In the Spotlight
Jan. 10, 2001
By P.J. Slinger
Nate Anderson is learning as he's playing. While that's typical for almost any hockey player, he's not just learning the game of hockey, though. He's learning how to be a coach.
Anderson, the junior center for the University of Minnesota-Duluth, is studying to be a physical education teacher and hockey coach after college.
"So I try to pick up as many things as I can from the coaches," he said. "Stuff you learn in practice, like working hard and moving your feet. And afterwards, like coach Sandelin does, asking what I accomplished today."
Scott Sandelin is the Bulldogs' first-year coach, taking over for the longtime UMD coach Mike Sertich.
"I pulled Nate aside after practice one day and I said 'How many goals did you have in practice?'" Sandelin said. "I told him to count the number every day and I'd ask him after practice."
After that, Anderson went on a goal-scoring spree, getting 10 goals in 10 games. That was after going the first six games of the season without a goal. In fact, Anderson scored just two goals his freshman year and had none last season.
"I don't know if what I said had anything to do with it," Sandelin said. "It's just a thought process that allows him to have fun with it and it makes him concentrate more in practice because he's thinking about scoring goals. It was just getting back to those days at the outdoor rinks where you count how many hat tricks you had. For some it might work, for others it might not."
It appears to have worked for Anderson. Slightly more than halfway through the season, Anderson has 18 points (11 goals, 7 assists). Those are impressive numbers considering he had 11 points total his first two years in the WCHA.
"At the beginning of the season they told me they were counting on me to go out and score more goals," he said. "They said they needed me."
And don't think Sandelin's coaching lesson slipped by Anderson.
"Every person has their own coaching style and I try to take certain things from each of them," Anderson said.
And Anderson has had his share of hockey coaches. Although he never played high school hockey as such, he did play hockey, and lots of it.
"Hockey in our area wasn't that strong for high schools," he said. So Anderson went to play for a Junior B team in Deerwood, Minn., near his hometown of Crosby, during his freshman and sophomore years.
"I saw him play when he was about 14 or so playing for Steve Jensen's Junior B team," Sandelin said. "It seems like a long time ago. I remember him being a smaller guy with good skills."
After Junior Bs, Anderson hoped he could make the jump to the United States Hockey League.
"After my sophomore year, I tried out in the USHL, but I was still too young, just 15, but some people from the Detroit Little Caesars Midget AAA team noticed me," Anderson said.
So off he went to the Motor City for a year.
"I don't think my mom was too thrilled about it," he said. "But the coaches ran a pretty tight ship. Michigan doesn't really have high school hockey, so midget hockey is their top hockey at that age, even though my particular league wasn't that strong. But we did play a lot of teams in Canada."
The advantage of playing midget hockey in Michigan is that teams play about 80 games a season, compared to less than 25 during a Minnesota high school hockey season.
"We actually ended up winning nationals," Anderson said. "That was probably my funnest year of hockey."
Finally Anderson was old enough to play in the USHL, and ended up on the Twin Cities Vulcans during his senior year of high school. But again he was away from his parents, and he lived with a family in Bloomington, Minn., and attended Burnsville High School.
"They were really nice people, so it wasn't that big of an adjustment for me," he said.
Anderson played for the Vulcans for three years, the last two living with Joe Brown, a former Vulcan himself. In his final season with the team, he had 49 points in 55 games to lead the Vulcans.
Then it was time to decide on a college, and because Anderson still had to take his ACT, he was ineligible to go on official visits to colleges. "That kind of slowed the whole process down," he said.
But Anderson ended up where he wanted to be anyway.
"Crosby is only about two hours from Duluth, so I grew up watching the Bulldogs, so that was a lot of it," he said.
As a freshman, Anderson had 2 goals and 6 assists for 8 points. Last year he had only 3 points (all assists) in 23 games.
Sandelin, who was an assistant coach at North Dakota until this season, said he never really noticed Anderson the past two seasons when UMD and UND would play.
"With a lot of teams you just don't pay attention to some players unless they are big goal-scorers or if they are goalies," Sandelin said. "I guess we usually pay more attention to goalies than anyone else."
But he certainly caught Sandelin's eye this year.
"I found it hard to believe that he didn't play in every game last year," Sandelin said. "His numbers were 0-3, and that was tough for me to understand. But the past was the past as far as I'm concerned."
Despite the low scoring numbers, Sandelin wasn't going to judge him by that.
"When I came here, I didn't pay much attention to stats," Sandelin said. "And I didn't look at any tapes. I just went into it thinking whomever stands out is going to play. At that time I thought he was the best forward on the team. He has that speed and good puck skills."
And that was perhaps the break Anderson needed.
"I'm getting a lot more ice time and a lot more opportunities this year
and I'm working more on shooting after practice," he said. "I'm just more
confident that I can go out and score. I just want to be as good as I
can. I want to be able to look back and say, 'Yeah, that's the best I
could do.'"
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