The Legacy on Ice: A Century of Michigan Wolverines Hockey
Introduction
The Michigan Wolverines men's ice hockey team represents the University of Michigan with a storied tradition that spans over a century. From its humble beginnings as an informal team to its current status as a perennial powerhouse, the program has achieved remarkable success, marked by a record-setting number of championships, tournament appearances, and a consistent stream of talented players. This article explores the rich history of Michigan Wolverines hockey, highlighting its key milestones, influential figures, and enduring legacy.
Early Years: From Informal Beginnings to Varsity Status (1920-1947)
In 1920, driven by the burgeoning interest in interclass and interfraternity leagues, an informal Michigan hockey team was established to represent the university. Mr. Le Mieux, a member of the Engineering faculty with 12 years of professional hockey experience, volunteered as coach. The team faced challenges in securing intercollegiate competition and played a six-game schedule against local teams and Assumption College, achieving a perfect 6-0 record and outscoring opponents 27 to 7, with Russell Barkell emerging as the team's high scorer.
Despite the team's success, the absence of a university rink and suitable competition hindered its progress. However, the growing sentiment for a varsity hockey team led to increased efforts to elevate the sport. In 1921, hockey gained momentum with Joseph Barss as coach (1921-26). Although not yet part of the Western Conference athletic program, hockey provided competition for several Big Ten teams. That season saw the development of intercollegiate hockey at Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Michigan and Wisconsin scheduled four games to be played on consecutive weekends from February 18 to 26, 1921. The 1921 season began with two games against the Michigan College of Mines at Houghton, Michigan. Michigan lost the first game 3-0 but won the second game 4-3. Russell Barkell, the first standout hockey player at Michigan, was the Michigan star in both games against the College of Mines. However, the remainder of the season, including the planned four-game series with Wisconsin, was cancelled due to warm weather.
In December 1921, The Michigan Alumnus wrote: "There will be much pushing of the puck this year. The Athletic Association hopes to have more money to spend for Michigan skaters, and plans to encourage hockey more than ever before. We used to spend our time 'doing the grapevine,' but only because we were not fast enough for shinny."
In late 1922, after years spent as an “informal” sport played by fraternities and small clubs, hockey was officially designated a varsity sport by athletic director Fielding Yost. Over the course of a 10-game schedule, Michigan's 1922 squad finished with a record of 5-5. The team opened the 1922 season with a 5-1 victory over Michigan Agricultural College (now known as Michigan State University) in the first hockey match between the rival schools. They followed with a 3-2 overtime victory over the Detroit Rayls on January 16, 1922. Later that month, the Notre Dame hockey team defeated Michigan 3-2 in overtime, marking the first defeat for the Michigan hockey team on its home rink in three years. The team traveled to Houghton for night games against the Michigan School of Mines, losing both games by scores of 2-1 and 5-2. The Wolverines beat the School of Mines 4-1 in a rematch in Ann Arbor. In March 1922, The Michigan Alumnus reported that athletic director Fielding H. Yost had stated that recognition of hockey as a minor sport was very probable in 1923. Yost expressed the view that the sport should be either intramural or intercollegiate and not an informal sport. According to Bacon's history of the Michigan hockey program, the first "official" college hockey game played west of the Alleghenies was a game between Michigan and Wisconsin, played on January 12, 1923, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The game went into overtime with Michigan prevailing by a score of 2-1. The Capital Times in Madison reported on the game as follows: "Michigan counted the first point, when Kahn, by clever work, rushed the ball through the Badger defense for a goal. In the second period Blodgett for Wisconsin tied the score. The first five-minute period of overtime found both teams battling desperately. The second five minutes was a repetition. Barss coached the Michigan Wolverines men's ice hockey team from 1922 to 1927. As the popularity of college hockey grew in the early 1920s, other colleges looked to Barss' pupils for coaching candidates. In February 1924, after a 3-0 victory by Michigan over Wisconsin, a Madison newspaper praised the defensive play of the Barss-coached Wolverines: "With an almost air-tight defense and a definite scoring attack the Michigan hockey team defeated the Badger six by a score of 3-0 yesterday afternoon.
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The Heyliger Era: Dominance and National Titles (1947-1957)
The arrival of Vic Heyliger in 1947 marked the beginning of an unprecedented era of success for Michigan hockey. From 1947-48 through 1956-57, when Vic Heyliger retired, the Michigan hockey team had won 195 games, lost only 41, and tied 11. The Wolverines' record got them 10 consecutive invitations to the Frozen Four, where they came home with the national title six times-records that have never been in danger of being broken by any college team a half century later. This also helped shift the locus of power in hockey from the East to the West when it was previously thought to be the other way around. Led by Michigan, the West won 18 of the first 20 NCAA championships, setting the question rather emphatically. In 1948, in the first ever NCAA Hockey Tournament, Michigan was one of four teams selected to the inaugural Frozen Four in Colorado Springs. Of Michigan's 53 players who have earned All-American status, almost half (24) played for Heyliger between 1948 and 1957. During that stretch he never had fewer than two players on the All-American team. Four times he had five players so honored, and in 1956 he had a record six players on the squad. In Michigan history, twelve Wolverines have won it twice or more. Heyliger coached nine of them and recruited the tenth, Bob White. Hockey Hall of Fame, and he was selected in 1996 by the American Hockey Coaches Association as one of the five best college coaches of the century, and the very best of the first half. In 1980 he became the first hockey coach to be inducted into the University of Michigan's Hall of Honor.
Heyliger's severe asthma forced him to leave the team and Ann Arbor in the summer of 1957. Through Heyliger's tenure, athletic director Fritz Crisler had seen the virtue of having a Michigan man head the hockey program. At the end of Renfrew's first season in Grand Forks, Heyliger stepped down from the Michigan job and told Renfrew to put his name in for it.
The Renfrew Years: Building a Legacy (1957-1973)
Renfrew wrote Fritz Crisler a letter in March indicating his interest, but Crisler didn't respond for over a month. Renfrew had already concluded he was out of the running when Crisler called to offer him the job. His decision should have been harder than it was. Renfrew inherited a team that had gone 18-5-2 and finished one victory short of its third consecutive NCAA title in 1956-57-and then Renfrew promptly suffered Michigan's first losing season since World War II. His skaters finished 8-13 in 1957-58, his first year, and 8-13-1 his second. From 1958 to 1964, some 14 players made the trek from Regina, Saskatchewan to Ann Arbor, including one Red Berenson. While still in high school, Berenson had already become a highly touted major junior player, one good enough to join the Montreal Canadiens system straight out of high school, but he had other ideas. A serious student, Berenson became aware of the world of American college hockey when Regina Pats high-profile coach Murray Armstrong went south of the border in 1956 to accept the head coaching job at University of Denver. Berenson visited North Dakota in 1958 and was favorably impressed at the caliber of players the former coach, a man named Al Renfrew, had lured to Grand Forks before Ranfrew returned to Michigan the year before. But soon after Berenson's visit to North Dakota, Dale MacDonald, a Saskatchewan native playing for Renfrew at Michigan, told his coach that Berenson was the rare player worth going out of his way to get. Renfrew scraped together enough money to fly the young phenom to Michigan, thereby making him the first hockey player ever to receive a free recruiting trip to Ann Arbor. The extra effort was worth it, for both parties. Once he was on campus, they didn't have to sell him on it. "After I came down on a visit", Berenson confirms, "I came back and told the other guys. Berenson's decision, at least, came with a price. Frank Selke, the Montreal GM who had drafted Berenson, warned him that if he went to an America college he would never become a pro. Fully aware he might be sacrificing the dream of every Canadian boy to play in the NHL-and for the Montreal Canadiens, no less-Berenson didn't flinch. After sitting out his first year, which the NCAA required of all freshmen at that time, Berenson suited up for his first game on February 5, 1960, against Minnesota. He scored 90 seconds into his first game, assisted on another goal five minutes later and scored a third later in the game. Renfrew notched his first winning season and his first league playoff berth in the 1960-61 season. The following season, the Berenson-captained squad didn't lose a game through New Year's, and finished the regular season with a 20-3 mark. As expected, the Wolverines received their first NCAA bid under Renfrew that spring. Michigan was a slight favorite entering the 1962 NCAA Tournament in Utica, New York, but were upset by Clarkson 5-4 in the semifinal. In a life with few regrets, the game against Clarkson ranks near the top for Berenson. "We should've won it", he said. "We were destined to meet Michigan Tech in the finals, but got knocked off by and underdog-Clarkson-back when eastern teams weren't that good. You don't get too many chances to win it all as a player. At the time it doesn't seem so important, but 10 years, 20 years later, you ask yourself: "Why the hell didn't we do that?"[attribution needed] After scoring his school record-tying 43rd goal against St. The 1964 squad returned its two leading scorers from the previous season, Gary Butler and Gordon Wilkie, both ex-Pats, who had combined for 79 points in just 24 games the previous season. They played better than expected, combining for a remarkable 135 points in just 29 games-both players finished just shy of Berenson's single-season record of 70 points. Rookie Wilf Martin added an unexpected 58 points. Mel Wakabayashi, all 5'5" of him, join the team in January 1964, centering Rob Coristine and Bob Ferguson on the third line. The trio added 107 points, which would have made them the top-scoring line the previous season. Added it all up and you had the first Michigan team to score more than 200 goals in a season, averaging a prolific 7.5 goals per game. Thanks largely to the scoring streak, this unheralded but determined bunch beat every opponent at least once en route to a 24-2-1 record, winning more games than any team in Michigan history. At the 1964 Frozen Four, Denver took care of Rensselaer, 4-1, while Michigan survived a close game with Providence, 3-2. For the final game, 7,000 Pioneer fans packed the Denver Arena to watch their team battle for its fourth NCAA title in seven years. The underdog Wolverines beat Denver, 6-3, in the Bulldogs' backyard, winning their seventh national championship. It was the last hurrah for the Regina regiment, a group of some 14 players who came to Ann Arbor between 1958 and 1964.
Transitions and Challenges (1973-1984)
Renfrew retired as head coach following the 1972-73 season. He was succeeded by Dan Farrell, a former assistant coach at Michigan Tech (where Renfrew had previously coached). Farrell's first season was also the team's first at their new home in the converted Fielding H. Yost Field House, now known as Yost Ice Arena. Nearly 50 years ago, following the construction of Crisler Center and the men’s basketball team’s subsequent move into it, Michigan hockey finally said goodbye to playing in the Weinberg Coliseum and moved into Yost Ice Arena. Farrell guided the Wolverines to the 1977 NCAA championship game at Olympia Stadium, losing to the Wisconsin Badgers by a score of 6-5. Wilf Martin returned to his alma mater to serve as head coach, but only lasted two games into the 1980-81 season before he was forced to step down for health reasons. Assistant coach John Giordano took over for the rest of the season. In 1981, Giordano's Wolverines moved from the WCHA to the CCHA, joining fellow Big Ten rival schools Michigan State (which also jumped from the WCHA) and Ohio State (a founding member of the CCHA), as well as football rival Notre Dame. It was hoped that the change in conferences would help the Wolverines compete, but Michigan followed up a first-round conference tournament loss to the Irish with back-to-back ninth-place finishes.
The Return of a Legend: The Berenson Era (1984-2017)
After a lengthy playing career in the NHL and a stint as head coach of the St. Louis Blues (where he won the Jack Adams Award) and a term as an assistant to Scotty Bowman in Buffalo, Red Berenson returned to his alma mater in 1984 to take over the reins. Following years of stagnation after its last title in 1964, Michigan needed a change behind the bench. It fired head coach John Giordano and hired former Michigan forward, NHL superstar and St. “I’d like to improve the image of the Michigan hockey team on campus and with the alumni,” Berenson said. Berenson's teams faced a stiff rival in Ron Mason's Spartans, who dominated the CCHA in the mid-80s and won the 1986 NCAA championship. After several years of rebuilding the Wolverines finally won a CCHA playoff series in 19…. From 1991 to 2012, the team played in 22 consecutive NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournaments, an NCAA record.[3]
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In the semifinal of the 1995 NCAA Tournament, forward Brendan Morrison had a chance to send his team to the championship in overtime. Instead, he hit the post and the Wolverines lost. “I’m sick of hearing the rumors that we can’t win the big game,” then-sophomore forward and current assistant coach Bill Muckalt said. And two years later, Muckalt and the Wolverines would prove “them” wrong again, winning yet another overtime thriller. “There is nothing like this,” Michigan coach Red Berenson said in 1996.
Down 2-1 in the second period of Michigan’s quarterfinal matchup with Minnesota in the 1996 NCAA Tournament, junior forward Mike Legg scored a goal so memorable and so iconic that it has become known simply as “the Michigan” - and it even has its own Wikipedia page. “I tried it everyday in practice a couple hundred times,” Legg said postgame.
Berenson for nearly 50 years has continued to hold the school single-season goal scoring record, and was the second player in the program's history to win the Stanley Cup. They currently hold the record for the most titles at the Great Lakes Invitational with 17 titles respectively.
Recent Years: A New Chapter (2017-Present)
The most recent head coach was Mel Pearson, a former assistant to coach Red Berenson who retired in 2017 after leading the program for 33 years. Following years in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA), Michigan hockey was finally able to join the rest of the athletic department in the Big Ten following the creation of a Big Ten hockey league. On Aug. 5 2022, the University of Michigan announced its firing of head coach Mel Pearson. Pearson had spent the past five years at the Wolverines’ helm and had guided them to two Frozen Fours in his tenure - although he had been unable to snap the title drought. Just two days later, following a rapid coaching search that included only two candidates, Brandon Naurato was hired. Current seasonUniversityUniversity of MichiganConferenceBig TenFirst season1922-23Head coachBrandon Naurato4th season, 67-42-9Captain(s)T.J. Hughes
The 37-year old former Michigan assistant coach, former Red Wings player development coach and former Michigan forward was suddenly promoted to the position of interim head coach - just a month and a half before the season started.
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Notable Alumni and NHL Presence
The Michigan Wolverines hockey program boasts a vast network of alumni who have gone on to achieve success in the National Hockey League (NHL). The program has dozens of National Hockey League alumni and over twenty current players. Players from the program have earned numerous honors, professional championships, international championships, individual statistical championships, team and individual records.
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