Kornacki: Red's First Champs Recall Winning It All in Cincinnati
3/25/2016 12:00:00 AM | Ice Hockey, Features
By Steve Kornacki
CINCINNATI, Ohio -- There is a photo as grand as any taken of a coach and a player after they've scaled the mountaintop together, staking their flag at the summit after a long and tiring quest.
Brendan Morrison has his right arm around University of Michigan coach Red Berenson, who is holding a puck out with his right hand and looking at it the way gold rush miners gazed at the panned nugget of a lifetime. The "Red Baron" had finally, at last, pulled out the big one in winning the 1996 NCAA ice hockey championship.
"The raw emotion of that photo really allows you to see the look in Coach's face and my face, too," said Morrison, who is proclaiming the Wolverines No. 1 with the index finger of his left hand held high. "He's the happiest I've ever seen him at that moment, and that's why it's one of my favorite photos.
"It was a pretty cool thing to see a guy who put so much time and effort into the program at Michigan, having built the program back to prominence, finally reach the pinnacle."
Twenty years have passed since Morrison ended the national championship game with Colorado College in overtime by burying the rebound from Bill Muckalt's shot at Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati.
However, goalie Marty Turco and forwards Muckalt and Morrison recall it as clearly as yesterday. Each of them went on to success in the NHL, but they cherish what happened back on March 30, 1996, when they beat Colorado College, 3-2, in overtime and piled onto Morrison in triumph.
"When you win a championship," said Muckalt, "you remember that for the rest of your life, what you accomplished together. Nobody remembers how many goals you scored that year or what your save percentage was. What they remember is that every time you walk into the rink there's a banner hanging there, and a lot of work went into getting that with the coaching staff."
It was the first of two NCAA championships that Muckalt, Turco and nine others would win, and the journey for the 2016 Wolverines begins Friday evening (March 25) against Notre Dame in the NCAA Tournament Midwest Regional in the very same arena in Cincinnati, now named U.S. Bank Arena.
Muckalt said, "You know what, history repeats itself. This is a tremendously talented group that they have up front, and they are as dangerous as anybody with a chance to go all the way."
Berenson said he would point out the Cincinnati connection to his current players before the game.
"Now, they don't know that," Berenson said outside the locker room following Thursday afternoon's (March 24) practice. "But, when you say, 'Cincinnati,' that's good for Michigan. Notre Dame might think it's good for Notre Dame, but we think it's good for Michigan."
Berenson, now 76, was in his 12th season in 1996. He'd taken his alma mater to the Frozen Four in three of the previous four seasons but hadn't even reached the championship game yet. The 4-0 win over Boston University -- which Turco called Michigan's "best game of the year" and Morrison called "an almost perfect game" -- put them one win away from his first championship.
"Although it is so many years ago it all remains a vivid memory for me," said Turco, 40, and now the director of corporate development for the same Dallas Stars he played for. "What we all faced was a tremendous amount of pressure, with Red being the biggest because he hadn't won the big one and had been close plenty of years. The program hadn't won in over 30 years (since 1964), and it was all on our shoulders.
"But I enjoyed pressure; it didn't bother me. I wanted to play in the big games and enjoyed it. It enhanced my demeanor. I was kind of meant to be a goalie from that perspective. I just had to make the saves in this one, do whatever it took. We were down going into the third period and there wasn't anyone in the locker room showing any kind of panic."
At the 6:54 mark of the third period, Mike Legg tied it, 2-2, with assists from Steven Halko and Harold Schock.
Turco had a straight-on view of the play 200 feet down ice.
He said, "The play Halko made to keep it into Mike Legg, who was standing there off to the side of the net, tapping in a rebound, it was pretty amazing. There were some good chances both ways after that, and Ryan Bach, their goalie, played really, really well. When I see those highlights, I realize we were pretty lucky to beat those guys that day."
Morrison saw to that by scoring his 28th goal of the season 3:35 into overtime.
"A defenseman along the boards tried to slip the puck past me," said Morrison, "He actually hit me and I knocked it down, and I spun around and knew Greg Crozier was in the high slot. I gave him a pass, and he shot. Mucker had the rebound to the goalie's right, and I figured to beat the defenseman to the puck if there was another rebound.
"So, fortunately for me, the rebound came right to me and I had a wide-open net. All I wanted to do if the goalie lunged was lift the puck to give it a chance to go in. It seemed to take forever, and it did go in."
Muckalt and Turco agreed with Morrison on that point. The shot took forever to hit the back of the net. It was as if the play of their lives had been granted slow-motion qualities.
Brendan Morrison's game-winning goal in the 1996 NCAA final
Muckalt, 41, and now the head coach and general manager of the Tri-City Storm of the United States Hockey League in Kearney, Nebraska, recalled the play.
"The puck hit a skate," said Muckalt, "and I was open back door. It came to me and I was worried about going high because there wouldn't be a rebound. So I just put it on net and the puck was just lying there. I remember it seemed like an eternity before Brendan could get there.
"Now, obviously, it was quicker than that. There's a picture of Brendan scoring that's pretty famous, and then we were trying to hunt him down. It was so special for that team to get over the hump. We wanted to win it for Red."
Tom Mees, the late ESPN play-by-play announcer, shouted into his microphone: "Red Berenson! The gorilla is off his back in Ann Arbor! Brendan Morrison has ended the game in three minutes and 35 seconds of overtime, and Michigan is the national champions of college hockey!"
Watching video of that scene of joy and hysteria will give you chills. It was pure magic for the Wolverines. The pep band played "The Victors" as Morrison experienced an adrenaline high beneath his teammates.
"That is a dog pile that I would sign up for again any day," said Morrison, now 40 and living in the Canadian province of Alberta. "There was so much adrenaline and excitement. I remember when the puck went in the net, I thought, 'Did that really just happen? Did it count?'
"But just then I saw the bench erupt and I saw (defenseman) Harold Schock at the blue line. He was flying at me, and I had circled the net and was kind of high-stepping it around. Schocker and I, we collided, and there's a really cool picture of us perpendicular to the ice. I ended up on the bottom and then there was a pile on us. There was so much adrenaline going through you, so much excitement. It was awesome. I just wanted to get up and celebrate. I put my hand up and tried not to get squished."
Morrison, who earned an economics degree at Michigan, is the vice president of Breakaway Matting, an oil and energy company in Calgary. He's also an associate for The Strongman Group, which specializes in acquiring cash-flowing commercial real estate outlets, and he has his own fishing show.
He scored 200 goals in 15 NHL seasons, mostly with the Vancouver Canucks, for whom he played a club-record 534 consecutive games.
Morrison left Michigan with a school-record 284 points and loved playing on the same line with Jason Botterill and Muckalt. Morrison's pass to Muckalt resulted in the first scoring in the '96 championship game midway through the first period.
"It was the chemistry we had," said Muckalt. "I don't even think Brendan looked to see where I was, and I was expecting the pass. When you play with great players, you are going to expect the pass at any time you are inside the blue line, and you want to smack it and score a goal.
"Brendan made a great pass, and I just got rid of it quick and got it on net, catching (goalie Ryan) Bach by surprise. As we say in the coaching world, I didn't dust it off."
Turco stopped 21 of the 23 shots he faced, and nothing got by him after Colin Schmidt's goal 5:37 into the second period gave Colorado College a 2-1 lead. Turco won 127 games, an NCAA record for goalies, and his performance down the stretch in the championship game exhibited how he would dig down deep to win.
"Marty, first and foremost, is a competitor," said Muckalt. "He hated to lose and was a great athlete. When he's your goalie, Marty Turco gives you a chance to win any night in any rink against any opponent. And he proved that with the all-time most wins.
"Marty was as cool as a cucumber. He had ice in his veins. He was a gamer. In a big game, he stopped all the ones he should and then some of those he shouldn't have."
Turco would play all but two of his 11 seasons in the NHL with Dallas, and in 2002-03 set the modern league goals-against average of 1.72 that has since been broken. He's the best Berenson's ever had between the pipes.
Legg's Lacrosse-Style Goal Sparked Team
Still with all the talent on a team that included 12 future NHL players, the Wolverines might never have reached the 1996 Frozen Four had Legg not sparked them to victory in the regional final with a spectacular goal that he whipped in from behind the net with the puck on his stick like a lacrosse player.
"The big turning point for us that year was when Mike Legg scored that goal," said Turco. "Anybody who wasn't in diapers then remembers the goal. What nobody really remembers is that we were getting rope-a-doped, punched out by the Minnesota Gophers at Munn Ice Arena in our rival's barn (in East Lansing, Michigan).
"We were down, 2-1, getting outshot pretty crazy, and that goal seemed to ... I never saw another goal change the dynamic of a game like that. What it meant was a momentum changer in the game to go to the Final Four. We needed something, and we got it. We could not believe what happened. It was like, 'Look at that goal by Legger!'"
Berenson beamed when it was brought up.
"Players fool around when they take shots after practice," said Berenson. "I'd seen Mike try that play behind the net and I mentioned to him one day, 'Why don't you try that in a game?' I had no idea that he would pull that off in an NCAA Regional game. We were down a goal at the time.
"He got behind the net and pulled it off. It was unrehearsed, in terms of that day and that game. It just hit him -- that instinct hit him. He pulled it off and it couldn't have been better. Our whole bench just erupted -- we were laughing because we had seen it, but we didn't believe it. The rest of the hockey crowd saw it and they didn't believe it. The radio guy said, 'I know I saw it, but I don't believe it.' It was a great event and we went on to win the game and come here (to Cincinnati) and have a good finish."
The Wolverines' NCAA title earned them a visit with vice president Al Gore at the White House
Morrison Played with Broken Wrist
Morrison, who would win the Hobey Baker Award in 1997 as a senior, was the Most Outstanding Player of the Frozen Four. He represented not only the great talent on the team but the grit. He played the stretch run with a broken bone in his wrist.
"I broke the scaphoid bone at the end of January," said Morrison, a left-handed shooter. "And so I wore a cast for the last two months of the season. It was my top hand, and I was fortunate it wasn't my bottom hand because I probably wouldn't have been able to hold my stick all that well.
"So, I had a cast on, and it affected me for sure the first couple weeks. But like anything, you kind of get used to it and figure out what you can and can't do."
They were a team that refused to give up and stayed late after practices, Muckalt noted.
Eleven played on both the '96 and '98 national championship teams: defensemen Bubba Berenzweig and Chris Fox; goalies Gregg Malicke, Greg Daddario and Turco; and forwards Justin Clark, Matt Herr, Sean Richlin, Dale Rominski, Bobby Hayes and Muckalt.
Turco said, "For us, every year exponentially increases our appreciation for the opportunity to play in four Frozen Fours and also win twice. It's a hard thing to win, but when you do, you feel like you'll just do it again, and we did.
"But the '96 one was pretty special. So many great players had come through the program with Red straightening the ship. And for him to pretty much annually get a kick at the can and not come through, well, there was just a lot of emotion that came through, a release to some people.
"I realized that day what that jersey meant and that one day we'd sadly have to take it off. Winning it my sophomore year, and realizing what it meant to those seniors to wear that jersey, it hit me square in the head what I was doing there at Michigan."
Berenson smiles when the players on that team are mentioned.
"That team in '96 had a little bit of everything," said Berenson. "We had Billy Muckalt, who was a real scorer, Botterill, (John) Madden, (Warren) Luhning, Legg, and Brendan Morrison kind of led the way. I felt bad that Mike Knuble (who scored 38 goals as a senior in 1995) wasn't there because he'd done so much for the program and never got to win."
They were a special brand of committed players who cared greatly for one another as well as others.
Morrison, who is taping an episode of "Sportfishing Adventures" that he hosts for Wild TV, a hunting and fishing network in Canada, drove away from his camp to get into a cell phone reception area to talk for this story.
"The guys are going to feel good there in Cincinnati," Morrison said of the current Wolverines. "They are going to have a lot of support. I got chills hearing they were going to play there like we did.
"You know, the other thing is how shocking it is how fast 20 years go by. It seems like yesterday. For me, that's one day that's still crystal clear."
