Potter Helps UMD Aim For Incredible Three-Peat
March 20, 2003
BY JOHN GILBERT
Three years ago, in the University of Minnesota-Duluth's first season of women's hockey, the Bulldogs had erupted for a hailstorm of goals en route to a stunning women's hockey victory against Wisconsin, and Jenny Schmidgall was stopped by reporters on her way to the dressing room. Always at ease with her free-flowing style on the ice, "Shmiggy" is equally as uneasy discussing her accomplishments.
When she was asked if she had ever scored so much, she looked puzzled. "What do you mean?" she asked.
"Well, you had nine points tonight," she was told.
A sly grin, almost of embarrassment, crossed her face. She had scored five goals and four assists, but she had no idea that she had put up such startling numbers. Ever since she was a tiny girl, skating on outdoor ice with her dad in Edina, Jenny has been dedicated to one thing - playing the game as hard as she can, every instant she is on the ice. She is not the player you want to put on the ice if the game if you expect her to coast because the game is one-sided, and yet she is exactly the player you want to put out there if the game is close.
UMD takes a 29-3-2 record into Friday's NCAA semifinal against Dartmouth (26-7), while Harvard (29-2-1) faces WCHA season and playoff runner-up Minnesota (27-6-1) in the other semifinal at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center. The Bulldogs are in quest of an incredible three-peat - striving for their third NCAA championship in the NCAA's third women's hockey national tournament.
Times have changed if the style has not, for Schmidgall, who is now Jenny Potter, a wife and mother as a junior at UMD, carries the WCHA's banner as the league's only finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Award, which will be presented Saturday to the player voted as the best women's hockey player in the nation. Her competitors are Harvard's pair, defenseman Angela Ruggiero who was Shmiggy's teammate on Team USA last year, and forward Jennifer Botterill, their foe on Team Canada's team that broke the USA's heart in the gold medal finale, and who won the Kazmaier award two years ago.
Potter has 31 goals, 54 assists for 85 points to lead the Bulldogs. She already has been named WCHA Player of the Year. Amazingly, she could have many more points, because she has been used pretty much as a wild card by coach Shannon Miller and doesn't play on the star-studded first unit, or on the top power-play unit, or the first penalty-kill group. Yet she leads the team with 10 power-play goals and four shorthanded tallies, along with 17 equal-strength goals.
After her freshman year, she left the University of Minnesota when she felt unfulfilled - despite team records of 33 goals, 38 assists and 71 points - and transferred to Minnesota-Duluth, where she led the nation in scoring with 41-52-93 as a sophomore. That was an average of 2.93 points per game, as the Bulldogs went on to win the first WCHA Women's championship in 1999-2000, in their first year of operation.
She was only part of the first-year UMD team, of course, joining a cast that ranged from freshmen Maria Rooth and Erika Holst from Sweden, and Hanne Sikio from Finland, along with some very solid players from Minnesota and Canada, on down to a few walk-ons and club players who already were on campus. And, for the record, Potter scored nine points twice and seven another time that season.
The next year, UMD soared to the championship in the first year the NCAA held a national tournament for women, and the Bulldogs repeated the triumph last season, in the second NCAA tournament. But they did it without Schmidgall, who took the last two years off from school. In the whirlwind year of 2000-01, she acquired a husband, Rob Potter, a baby daughter, Madison, and a silver medal when she came back to play for Team USA in the World Championships. The next year, Jenny Potter played for Team USA at the Olympics, where she won another silver medal, in Salt Lake City.
This season, she returned to UMD. She is Jenny Potter now, although she remains universally known as Shmiggy. The Bulldogs obviously had done well in her absence, but they have done even better this season, which should be no surprise. That's what happens when you add a player who many believe is the best individual player in the country, if not the world. She scored a team-record six goals in one game against St. Cloud State, mostly because she can't play any shifts of any game any way except wide-open.
UMD won the WCHA regular-season championship, and the WCHA playoff title, and takes the No. 1 ranking in the country into this week's third NCAA Women 's hockey tournament in Duluth.
Still, she is more comfortable talking about the team than herself, although juggling marriage, motherhood, hockey and schoolwork has been an enormous task.
"It's been fine coming back to school," Potter said. "It was hard getting back in the groove of studying. It does seem like it's been a long time since I started college. But the level of play in women's college hockey has definitely gotten better. It's gone way up, and it's a totally different scene, with players who started playing younger."
As for the tournament, and UMD's chances, Potter recalled the sting of the 2-1 loss to Harvard, on a marginal last-minute penalty call and a power-play goal in the closing seconds, and a two-game UMD sweep against Dartmouth, as well as four victories in five games against arch-rival Minnesota.
"Harvard is good, but I don't think we played our best against them," said Potter. "And we beat Dartmouth, but they were playing without their three best players. We know the tournament is going to be good, and we can't look at teams we played in January and think that we know how they are now. But, they can't look at our team that way, either.
"Our depth definitely helps. A lot of teams have a top line, but their talent dwindles after that. We have three lines that can all score, and can all forecheck and play. And we have great goaltending."
Patricia Sautter, from Switzerland, is the UMD goaltender, and she is 24-3-2 with a 1.72 goals-against average and a .915 save percentage. UMD's balance is its strength. While Potter has 31-54-85, rookie Caroline Ouellette, from Canada's gold medal Olympic team, has 29-40-69; Holst has 33-29-62; Rooth 19-33-52; Sikio 22-29-51; and freshman Krista McArthur 15-23-38. Rooth, Sikio and Holst are all completing phenomenal four-year careers with more than 200 points. Rooth's 230 points make her the top-scoring UMD hockey player ever, male or female, while Sikio has 216 and Holst 202.
Potter, who has still has another year of eligibility left to soar past the 200-point plateau at UMD alone, has 248 total points if you include her season at Minnesota and the two at UMD.
Other seniors who offer strong support are Jenny Hempel, Joanne Eustace, Michelle McAteer, defenseman Navada Russell and, of course, goalie Sautter. Along with Potter, top underclassmen include junior Satu Kiipeli and sophomore Juliane Vasichek on defense, freshman McArthur, and Ouellette and sophomore Nora Tallus, who line up on defense in the Torpedo alignment, and forwards Tricia Guest, a junior, and sophomores Leah Kasper, Larissa Luther, Julie Fearing and Meghan Stotts, and freshman Amelia Hradsky. Seven different Bulldogs had hat tricks this season, five of them had more than one. All of that firepower has led to a 29.5 percent power play, and the 'Dogs kill 92.2 percent of opposing power plays.
The Torpedo system has bolstered the attack, with four attackers and only one defenseman in normal deployment, two forecheckers going long to stretch out the ice, while two more move up in strong support. That often leads to four attackers at the net, with one defenseman back. That was a new wrinkle Miller put in at the end of last season, and an adjustment for Potter.
"The Torpedo system works for us because we don't have as many natural defensemen, and our two 'halfbacks' are part-forward, part-defense," said Potter.
For Potter, of course, any system seems to work because she played defense for one whole year for Team USA. And she is at her best when the game becomes a rink-rat confrontation of improvising to make a play that beats an opponent, regardless of form or system. Every once in a while, it might seem that maybe other players have improved so much that maybe Potter is no longer the best, but right about then she will skate through a couple of defenders and score a goal or make a play that makes you realize she's done so much that you've taken her skills for granted.
"The Kazmaier Award is really important, and I have no idea what my chances are to win it," Potter said. Then she got very serious. "I might have to give a speech."
It would be far easier for Jenny Potter to play a little 1-on-1 for the
award.
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