On Monday, the unranked St. Cloud State women's hockey team picked up its first win over the University of Minnesota since 2010, a stretch of 61 games. It was the third meeting of the season between the Huskies and Golden Gophers, who had defeated SCSU both times, the latter coming on a 2-1 win on Nov. 2.
Brian Idalski is in his first season as head coach of the Huskies (7-6), who have won five straight games going into this weekend's WCHA series against Minnesota Duluth (3 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. Saturday, B1G+).
Idalski talks about that big win, keys to his team already surpassing last season's win total (6), his coaching career and his Olympic experience as the head coach of the Chinese women's team. All of this and a lot more on this episode of The Rink Live podcast with Jess Myers and Mick Hatten.
TIME STAMPS
2:00 SCSU pregame chat before knocking off top-ranked Minnesota, the importance of showing that a one-goal loss to Gophers wasn't a fluke
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3:25 JoJo Chobak's impact after transferring to SCSU from UMD, coach being able to score on her and Sanni Ahola in practice
5:45 Sanni Ahola's performance (34 saves) in the 4-1 win over Minnesota
7:00 Playing for the Columbus Cottonmouths, how he got involved in coaching
10:25 How he stumbled into college coaching at Wisconsin-Stevens Point, going 26-1 in his first season of coaching the Pointers women's team
13:00 The shock of North Dakota cutting women's hockey when he was the head coach in 2017, the success that the players went on to achieve after it was cut
16:25 Helping out coaching for a season at Culver Military Academy, the fun story of how he ended up coaching in China in the Russian pro women's league
19:40 Dealing with coaching in China, despite not speaking Chinese, what the food was like there
22:15 The level of hockey in the Russian women's league, coming back and comparing it to this season's WCHA
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24:15 His experience coaching the Chinese Olympic team
25:22 Keys to his team's improvement on the penalty kill and power play
28:20 Previewing this weekend's series against Minnesota Duluth
30:00 What it has been like coaching SCSU's Olympians Jenniina Nylund and Klara Hymlarova
