Joe Bertagna, Executive Director, American Hockey Coaches Association 7 Concord Street in Gloucester, MA 01930 [email protected] — (978) 376-5494 For immediate release: Monday, January 20, 2020 Dean Blais, Ben Smith and John Marchetti Headline 2020 AHCA Award Winners The American Hockey Coaches Association has announced its major award winners for the 2019-20 season. Most of the honorees will receive their awards during the 2020 AHCA Convention in Naples, FL, where men’s and women’s hock- ey are celebrated at separate dinner on Wednesday, April 22 and Friday, April 24, respectively. (See list of previous AHCA Award Winners.) JOHN MACINNES AWARD Established by the AHCA in 1982 to honor former Michigan Tech coach, John MacInnes, this award recognizes those people who have shown a great concern for amateur hockey. The recipients have had high winning percentages, as well as out- standing graduating percentages among their former players. The winners of this award have helped young men grow not only as hockey players, but also more importantly, as men. 2020 Recipient: Dean Blais, Minnesota, North Dakota, Omaha Dean Blais enjoyed a uniquely successful hockey career as both a player and a coach, spanning five decades. A na- tive of International Falls, Minnesota, Blais entered the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1969 and played two varsity seasons for Glen Sonmor and one for Herb Brooks. The 1971 Gophers were NCAA runners-up, falling to Boston University in the final in Syracuse. Blais was named to that year’s All Tournament Team. In his senior year, Blais represented the United States in the 1973 World Championships, starting a long relationship with USA Hockey. Drafted by the Chicago Blackhawks in the fifth round (68th overall), Blais spent three seasons in the Chi- cago organization before starting his coaching career as an assistant at Minnesota for the 1976-77 season. His first head coaching position came with Minot (ND) High School, from 1977-1980. He returned to college hockey as an assistant to Gino Gasparini at North Dakota, helping the Sioux to two NCAA championships during his 1980-89 tenure. After five seasons back at the high school level (Roseau and International Falls High Schools), he returned to Grand Forks as head coach of North Dakota and enjoyed a record of 262-115-33 in 10 seasons, winning NCAA championships in 1997 and 2000. In his decade at North Dakota, his teams finished first in the WCHA on five occasions. Blais again left college hockey, this time for three seasons in the Columbus Blue Jackets organization (2004-2007), followed by two years with the Fargo Force of the USHL. College hockey lured him back when he took over the program at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, winning 146 games over the next eight seasons and bringing Omaha to the Frozen Four in 2015. In all, his college head coaching record was 408-248-63. He also led Team USA to the gold medal in the 2010 World Junior Championship and he remained active with USA Hockey in a variety of roles over the years. The MacInnes Award is not the first honor bestowed on Blais by the AHCA. He earned the Spencer Penrose Award as the nation’s top Division I men’s coach in both 1997 and 2001. JOHN "SNOOKS" KELLEY FOUNDERS AWARD Named after the famed Boston College coach, this award honors those people in the coaching profession who have contributed to the overall growth and development of the sport of ice hockey in the United States. 2020 Recipient: Ben Smith, BU, Yale, Dartmouth, Northeastern and USA Hockey Ben Smith was the head coach of three U.S. Olympic Women’s Hockey Teams, including the 1998 squad that captured the first-ever gold medal awarded in women’s hockey. He also coached five Women’s World Championships, leading the U.S to win its first-ever gold medal in 2005. On the men’s side internationally, Smith has been on staff for three World Junior Championships, two Men’s World Championships, the 1988 Olympics in Calgary, and the 2018 Olympics in South Korea. Smith played hockey at Harvard (‘68) for Hall of Famer, Cooney Weiland before entering the coaching ranks. His first job was at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, followed by a one-year stint at his hometown high school in Glouces AHCA Major Award Winners/January 20, 2020/Page Two ter, MA. Smith moved on to Yale, serving for five years with fellow Harvard alum Tim Taylor. After Yale won its first-ever Ivy League Championship in 1981, Smith took a position with Jack Parker at Boston University, where he assisted for nine years. He became head coach at Dartmouth in 1990, and head coach at Northeastern in 1991, serving until 1996. USA Hockey hired Smith in 1996 to coach the Women’s National and Olympic program, which he did for over a decade. In 2008, Smith transitioned to the men’s side. His current assignment for USA Hockey is with the Boys U-20 National Team which plays in the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championships on an annual basis. Smith was formally inducted into the Interna- tional Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame in 2016 and the USA Hockey Hall of Fame in 2017. JIM FULLERTON AWARD Named in honor of the former Brown University hockey coach and ACHA spiritual leader, this award recognizes an individual who loves the purity of our sport. Whether a coach, administrator, trainer, official, journalist or simply a fan, the recipient exemplifies Jim Fullerton, who gave as much as he received and never stopped caring about the direction in which our game was heading. 2020 Recipient: Trent Trahan, Plattsburgh Prime Link Shootout Trent Trahan is the president and CEO of The Champlain Telephone Company and PrimeLink. His leadership and vision has developed the management of the phone company and its subsidiaries during a time of revolutionary change in the tele- communication industry. Under Trahan’s direction, PrimeLink established the Prime Link Great Northern Shoot Out, an annual Thanksgiving weekend two-day round-robin Division III hockey tournament. The event features four of the region’s competi- tive Division III hockey programs; Norwich University, Middlebury College, Plattsburgh State University and a Division III guest from throughout the country. Mr. Trahan has been a Plattsburgh State Hockey fan for 27 years. At one point, he was a collegiate basketball player who, upon graduation, moved to Minnesota to work and fell in love with college hockey. Upon moving back to the Plattsburgh Area in late 80’s to take over the family business, he became a Plattsburgh State Hockey Fan. He immediately became a supporter of the program donating his time and money to the growth of the hockey program at the college. It was his love of college hockey that led Trent in 1998, to develop a plan to build and grow Division III college hockey even further than it had at that time. In the two decades of the tournament, Primelink has been a positive experience for over 2000 NCAA Division III hockey players, both East and West. His promotion of the tournament has led to a much greater awareness of the Division III game throughout the college hockey world. A native of Chazy, NY, Trahan attended Plattsburgh State University. He serves as Chairperson for Clinton County Indus- trial Development Agency (CCIDA). He is a member of the Plattsburgh State College Foundation Investment Committee. He is past Chairman of the Plattsburgh State College Foundation. He is a member of the Omicron Delta Kappa, The National Leadership Honor Society. He has 30 years of experience in the telephony industry. TERRY FLANAGAN AWARD Named in honor of the former UNH player and Bowling Green Assistant, this award honors an assistant coach’s career body of work. 2020 Recipient: Keith Fisher, SCSC, Princeton and Penn State With a distinguished 22-season coaching background, Keith Fisher’s recruiting and coaching acumen has been vital to the recent rise of Penn State hockey, including back-to-back NCAA Tournament berths in 2017 and 2018. In 2018-19, Fisher helped guide Penn State to its second Big Ten Championship game in the past three seasons as the Nittany Lions posted their second most victories in a season finishing 22-15-2. In 2017-18, Penn State reached the Big Ten semifinals for the fourth time in the brief five-year history of the conference. Fisher also helped guide Penn State to back-to- back 20-win campaigns in 2015-16 & 2016-17 and the programs first-ever Big Ten Tournament Championship in 2017. Prior to coming to Penn State, Fisher spent the previous six seasons on the staff at Princeton from 2005-2011. With the Tigers, he helped lead the team to a pair of NCAA tournament berths (2008, 2009) and the 2008 ECAC and Ivy League Cham- pionships. The 2009 Princeton Tigers also set the school-record for wins in a season with 22, a record which still stands to this day. The Minnesota native headed up the Princeton recruiting efforts which saw three All-Americans, two Hobey Baker Award Finalists, two ECAC Player of the Year recipients (the only two in the history of the program), one ECAC Rookie of the Year, one ECAC Defenseman of the Year and one ECAC Goaltender of the year. Fisher spent five years with the USHL’s Omaha Lancers’ coaching staff, helping the team to the Clark Cup championship in 2001 and Anderson Cup regular-season championships in both 2002 and 2005. A graduate of St. Cloud State University, Fisher got his coaching start with two seasons with the Huskies’ hockey program as an undergraduate assistant coach.