Coach put Maine on the college hockey map Black Bears won two national championships

University of Maine men’s ice hockey coach Shawn Walsh, who coached the Black Bears to two NCAA National Championships, was to have begun his 18th season behind the Maine bench Tuesday.

Walsh, 46, died Monday of complications from kidney cancer at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor.

Walsh’s overall coaching record and record at UMaine stands at 399-214-44, a mark that ranks 19th all-time and 11th among active college coaches. As he racked up victories, Hockey East Association milestones and national championships, Walsh brought the Maine program to national prominence.

His career was highlighted by national titles in 1992-93 and 1998-99, seven appearances in the NCAA Frozen Four, the Spencer Penrose Trophy as the National Coach of the Year following the 1994-95 season, and four Hockey East regular-season championships.

“The longevity of what he’s done here is amazing,” said UMaine baseball coach Paul Kostacopoulos. “How many people are here [at UMaine] 14 years and 11 or 12 of them are incredibly successful? Who does that here, except him?”

In 2000-2001 the Black Bears got as far as the second round of the NCAA East Regional where they lost to eventual national champion Boston College. They finished the season with a 20-12-7 record.

Walsh led the 1998-99 Bears to their second national crown and sixth Frozen Four appearance in Anaheim, Calif. Maine beat BC 2-1 in overtime to move to the title game against New Hampshire, where the Black Bears topped the Wildcats 3-2 in overtime. With those two wins, and two in the regional tournament, Maine had won 11 of its last 12 NCAA tournament games.

Maine’s 1992-93 national championship was the school’s first in any team sport. The Black Bears started out that season with a 32-game unbeaten streak and posted a school record for wins with a 42-1-2 mark.

UM won its last 12 games that year, including the come-from-behind victory over Lake Superior in the national championship game in which senior captain Jim Montgomery scored three goals in a span of four minutes, 35 seconds.

The Bears also won the Hockey East tournament and regular-season championships that year.

Walsh was one of two coaches to have been a member of Hockey East since its inception in 1984-85. His teams won three Hockey East tournament titles – the kind of numbers and longevity that made Walsh a leader among the rest of the University of Maine coaches.

“You have to admire him,” Kostacopoulos said. “He had strength and conviction. If we, as a society in general, had a quarter of the conviction he had, we could accomplish anything.

“We’re going to miss him as a person, as a leader of the department.”

In the years following the 1993 national title Walsh had to deal with NCAA sanctions that first surfaced in September 1993. He was suspended without pay for a year in December 1995 and the team had to forfeit games from the 1991-92 and 1993-94 seasons.

In July 1996, the Black Bears were prohibited from appearing in the postseason in 1996 (a self-imposed ban) and 1997 (NCAA-mandated). The NCAA Committee on Infractions placed Maine on probation for four years for NCAA rules violations primarily in its men’s ice hockey program.

But Bears rallied in the 1997-98 season and earned a berth in the Hockey East final.

“Here was a guy going through the roughest part of his coaching career and he already knew in his mind that he would get the thing turned around,” Kostacopoulos said. “You could see how strong he was, how he was going to do it. I just thought, ‘this guy’s a winner.'”

UMaine became the second school to have back-to-back recipients of the Hobey Baker Award for the nation’s top college hockey player when Scott Pellerin and Paul Kariya won it in 1992 and 1993, respectively.

Walsh arrived at Maine for the 1984-85 season. In his first two years the Black Bears finished with a combined 27-52-2 overall record, but he turned the program around by his third season. The team finished with a 24-16-2 overall mark and made its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament. The following year the Bears won 34 games and Walsh was named the Hockey East Coach of the Year and the New England Division I Coach of the Year.

He won his first conference title in the 1988-89 season. The Black Bears advanced to the Hockey East final and the NCAA Tournament in each of the following two years.

Walsh also had successes on an international stage and with national teams. He coached squads to gold medals at the U.S. Olympic Festival in 1981 and 1990 and U.S. Select team to wins in 1989 and 1993. Walsh produced eight U.S. Olympians, two Canadian Olympians, and 32 National Hockey League players.

Several UMaine assistants who coached under Walsh also moved on to the NHL, including Red Gendron (New Jersey Devils), Jay Leach (Atlanta Thrashers), Greg Cronin (New York Islanders) and Dave Nonis (assistant general manager of the Vancouver Canucks).

Walsh, a native of White Plains, N.Y., is a 1978 graduate of Bowling Green University, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education. He began his coaching career in his senior year at Bowling Green, skippering the junior varsity team and working with then-head coach Ron Mason at the varsity level. Walsh remained at Bowling Green for two season, moving with Mason to Michigan State.

While at MSU, Walsh helped lead the Spartans to three straight CCHA titles and the NCAA semifinals in 1983-84.

Walsh had served as the president of the American Hockey Coaches Association and was on the board for 10 years. He directed the Maine Hockey School and was a former owner of the Huron Hockey School.