When Eric Lang first returned to American International’s campus as head coach in 2016, he stressed a “crawl, walk, run” approach.
Senior captain Shawn McBride remembers hearing that mantra consistently when he was a sophomore.
“It speaks to how he wanted to do things, how he wanted to change things,” McBride said. “It was more about the process than the end goal.”
The Yellow Jackets were coming off a seven-win season in 2015-16 after winning just four games the year prior. The team had yet to record a winning season in the 21st century, their best year being a 12-17-6 finish in 2013. The program was in a rut with no end in sight.
An AIC alumnus and assistant coach with the team from 2006-08, Lang didn’t anticipate overnight success after replacing Gary Wright as head coach. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Yet it took just three seasons for the Yellow Jackets to do a complete turnaround, winning both the Atlantic Hockey regular-season and tournament championships with a 22-16-1 record. Then, on March 29 in the West Region semifinal of the NCAA tournament in Fargo, N.D., No. 16-seeded AIC pulled off what is being hailed as the biggest upset in NCAA tournament history, derailing overall top seed St. Cloud State, 2-1.
American International didn’t clinch the regular-season title until its last game, defeating Sacred Heart at home to edge second-place Bentley by a point. It was a tense game throughout for Lang and his guys, and that experience helped better prepare them for the conference tournament.
“As an alum, someone that was here as an assistant coach 12 years ago, to come back here and do something we’ve never done here before is something we’re certainly all very proud of,” Lang said. “It wound up being a game that we think we’ll be able to lean on in terms of a little bit of a pressure-packed game but a lot riding on it.”
Lang was right; the Yellow Jackets went on to defeat Army in a three-game series, then won both the conference semifinal and final in overtime to clinch a berth in the NCAA tournament. Hugo Reinhardt’s goal a minute into the extra period in the title game earned AIC a 3-2 win over Niagara and its first AHC championship.
In attendance for most of the Yellow Jackets’ playoff run was Mike Engle, a Troy, N.Y., resident who loves AIC hockey. He started going to games sometime around 2006, making the 90-minute drive down to Springfield.
“It was surreal and nervous at the same time,” Engle said of the win over Sacred Heart. “I knew they could do it, but you’re like, ‘Is something going to happen?’ ”
Engle’s skepticism is understandable given AIC’s history. The program hadn’t won a conference title since winning the ECAC East in 1990. From 1995 to 2017, the Yellow Jackets had never earned more than 12 wins. AIC is a Division 2 school, but since the NCAA sponsors hockey only in Divisions 1 and 3, the Yellow Jackets have been playing more talented, physical opponents.
After spending four season as an assistant under Brian Riley at Army West Point, Lang took over the program, keeping assistant coaches Mike Towns and Stephen Wiedler onboard. AIC went 8-20-8 in his first season, a slight improvement from the year prior.
In the 2017-18 season, as Lang fine-tuned the team culture and identity, the Yellow Jackets started winning games they wouldn’t have a couple years earlier. They finished 15-20-4, winning an Atlantic Hockey playoff round for the first time in more than a decade. The 15 wins were the most since 1993.
Lang says the first thing he worked on with the team is developing the right mindset. This meant recruiting players with the correct mentality, like Brennan Kapcheck, the 2018 Atlantic Hockey Rookie of the Year.
Of course, instilling the right team atmosphere involves more than recruiting athletes. Once the proper culture is in place, the coaches and players must uphold that culture at all times. Cutting corners off the ice and in the locker room can fester into mediocrity and disappointment.
“It’s something we talk about in terms of guarding the culture everyday,” Lang said. “There’s things as coaches that we do. More importantly there’s things that our players and our leadership group are not accepting. That’s been the biggest transformation, the ownership from not only our leaders but up and down our lineup. Guys protect the culture.”
Once the “crawl, walk, run” approach was adopted, AIC started to believe in itself each night on the ice, regardless of opponent or venue.
“I feel like in year one we were hoping to win, and then in year two I felt we were at a point where we think we can win,” Lang said. “Now this group fully expects to win no matter who we play on a given night. They’re very disappointed if we don’t.”
A head coach can only do so much to turn around a program in three seasons. Lang happily puts the emphasis on the players who made this season possible. He calls McBride as good a leader as he’s ever been around, but every skater on the team has a role to play.
“We all push each other to get better. We got a lot of competitive guys in there that don’t stop improving and getting better in every aspect of their game,” McBride said. “We just have a great locker room, a great rapport with everyone in the room. It’s all added up to the success we’ve had this year. Guys have taken the next step in their games, and that’s translated to our team taking the next step. It’s been pretty cool to be a part of.”
Added Lang, “We’ve got a lot of heart-and-soul guys that don’t get a lot of accolades. Kapcheck and (junior forward Blake) Christensen are two of our more skilled players, but we couldn’t do this without the Jared Pikes and the Ryan Polins and the Luka Mavers of the world that don’t necessarily end up on the scoresheet, but they’re winning hockey players. That supersedes everything.”
While AIC’s storybook run ended in the NCAA West Region final, when Denver blanked the Yellow Jackets, 3-0, it was a season to cherish for the once-doormat of Eastern college hockey.
Christensen led AIC in points with 47, but after him, five skaters totaled between 27 and 23 points. The Yellow Jackets were a balanced team that might have lacked star power but made up for it by having solid skaters all around.
Engle first started following American International partly because of the program’s constant underdog status. Now, he loves how the team doesn’t have any superstars.
“This is a team about any line,” Engle said. “I love it when the fourth line scores, but this year, any line can beat any team, which is absolutely awesome and intimidating at the same time.”
As the team has transformed into a title contender, the AIC student body and the community of Springfield have begun to take note. Attendance at MassMutual Center for the Yellow Jackets’ last four home games, including the three-game series vs. Army during AIC’s spring break, was strong. It’s clear Springfield is starting to appreciate the Yellow Jackets. One thing that has helped is the players appearing at local youth hockey practices and games.
“The momentum we have right now in the city of Springfield and the greater surrounding area is as good as it’s ever been,” Lang said. “Our fan base is growing quickly. I also have to give credit — our guys have been in the community twice a week since September. We want to do things for the right reason in terms of giving back to the community. The residual benefit is that our fan base is growing.”
McBride remembers his freshman year, when the fan support wasn’t anywhere close to what it currently is. Now, the love from students and faculty has the Yellow Jackets soaring.
“It’s very cool, the way the city and the way the school has embraced us,” McBride said. “People know who we are now, which is very cool, more than they did before. They know what we’re doing, they’ve been to a game, they’ve been to MassMutual. That’s cool to see.”
The fans, along with the city of Springfield, are bursting with pride. The players are meshing like never before. And the Yellow Jackets punched their ticket to the NCAA tournament. At the head of it all is Lang, the 2019 Atlantic Hockey Coach of the Year.
“He had the good structure there, and then he started getting players that could play to a style that he thought could work,” Engle said of the head coach. “One thing leads to another. Good positives lead to more good positives.”
Now, with a monumental NCAA tournament win on its résumé, AIC’s recruiting will become easier, and attendance should continue to climb.
On top of that, AIC graduates just two seniors, McBride and Polin. The pieces will be in place for a repeat run. Yet what Lang is really excited about is the program’s rise to approval in Division 1 hockey.
“The program’s at a point right now where we’ve garnered the respect of our peers and colleagues in terms of the rest of the college hockey world,” Lang said. “Sometimes the climb is a little easier, but staying up there is going to be a different type of challenge that’s presented to us. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
First AIC crawled, then it walked, then it ran. There’s no telling if the rest of the Atlantic Hockey will catch up.
