Bobcat Hockey completes best regular season in program history

Bobcat hockey is a powerhouse showing no signs of slowing down. That dominance was on full display on Feb. 3, when the team notched their club-record 32nd win of the season with a 6-4 victory over the Griz in front of a sell-out home crowd.

The reigning back-to-back Mountain West Collegiate Hockey League (MWCHL) champions have had a wildly successful past three years, but a national championship continues to elude the ‘Cats. If there was ever a year to rectify that, it is with this iteration of Bobcat hockey. The team sits atop the MWCHL standings and has already clinched a bid to the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) Division II National Championships that will take place in St. Louis, Missouri starting on Mar. 11.

 “We have four goals as an organization. One is to win the season, which we have. The second one is to win leagues, which is the playoffs and that's next weekend and we need to take care of that,” defenseman Rhys Phelps said. “The third one is to win over the Griz. Nationals is the fourth goal. We want to come home with a ring.”

Founded in 1998, the hockey club started as a casual organization, a space for people to experience affordable, low-stakes collegiate hockey. That changed in 2016 when Dave Weaver led a rejuvenation of the club, a process that included his taking over as head coach.

 “It starts with the top-level leadership. Dave [Weaver] has done a great job of building this program, even from before Rhys [Phelps] and I got here and the MSU Bobcat hockey team wasn’t nearly the team that it is now,” forward Lucas Solanik said.

In addition to Weaver, the team now features a staff of hockey enthusiasts dedicated to helping grow the club and improving the quality of the sport in Bozeman.

“We have physical trainers, workout trainers, we have people who help coordinate the food, the travel, the hotels, just a bunch of people who work behind the scenes doing the scorekeeping or the boxes or make sure the rink is clean or work security. We have a staff of almost 30 that puts on these games,” Phelps said. “There's a lot of love for this organization and this sport and we just want that to grow.”

If the crowds of spectators are any indication, the team has certainly succeeded in that area just as well as they have with any of their goals on the ice. Home games for the team are played at Haynes Pavilion at the Gallatin County Fairgrounds and have become characterized by the passion of the fans. For example, the Cat-Griz game on Feb. 3 sold out in less than two days and drew a crowd estimated to be 500 people, according to the team.

“You know the difference when you come into a game and there [are] fifty people in the stands when we go play a different team and then we come here and have four or five hundred fans,” Solanik said. He punched in three goals for a hat trick during the win over the Griz, securing an undefeated home season for the year.

Goalie Jorgen Johnson has also noted the community support as the program’s accolades continue to pile up. “It’s kind of surreal, really. Even just walking into the rink and hearing my name coming from some little kids and just getting to stop and talk with these youth hockey players and their parents. These kids do look up to you, it is a bit of a pinnacle of hockey here in Montana and it’s something you don't take for granted,” Johnson said.

For a team this successful, it would be easy to let the focus drift towards more distant goals like a national championship. People around the team recognized early on that this tight-knit group had the potential to go all the way and win the first national championship in program history.

“Coming into this year we had a sit down with coach Dave and all the upperclassmen kind of sat down and we all said, we did good last year, but we’re going back to nationals with all the same experience we had last year. This is our year,” Solanik said. “There’s no question this is a year that we can and should win nationals and that’s our goal.”

Phelps agreed with the sentiment that this team has the potential to bring a championship back to Bozeman. “This year, the one thing we noticed about a third of the way through the season when we were undefeated was that we can do this and this could be our year. Then the buy-in from the team increased dramatically which just made our success better,” Phelps said.

En route to amassing a record of 32 regular season wins and only two losses, the team has a mantra that they are carrying with them into the postseason.

“Our focus this year with our record as good as it's been is that no game is more important than the last and every game goes into the overall record, our final goals of the season,” Johnson said. “Play our game and get the win, no matter who we’re playing, whether it's the Griz or flying to St. Louis, we’re playing our game. We know what works, and we’re going to stick to that game no matter what.”

Part of the preparations for St. Louis will involve the team mastering their emotions and surrendering fewer penalties, something that teams competing at the national championship will seek to take advantage of. “The big one is to control our emotions, because we have some of the most penalties in the nation. We want to calm that down so that doesn’t become a hindrance in our game in nationals,” Phelps said. “That could be a bit of a problem for us.”

A five-week gap between the conference playoffs and the national tournament will give the team a chance to maintain their conditioning and connect more closely with the community while conducting fundraising. According to a GoFundMe created for the team last season, the club sport designation means only 3% of the funding from the team comes from MSU. The rest of the funds for the team comes from the players themselves, sponsors and donations from various fundraisers.

“We’ll have a Skate with the Bobcats [fundraiser], that's one we’ve done the past few years. We’ll do another fundraiser at the Center Ice Cafe. We are also doing a pint night with the boys, where it's an older crowd, kind of hanging out and drinking with the boys. The last thing we’re going to do is do an intrasquad scrimmage in Big Sky for an outdoor game. We’re gonna turn that into another Skate with the Bobcats so we’ve got four big ones coming up,” Phelps said.

If you want to learn more about the team, stay up to date on fundraisers, or follow along during the final push for a national championship, they can be found on Instagram, at @msubobcathockey.