Hockey's Hard Hat Motivates Wolverines to NCAA Title Game
4/9/2011 12:00:00 AM | Ice Hockey
April 9, 2011
• Video Coverage of Frozen Four 
By James Dowd
While there isn't a single player on the University of Michigan ice hockey team that will be satisfied if they aren't returning to Ann Arbor with the NCAA championship trophy after facing Minnesota-Duluth on Saturday night (April 9), each and every one of them also has an additional piece of hardware in mind -- a Maize and Blue hard hat.
The hard hat is given to the player who best exemplifies all of the small things that have brought this year's Wolverines as far as they have come -- hard work, attention to details and defensive responsibility.
After receiving the award, the player adds the score of the game and his initials, keeping a record of everyone who has received the award.
"It's meaningful to our team because we pride ourselves on defense," junior forward and co-captain Luke Glendening said. "We don't have many prolific offensive players, and so I think we have to come to work every day. We have to work hard on defense and the things that people don't notice a lot."
Glendening, one of the team's captains, picked up the hard hat from some friends on the soccer team -- a group that had an equally impressive season last fall, reaching the national semifinals -- and the captains gave it out starting with the Bowling Green series in the CCHA playoffs. After using a mountain on the wall as the symbol for playoff success last year, Glendening felt the hard hat was an appropriate metaphor for what this year's team needed to do to win in the posteason.
"Last year, we used the mountain as our kind of symbol," Glendening said. "We had our backs up against the wall and we had a fair amount of games there to win to get to the (NCAA) tournament. This year we didn't have as much pressure on us to win all of those games late in the season, so we used the hard hat because a couple of my friends who play on the soccer team wear them to our games and 'Get Back to Work' is kind of what they say to us."
Associate head coach Mel Pearson agreed that it's a great symbol for the personality of the 2010-11 squad. He noted that while coaches often try to drum up awards or incentives for players to keep them focused on the right things, this one was particularly special because the coaches had nothing to do with it.
"I think the nice thing about it is that the players brought that up," Pearson said. "I know in the past we've tried to do some things as coaches, but they came up with that on their own. It's much more meaningful when the team comes up with some award like that. There's no question that it really exemplifies our team and how we're playing, and how we're getting that workmanlike effort from players."
In preparing for Saturday night's contest against a Minnesota-Duluth team that boasts an excellent power play and a very dynamic top line, this focus on defense and the details will remain extremely important in the chase for the NCAA championship. Senior forward Scooter Vaughan, one of the more successful offensive players on this year's squad, noted that a key to victory will be the same as it has been in each of the three prior NCAA Tournament games -- the things that win you the hard hat.
"We have a really diverse team and we all know our roles really well," Vaughan said. "We know we're not going to do anything if we don't play defense. We're really not a run-and-gun team like some Michigan teams in the past, we're not going to win a lot of games 5-4 because that's just not our style. We're going to win 1-0, 2-1 kind of games, and we know to win those games we have to not give up any opportunities and take away opportunities. That's something special about our team, on the scoresheet you might not get the glory, but in our locker room, if you block that shot, if you backcheck, that's the real glory."
