In the Spotlight
March 9, 2001
By P.J. Slinger
Jordan Leopold admittedly was timid when Don Lucia took over as the Minnesota Gophers head coach at the beginning of last season.
Leopold, then a sophomore, thought he would stick to doing his job as a defenseman and forget about scoring unless he heard otherwise from the coaching staff.
"I stayed back a lot," Leopold said. "Then one time I went up and scored. I came back to the bench and he said that's what I'm supposed to do, get up on the play. Once he said that, I knew I had the freedom. I have the green light when I get the chance."
And it hasn't turned yellow.
Leopold, now a 20-year-old junior, finished the regular season tied with North Dakota's Travis Roche as the overall leading scorer among defenseman in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association with 43 points.
Leopold also leads all defensemen with 31 points in league play. Those 43 points are more than the highest-scoring players have from half of the WCHA's teams.
"He can do it all," Lucia said. "He brings the puck out, he's good man-on-man, good offensively, and he quarterbacks our power play, which has been pretty successful."
In fact, Lucia has even higher praise for Leopold.
"He is the best defenseman I've ever coached, and I've coached four All-Americans (Shawn Reid '94, Kent Fearns '95, Calvin Elfring, '98, Scott Swanson '99.) He's better than all of them because he's so good on both ends."
Leopold said it all goes back to his youth.
"Those skating classes I had when I was young were huge," Leopold said. He actually took figure skating lessons when he was first learning to skate.
"My dad told me it would help me learn my edges," he said. "But I had no choice. I was only 4 or 5. But after that it was all hockey instruction."
Leopold credits Carn's Skating Dynamics classes that he took for six or seven years in Edina, Minnesota, not too far from his hometown of Golden Valley.
"That's probably the best thing I did skating-wise," he said.
But Leopold did more than learn to skate.
"Since I was young I always picked up the stick and would play hockey either in the basement or in our driveway," he said. "I was always playing."
Leopold did play a few seasons as a forward before becoming a staple at the blue line.
"Because I was one of the better backwards skaters, I got put on defense," he said. "Playing defense I really like seeing the ice, that's why I don't like to play forward. I like looking ahead, not behind."
And Leopold had been looking ahead to playing for the Gophers for a long time.
"Growing up in Minnesota it was tough not to watch the Gophers," he said. "I grew up watching guys like Larry Olimb skating around and I always wanted to play here. I'd watch games in our basement on a channel that barely came in. It wasn't like now with the (Gophers) TV contract. I'd be shooting pucks in the basement and watching the games."
Leopold had the benefit of being an only child, which can help when you're an aspiring young hockey player.
"I guess I got more attention paid to me, and that meant more money in the hockey fund for me," he said. "But my parents separated when I was 11, and money became an issue after that. Had they separated when I was younger, I don't know if I would have had things so good."
Leopold was also a good baseball player, earning all-conference honors twice during high school.
"I liked baseball more (than hockey) during baseball season, but it always depended on what season it was, that's the sport I liked the most," he said. "I almost quit playing baseball my sophomore year to concentrate on hockey. Then the next year I broke my collarbone playing hockey and missed most of my high school baseball season. But baseball got my mind off hockey for a while."
After two years of varsity hockey at Robbinsdale Armstrong High School, Leopold left to play his senior season for the U.S. National Under-18 team in Ann Arbor, Mich.
"Playing with the national team really helped me develop a lot," he said. Leopold joined teammates Erik Westrum and John Pohl on the WCHA all-star team that traveled to Norway this past summer. He also was taken in the second round of the NHL draft by Anaheim two years ago, but his rights were traded to Calgary last summer.
"I've always dreamed of playing in the NHL, but I'm just enjoying being here right now," he said. "I'm not in that big of a rush. I'm comfortable where I'm at right now. If I could draw it up, I do it the same way."
Lucia said when he came to Minnesota from Colorado College, it was a bonus to inherit a player the caliber of Leopold.
"He's going to be an All-American," Lucia predicted for Leopold this
season. "It's just the evolution of him as a player. He made the
all-rookie team (in the WCHA), he was all-WCHA second team last year and
he'll be a first team pick and All-American this year. He's the type of
defenseman that doesn't come around too often."
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