Why'd You Wanna Play College Hockey: Isn't It Obvious? To Score A 2OT Game Winner In The Frozen Four
Tyler McFarland. Getty Images.The Western Michigan University Broncos advanced to the Frozen Four for the first time in school history. This isn't some prodigy program filled with a bunch of kids playing on national teams. For most of these guys, this semifinal game was the biggest game that they've ever played in. Sure, the Broncos may have been the higher seed in this matchup but they still have the defending National Champs across the ice from them. That's no tall order. That's a team who has been there before, and won the whole thing in 2 out of the last 3 years. They know how to get the job done. So when Denver tied the game up with just a couple minutes left in regulation, it had to feel like a "here we go again" type of moment.
Biggest game of your life and it gets sent to overtime. The emotions are going through the roof. Everybody dreams of this moment, and everybody wants to be the hero. But your nerves are also going berserk. Every shift feels like a lifetime. Every time you're waiting on the bench to go back out on the ice feels like an eternity. One overtime period wasn't enough and the boys had a chance to head back to the locker room to try to control some of those nerves before heading back out there for 2OT.
Clearly the message in the Western Michigan locker room was "let's get out of here quick so we can still have our legs under us for Saturday's National Championship game". Because less than a minute into 2OT, Owen Michaels was the hero to send the Broncos to play for their first national title.
Just a kid from Northville, Michigan. He grew up less than 30 minutes away from Ann Arbor. Right in the backyard of the University of Michigan. But he never got an offer from the Wolverines.
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He spent a couple seasons grinding it out in the NAHL and USHL, ends up in Kalamazoo to play for the WMU Broncos, and now he just put himself 60 minutes away from becoming a National Champion. That's why you grind. That's why you don't give up on the dream. That's why you play college hockey.
And for the girls, of course.