Former UND captain Gage Ausmus looks back on the team's bond and their accountability during UND's Frozen Four winning season

WEST FARGO—Eight years ago, the University of North Dakota defeated Quinnipiac 5-1 and ended its 16-year Division One Men's Hockey Championship drought. Gage Ausmus was the captain of that team.

Since becoming an alumnus, Ausmus has been in a position many fans are in. Cheering from the sidelines and hoping the Fighting Hawks will hang a ninth banner.

Unlike most North Dakota fans, Ausmus has experience. He played college hockey, won a national title, and eventually played a few years of pro hockey. So he understands the game and what it takes to win better than anyone.

“A lot of things go into having a winning culture,” Ausmus said. “You can still have a winning culture without winning it all. You have to get lucky to win the national championship. But one thing you absolutely need is for every guy on the team to prioritize winning.”

Ausmus also stated the importance of having a team that likes to have fun off the ice.

“When I played, we liked to have a good time,” Ausmus said. “We tell stories about having beers and going out to parties; that was actually part of our motivation to win games because we did want to have fun after. But at the same time, that was not our priority. Our priority was always to win games. Everything else came second.” 

During his years at UND, Ausmus remembers how tight his teams were and how bonding off the ice was a driving factor in their success.

“There’s no better way to come closer with a guy than to have a couple beers with him,” Ausmus said. “From our experience, our teams did enjoy a lot of beers together. It made it easier to go out and have that guy’s back. It made you want to win, not just for yourself, but because you also wanted those other guys to have success.”

Walsh Hall

In 1959, UND opened a brand new state-of-the-art dorm named after George H. Walsh, a Civil War veteran who moved to the Grand Forks area to start the region's first newspaper. Housing a portion of the student body for over 60 years.

Toward the end of its lifetime, Walsh Hall's age started to show, but that did not stop the UND players who called it home from having a good time.

“We all knew it was a crappy dorm,” Ausmus said. “It was brutal, but the tradition of it is that everyone wants to be a part of the history. We felt we were very much embedded into that tradition once we lived in Walsh Hall. All the freshmen lived there dating back to the sixties and seventies. We have that connection with all those guys. Every guy who went through UND as a freshman, at least on the hockey team, lived in Walsh Hall.”

While Walsh Hall is no longer standing, the legends and traditions that came through that building still live on.

“You see it around the rink, ‘add to the tradition,’ and that's what we tried to do, not only on the ice but off the ice,” Ausmus said.

While reminiscing about the 2016 national championship team, Ausmus spoke about the team's accountability and how that affected their performance on the ice.

“We tried to stay consistent and hold ourselves to a certain standard,” Ausmus said. “That year, we went to East Lansing to play Michigan State. We came in thinking that we should win two games fairly easily, and Friday night, we go up 2-0 after the first period, but we did not play that well. Michigan State outplayed us, and we shouldn't have been up.

“And then the defensemen and forwards actually had a little fight in the locker room between the first and second period, kinda just calling each other out like, ‘Hey, you guys are shit tonight; let's step it up.’ And they (the forwards) were just like ‘Hey, just move the puck.’ We got into a little argument; we were up 2-0, so there was really nothing to argue about, but it was just holding yourself to that same standard no matter what was going on. You’re up, you’re down; it does not matter. You know how good you need to be.”

Ausmus emphasized that even though he was the team captain, there was a locker room full of leaders who were just as capable of leading the charge.

“We had a very large leadership group that year,” Ausmus said. “For being captain, that was one of the easiest teams you could ever imagine being captain of because, one, we were successful right off the bat and, two, there were six guys that could have worn the C.”

North Dakota has not reached the Frozen Four since winning it in 2016. However, that is not an accurate measure of the program's success over the last few years. UND has won the Penrose Cup the last four of five years while having multiple Hobey Baker finalists.

“I thought last year's team had a successful season in my book,” Ausmus said. “Obviously, you need to win a game in the (NCAA) tournament; there really are no excuses. But again, you can't judge everything off the national tournament. At the end of the day, it's one and done; you could get bad puck luck.”

So, what are these UND teams missing that the 2016 team had?

“Well, they’re missing a CBS line,” Ausmus said. “I mean, who doesn't want a Brock Boeser scoring 30-plus goals?”

During the 2015-16 season, Drake Caggiula, Nick Schmaltz, and Brock Boeser amassed 157 total points.

For this next season, Ausmus urged that someone must take the reins come playoff time.

“You need to get rid of the fear of losing,” Ausmus said. “Play the game to win. Come playoff time, someone needs to make a play. Last year, we had an unbelievable team that was easily good enough to go on and win the national championship. If you want to win those games, your best players need to make a play.” 

UND will again be in the mix to make it to the NCAA tournament. UND has an excellent recruiting class, including two first-round draft picks in Sacha Boisvert (Chicago, 18th overall) and EJ Emery (NY Rangers, 30th overall).

“Really good defenseman coming in, really high-skilled forwards, it’s exciting,” Ausmus said. “They are still young kids; it might take them a little while to get acclimated with the college game, but overall, I think it was an unbelievable job by the coaching staff to get this class in. I think you have a lot of guys that should stay a while, at least. I'm pretty excited to watch them.” 

Ausmus had some advice for the freshman coming in this season.

“Do as much as you can; sometimes you don’t want to get in that shooting room, sometimes you don’t want to work out, sometimes you don’t want to skate before team practice and get your skill session in, but you will never regret doing those things.”

Ausmus also talked about taking advantage of the UND community and making the most of life outside the rink.

“It’s not about what you know, it’s about who you know,” Ausmus said. “North Dakota has some of the best alumni, and I am not talking just hockey; school alumni too. Talk to the donors, talk to your professors, talk to people on campus. I found UND people and UND alumni to be very helpful people in life after hockey. Make connections.”