.

As the only Class AA team in Duluth, the Greyhounds always face tough competition from Cloquet-Esko-Carlton and Grand Rapids -- the only other Class AA teams in northeastern Minnesota. After that, East faces the every improving competition from the North Suburban entries into Section 7. In case you’ve forgotten, East had to play those teams in football, too, and found that teams like St. Michael-Albertville won those football games by scores like 56-0.

Obviously, those huge-and-getting-huger schools have a lot of exceptional athletes, and East coach Mike Randolph is determined to try to schedule as many of them for his hockey team’s independent schedule, both to establish seeding ground rules and to measure those teams.

Last Saturday was the chance to measure St. Michael-Albertville at Heritage Center. St. Michael-Albertville showed it has become far more than that freeway-straddling pair of towns where the most impressive outlet shopping center is located. Outshooting East 8-4 in the scoreless first period, SMA got one past Lyle Howg when Gavin Jocelyn scored 10:32 into the second.

It stayed that way until the third period when junior Alex Spencer scored to lift East into a 1-1 tie. At 3:08 of the third, Garret Worth -- a freshman -- rushed up the left side, cut to the slot and fired it into the visitors net for a 2-1 East lead.

But St. Michael-Albertville came back barely a minute later when Jody Reckard fooled Howg with a goal that slithered in from behind the net for a 2-2 tie. Logan Nelson skated up the right side, accepted a drop pass and rifled a shot from the top of the right circle into the net off the far pipe at 8:30, and the Knights had reclaimed the lead at 3-2.

This East team is not loaded with skilled seniors. In fact, the Greyhounds have only eight seniors if you include both goaltenders. They also have an eighth-grader, three ninth-graders and 13 sophomores on the total roster.

The Greyhounds, having rallied from a 1-0 deficit to take a 2-1 lead before blowing it to trail 3-2 exactly midway through the third period, came charging back hard. But several chances misfired, as the minutes flew past. It looked like East’s patented ability to get a late goal would fail this time. But with 22 seconds remaining, Luke LeMaster, another of those ninth-graders, ripped a shot form the right point and it went through a screen of bodies to find the net with 21.6 seconds showing.

In overtime, East sophomore Reid Hill stepped up from his blue line as a Knights winger waited to catch a long pass near the boards. Noting Hill coming to cover, the skater pivoted to turn his back to protect the puck. Hill was already committed to the bodycheck, but pulled up to smack him with a medium-force bump. The referee, clear on the other side of the rink 80 feet away, immediately threw his hand in the air. He couldn’t call checking from behind, because the kid had pivoted away from him. So he called interference.

Now, interference means you checked someone who was not playing the puck, but in this case, the kid was playing the puck. So it was a bad call, all the way around, and worsened because it was overtime. The young Greyhounds hustled to kill the whole two minutes, however.

When the penalty kill was over, East’s Ash Altmann fed the puck ahead to Luke Dow, springing a 2-on-1 rush. Dow carried up the left side, then fed a perfect pass to the slot, where junior Ryan Peterson caught it, closed in, and snapped a shot over the goaltender’s arm and into the net.

The Greyhounds outshot St. Michael-Albertville 31-17, but it took a rally of traditional merit to tie the game, and then get the victory. They could say they won this one for the coach, because Randolph missed the game so he could take the trip to watch his son, former East star Jake Randolph, play for Nebraska-Omaha against St. Cloud State. Assistant Brendan Brooks kept Randolph informed by text messaging, and it was worth it from both standpoints.

Jake Randolph wound up with four assists in the St. Cloud series, and was named rookie of the week in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference. A couple hundred miles away, in Houghton, Mich., Jake’s old East linemate Dominic Toninato kept on scoring and was named NCHC offensive player of the week as UMD split with Michigan Tech.

While those East grads were doing the job at the next level, this level is plenty for the youthful but promising Greyhounds.

John Gilbert has been writing sports for over 30 years. Formerly with the Star Tribune and WCCO. He currently hosts a daily radio show on KDAL AM.