Behind the scenes with the Wisconsin Badgers future NHL stars

MADISON, Wis. — In the depths of the Kohl Center, home of the University of Wisconsin’s Badgers men’s hockey team, another week has ended much like the one before it — and the one before that.

Montreal Canadiens goal scoring sensation Cole Caufield, his big brother Brock by his side, stands with his parents. A few feet away, future New York Rangers defenceman K’Andre Miller talks quietly with his mom while Los Angeles Kings player development coach Jarret Stoll waits for 2019 fifth-overall pick Alex Turcotte.

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When the season began, Caufield, Miller and Turcotte made the Badgers the most talked-about team in NCAA hockey, with all of the talent in the world and the expectations that came with it. But they’ve fallen flat, faltering to the worst record in the Big Ten Conference. 

Now, the bright lights and anticipation of months ago feels distant. Now, they’re just three people in a hallway filled with them.

Like the rest of their teammates, they’re trying to navigate their way through the busy day-to-day of the college hockey player.

In the middle of one of the final weeks of that disappointing regular season, the Badgers opened their doors as they balanced life on and off the ice while preparing for the next chapters in their lives. For some, that next chapter is NHL stardom. For others, uncertainty looms and this may be the last hockey-playing chapter in their story. 

Wednesday, February 12, 12:10 p.m.

By the time the Badgers are stretching in the hallway outside their state-of-the-art gym, most have already checked some boxes for the day.

They’ve already punched the access code outside their sprawling dressing room in Labahn Arena. They’ve walked past the six national championship trophies and the signatures of NHL alums like Ryan Suter and Chris Chelios. They’ve opened their fully stocked fridge to pull out a bottle of water, and the cupboards beside it to grab protein bars.

Some have spent time in the team lounge, its furniture provided by alums Craig Smith and Joe Pavelski.

Everything that surrounds the Badgers suggests high expectations. 

And now they’ve put on their identical workout clothes — a grey T-shirt printed with ‘Preparation 313’, the area code for Detroit, where the Frozen Four national championship will be played this season — and they’ve wandered below the concourse to the gym, where strength coach Jim Snider has taken over.

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Each player has a mat and a roller and Snider speaks loudly above the sound of controlled breathing.

“Left knee pulls in, right knee pulls out,” he directs.

It’s Snider’s job to learn which buttons to push with each player so that he can use the short windows in their schedules where he has their attention to maximize his impact.

Each player grabs a piece of paper that details the order of the exercises and the number of reps. 

The players also fill out a form that updates Snider on their sleep, their body weight and their academic load. When sleep is decreased from an all-nighter for an assignment, Snider wants to know because lack of sleep heightens the risk of injury.

Snider knows everything. 

He knows that Miller has natural wire strength that requires a certain focus. He knows that Caufield has unmatched efficiency due to how muscular he is relative to his 5-foot-7 frame.

Today, Snider is paying particularly close attention to Turcotte. Nineteen days earlier, on the first shift of a Friday night game against Notre Dame, Turcotte ran into someone and injured his right knee. He has missed the five games since.

“I’m just grinding through it,” Turcotte says to Snider beneath blaring music, a black wrap pulled over his knee.

Turcotte does the same exercises and lifts the same weights as his teammates, determined to be involved. When Snider asks him if the weight is too heavy, he stiffens his lip and says no.

“Nice knee, buddy,” chirps Shay Donovan, a 21-year-old who is often a healthy scratch.

“You’re a hundred years old, buddy,” Turcotte fires back.

The last nine months, dating back to June’s NHL Draft, have been a whirlwind for Turcotte. After missing parts of his draft year with a series of injuries and illnesses, the knee injury is the second time Turcotte has missed games this season (he lost a weekend earlier in the year to the flu).

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But despite the injury, Turcotte is in good spirits, bouncing around the gym. Though Snider describes Turcotte’s strength as average, he has no issues with his star pupil’s work ethic.

“Alex comes in the gym and he’s always ready to get after it,” Snider says. “For him, it’s making sure he has the details down. He’s a goofball. He’s a chatterbox. He tries to get in with the guys.”

Inside the Badgers’ video room after the workout, head coach Tony Granato rises from his seat to highlight some sequences from their previous two games against Michigan.

“We were hard to play against. We deserved better. It didn’t happen. We’ve got to have that same mindset going into this weekend,” he says.

When the meeting ends, Granato bumps into Turcotte as they both exit the room. 

“How do you like blue?” he says of Turcotte’s jersey colour, which indicates he’s injured.

“I normally chirp blue,” Turcotte answers.

At today’s practice, Turcotte is still trying to find out what is the best solution for his knee. He has experimented with a brace but he finds it bulky, preferring athletic trainer Andy Hrodey heavily tape his knee. 

Throughout practice, Turcotte comes to the bench to complain about the size of his right shin pad. On the ice, though, he skates hard, showing no signs of injury.

When practice is over, Turcotte sits in his stall, his knee wrapped in ice.

Before the injury, his schedule was already packed. Now he spends even more time at the rink for treatment. He has an 11 a.m. class on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays called Atmospheres and Oceanic, which he says is hard due to the math involved. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, he has an English class that is easier but requires a lot more homework, including a recent short story assignment. Then he has two online classes, Introduction to Art and Development of Young Child. On most days, he’s at the rink from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. for workouts, video, practice, or studying at the Fetzer Student Athlete Academic Center.

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Turcotte is one of the players who found first semester difficult as he learned to deal with his college-age freedom. In the two years prior, when he was with USA Hockey’s national development program, school was more structured and the focus was squarely on hockey.

Because he knows he wants to turn pro as early as possible and might be leaving school at the end of just one season to join the Kings, focusing on school is that much more challenging.

“I’ve caught myself slipping sometimes but I think I’ve been pretty good about getting my work done,” Turcotte says. “You never know when you want to come back and get your degree.” 

In recent weeks, though, he has hated missing practices and games.

“It’s been tough. I didn’t tear anything, thank god. Knock on wood,” he says, tapping his fist to the stall. “But you can be fine one second and then you do a movement on the ice and it hurts again and it’s always sore. Last year I missed a lot of time. Last year was tough. This year it’s a little different with more adversity as far as hockey goes.”

The injury also followed the heartbreak Turcotte felt after a disappointing quarterfinals loss to the Finns with Team USA at the world juniors, alongside his Badgers teammates Caufield, Miller and Ty Emberson, a Coyotes prospect. 

“It’s part of learning. I still have some knee pain and I think that’s just going to be how it is the rest of the year. I’m just going to play through it,” Turcotte says.

“At this point, it is what it is. I hate watching and I can’t do it anymore. I just really want to play and I can rest this thing in the summer.”

Thursday, February 13, 9:30 a.m.

Emberson and Mick Messner show up to Grainger Hall, home of the university’s business school, for their second-year business analytics class. It’s the coldest day of the year — with lows reaching minus-14 Fahrenheit (or minus-26 Celsius).

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Emberson, a third-round pick of the Coyotes, is wearing a black hoodie and a toque below his Badgers jacket. Messner, a local kid who has bounced in and out of the lineup, wears a North Face T-shirt below his USA Hockey jacket and a Milwaukee Bucks hat.

Today is the second portion of a two-part class in their real estate degrees. Each Tuesday’s lecture is followed by a Thursday lab. A couple hundred students sit around small, round tables, their laptops open to Excel spreadsheets. The professor leaves them to the day’s exercise, which is designed to have them measure and project video game sales.

Emberson and Messner work quietly, occasionally leaning into each other to make sure their equations match. When the professor draws out an equation on a nearby whiteboard, Emberson rises from his table to watch him work through it.

“We’re going to be in here tomorrow, that’s for sure,” Messner says when Emberson returns.

They both work diligently but as class winds down, they grow frustrated.

“What the fuck? How is mine different?” Messner says when something about his spreadsheet is off.

Emberson is industrious, quick to pull out his notes from the previous class, or pull up a video the professor has posted to the class’ shared drive. Messner prefers to push ahead.

“Do you know what you’re doing or are you just hammering it out?” Emberson asks.

“No, I know exactly what I’m doing,” Messner answers.

At 10:45 a.m., when the class has ended and most have filed out, the pair continue to work, determined to complete it so they don’t have homework, while students from the next class wait for them to leave.

Eventually, they give up, grab their matching red backpacks, each stitched with their hockey number, and begin the walk through Madison’s windy, snow-covered streets to the Kohl Center for another day of hockey.

11:00 a.m.

When Emberson and Messner arrive at the rink, Miller is standing in the dressing room taping his stick while other players file in and scatter.

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Miller’s focus is different than many of his peers. A first-round pick of the Rangers, he has his sights set on Madison Square Garden more than on Madison, Wis.

He’s one of the players who struggles most with the school side of being a student-athlete and hasn’t decided on a major.

Often, while others work on assignments in the academic center, he’s in the gym getting in an extra workout, on the ice by himself, or in the shooting room. He only has one in-person class (and three online courses) so he spends less time on campus than almost anyone. Because he doesn’t have class on Monday, Wednesday or Friday, he’s usually one of the first to the rink. He figures he spends between 30 and 40 hours a week at the rink, not including the full days he’s there on weekends. 

“They’re not easy classes so there’s a lot of work behind them. Managing that in the right way with hockey has been fun … I guess,” Miller says with a chuckle. “I struggle to stay motivated. I don’t know. I love hockey. It’s kind of bad to say but I feel like school is always second to hockey. It’s just getting by in school and doing whatever I need to do to make it (to New York).”

This season hasn’t come as easily as his freshman year did, when he led all under-19 college defencemen in points.

After the world juniors, Miller rededicated himself to making a statement down the stretch.

“Times can be tough but you’ve just got to battle out of it … because at the end of the day you’re doing it for pride, and the love of the game, and to succeed,” Miller says.

Above all, though, Miller does everything for one person: His mom, Amy Sokoloski. The only child to a single mother, he says his dad was never really in the picture. These days, Sokoloski works as an assistant to the president of UnitedHealthcare. They talk every day and she comes to all of the Badgers’ home games and many of their road games.

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“My mom is my everything so I do everything that I can for her. She has given up a lot in her life to support me and push me to my dreams so I give a lot of support and credit to her for getting me to this point,” he says.

12:10 p.m.

Shortly before practice, Mark Strobel strolls through the lounge as the players discuss their Development of Young Child class. When he offers to help them with their homework, Caufield tells him to describe the three stages of prenatal development.

“They gave me stone tablets for my exams and then I had to chisel in the answers,” the associate coach answers quickly.

Strobel likes to keep the room light. The players smile whenever he enters. He’s the coach who bends them but never breaks them. 

Strobel wants to be trustworthy, someone they can turn to. He pays attention to things like eye contact and will circle back with a player if he thinks something’s off. With this team, he feels like 99 percent of the time the players let him in and he’s able to help them solve their problems. 

“I try to talk to everybody, whether it’s the third-string goalie or the fifth-line forward. I go out of my way to do it,” Strobel says.

With players like Caufield and Turcotte, who move on quickly, getting his message through can be more challenging because he has to condense his lessons. That has led to some arguments, too.

“If you want to be the best, you have to be able to take the criticism. The guys that want to back talk someone who has experience, you’re only hurting yourself,” Strobel says, adding that the results have been mixed with Caufield and Turcotte.

He wants to quash any immaturity so that their next coaches don’t have to. Both Caufield and Turcotte have taken big steps in that way, though. 

At the start of the year, Strobel would get frustrated when Caufield would be in the neutral zone banging his stick for a pass while his teammates were stuck in their own zone. But that’s mostly gone now, Strobel says.

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Meanwhile, the coach says Turcotte can be overly competitive while striving for perfection.

“Perfect is impossible,” Strobel says. “Mistakes are where you learn.”

Down the hall, Granato sits quietly in the video room. He’s the big picture guy. He’s the coach who went back to school to finish his degree after he was hired. He required each player to sign in and spend six hours in the academic center every week. He understands that only a small percentage of his players will play in the NHL and that it’s his job to help them prioritize school and family, not just hockey, in order to prepare them for their lives.

Though he knows people are disappointed by his team’s performance this season, Granato recognizes that they’re the second-youngest group in college hockey and that when they face the conference-leading Penn State Nittany Lions a day later, they’ll be up against a team with an average age two years older.

Granato’s the one who, knowing how badly he needs Turcotte back in the lineup, still has his star player’s long-term health as his top priority.

“Turc’s a competitor, a worker, he hates this. There’s no worse feeling in the world. You’re helpless. You feel you let your teammates down,” Granato says. “I know the frustrations that he’s going through and what that does to a player like him.” 

Most of all, he recognizes just how much the life of a college hockey player has changed. 

When Granato played for the Badgers, he had almost zero contact with his NHL team. He didn’t have an agent. He didn’t go to development camps. Nobody other than his coaches were ever in his ear with advice. 

This year, Granato guesses there are 60 NHL reps at every Badgers home game to see players like Caufield, Turcotte and Miller.

“When they get to Montreal, or L.A., or New York, this is a baby step,” he says.

3:00 p.m.

Goaltender Jack Berry sits in the lounge, a laptop in front of him, and types a letter to his girlfriend, varsity soccer star Camryn Biegalski, ahead of Valentine’s Day.

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Berry has a lot more time on his hands these days than the rest of his teammates. He took a shot off the knee in a recent practice and some fluid build-up has prevented him from getting back on the ice.

He’s also a senior, so his only remaining class is a capstone course for his degree in Agricultural and Applied Economics. And he can’t actually attend the class due to a conflict with his hockey commitments. While the players aren’t allowed to take classes during hockey hours, his final project is only offered in one time slot so he and teammate Max Zimmer communicate with their professor over email.

After groin surgery in the NAHL and back surgery as a sophomore, Berry, now 24, may have to watch from the sidelines as another injury threatens the end of his collegiate career.

“It frustrates me … If I load it up, it’s like this shooting pain,” Berry says of his knee. “I’ve got six official games left as a senior and I want to be out there.”

He’s trying his best to take in the final weeks.

“Be grateful for it because as soon as that goes you’re back into the real world,” he says, his voice trailing off. “I would like to play pro (when school is over). Where? I don’t know. We’ll see. I don’t really try to think about it. But I do …”

5:00 p.m.

At the end of the day, the players split apart on the walk from the arena to their apartments, most of which line University Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare.

Seven of the players sit in neighbouring apartment units at the end of the same fifth-floor hallway. In one, Finns Daniel Lebedeff (the team’s de facto starting goalie in Berry’s absence) and Jesper Peltonen (a frequent healthy scratch whose father Ville played in the NHL) are watching Netflix in their living room while Canadiens fourth-rounder Jack Gorniak swears at a game of “Fortnite” in his room.

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Lebedeff and Peltonen are complaining about the absurdity of their schedule.

Behind them, a Christmas tree that Gorniak’s mom dropped off is still lit. Though the players get anywhere from a week to 10 days off at Christmas, the Finns choose not to go home due to the distance. Because the players are also required to spend most of their summers on campus training and doing summer school, they only get a few weeks at home per year (normally from the end of the first week in May to the middle of June).

Across the hall, when Emberson enters his apartment after picking up Forage (a salad restaurant they all love) for his roommates, Miller is already on the couch playing “Fortnite” while Brock Caufield lounges on another. As Brock and Miller wind down, Emberson and Messner get back to work on their analytics assignment from earlier in the day.

Emberson and Messner have grown close because all of their classes are together. Emberson and Brock are tight because they grew up playing minor hockey together. But the bond shared between Emberson and Miller is unique. They’ve been through it all. They moved to Michigan for the national development program together, they attended the draft together, and they’ve grown up travelling the world for international tournaments on the same team, playing the same position.

Miller calls Emberson his best friend.

“We’ve had some deep conversations over the last four years. We talk about life, anything family-wise, I can literally talk to him about anything. He’s just that one guy that I have as a friend that I can feel comfortable telling anything and I know that he’ll have my back and support me through whatever I need help with,” Miller says.

Emberson says Miller is like a brother.

“We can lean on each other through anything in life,” Emberson says. “It’s more than hockey at this point.”

Friday, February 14, 9:50 a.m.

It’s game day and Cole Caufield is the first player to the rink. His headphones are in as he mumbles to himself about how cold it is outside.

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When other players begin to arrive, he becomes one of the loudest voices in the room.

“I don’t want to hear it from you!” he yells as Gorniak brags about how good he is at “Fortnite.”

“Hey Bakes, guess who asked about you today?” Caufield says as Tarek Baker enters.

“Who?” Baker responds.

Caufield smirks.

“Absolutely nobody.”

Then Caufield argues with Owen Lindmark — a Panthers prospect and former development program teammate — about who performed better in the team’s home run derby earlier in the year. He makes sure he tells everyone that No. 8 (himself) didn’t have a single turnover last week, according to the game sheet. When Granato arrives, he compliments his coach’s tan.

The players spend the morning rotating on and off the ice in sweats while Caufield straps on a pair of inflatable Normatech pants designed to improve recovery through pressure to the legs. He puts the footrest up on one of the recliners and begins playing a mobile golf game on his iPad. “Get in the hole he says,” as teammate Roman Ahcan joins him.

On the ice, things have always come easy to Cole, who leads all NCAA freshmen in goals. But the off-ice part of college has also clearly come easy to him. He is comfortable in the room and on top of his classes, according to staff. A day earlier, while his teammates were fooling around in the gym, he was working in the academic center.

“Cole has actually amazed me,” Brock says of his little brother. “I’ve been away from him for three years and we’re in some of the same online classes and he’s getting stuff done way before me, way before it’s due. He’s a motivated kid. The focus can easily be elsewhere but he knows that in order to do the hockey side of things, you have to take care of school.”

Brock, who just declared a personal finance major, insists there’s a misconception that players like Cole are “all hockey.” Both credit their mom, Kelly, a teacher, for their academic dedication. Cole tries to get all of his work done by Wednesday night so that he can focus on hockey on the weekend. Having his brother at Wisconsin has been a big benefit.

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“Brock helps me out a lot,” Cole says. “He’s such a good student and someone I look up to and he’s always there to help me when I need it. I’m pretty thankful for him.”

It’s not lost on the Caufield brothers how special it must be for their parents to be able to watch them in one place, either. That hasn’t happened since they were kids in Stevens Point, Wis., when Cole, who always played up a year or two, helped Brock’s team win two state championships. They also briefly played together in high school before the younger Caufield left for USA Hockey. Brock didn’t realize how much he missed playing with Cole until they were back together.

And even though Brock has found it harder to get into the lineup with Cole and the other freshmen around, he says he wouldn’t change it.

Cole has enjoyed the freshman experience. He and Lindmark share a double room in their dorm and do everything together. He says it’s not uncommon to find all six freshmen in the same dorm room and jokes that they’ve nearly gotten into trouble a few times.

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, though. Cole has struggled in spurts, including at the world juniors.

“Once I came back, it opened my eyes that I still have a lot more to prove and it’s never done,” he says. “The biggest part for me is just being a leader on this team that the guys look to and that when I’m giving my best effort, they can follow.” 

After every game at the world juniors, reporters prodded Cole with questions about why he wasn’t scoring, something he knows he has to get used to.

“(It) was pretty funny during the tournament when (Montreal reporters) were just on me. That’s just something that I should expect and get used to and not overthink it,” he says. “I can’t let it bother me and affect me.” 

Cole hopes that his play has done the talking the rest of the year and he wants to turn pro once the Badgers season ends. 

If the Canadiens will have him, he hopes to play in NHL games this season.

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“That’s my goal but I mean I can’t focus on it right now,” he says. “I just hope it works out. I talk to them probably once or twice a week and they just want me to focus on day-by-day and when that time comes we’ll think about it a little more. But I definitely want to be there.” 

12:37 p.m.

There’s normally at least one hockey player in the computer lab outside Mary Weaver-Klees’ office in the academic center. She’s their unsung hero.

Her desk and walls are covered with the faces of her “boys,” with custom mousepads and pinned photos she forced each player to take on their first day of school so that she could send them to their parents. Earlier this year, a condition on her taking Turcotte’s photo was a request that he become her screensaver. Outside her office sits a giant teddy bear Emberson named Boog. Boog has been to class with the players and it’s not rare to find one of them sleeping on him.

She has folders full of each kid’s information, including a plan for how they’re going to finish their intended degree. As she pulls out a sticky note to remind herself that Dylan Holloway owes her a couple of hours this week, she compliments this year’s group, who boast a 3.0 GPA (which she calls “amazing in the world of hockey”).

Weaver-Klees has been a guidance counsellor at the university for 37 years and will retire at the end of this semester. When the players run into her, they light up. She’s the one who helped Emberson and Messner become the only two players to get into the university’s prestigious business school. She’s also the one who told Emberson and Messner they had to wear a collared shirt and dress pants to their induction ceremony.

“There were many students in shorts and flip flops and they were like ‘Mary, we’re totally overdressed’ and I go ‘no, no, you represent yourself, your families, the athletic department, and men’s hockey,’” she says, laughing. “They are two very smart boys.”

When she considered leaving last year, the Caufields were among those who convinced her to stay so that Cole could get to know her.

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“Cole is, oh my gosh, that smile is always there,” Weaver-Klees says. “I hope (he doesn’t leave) after this year but I don’t get a vote. He’s so able. He’s so fabulous to work with. He’s got the vision.”

Part of the reason Miller is in such a heavy online course load is because she worries he’s going to leave at the end of the season and she thinks she can convince him to finish those classes when he’s in New York.

“K’Andre is torn between his two worlds,” she says. “He does struggle with it. My goal is for him to get as far into his undergraduate as he can. I don’t think that’s his goal but that’s OK.”

She’s also the first to say that hockey players have a harder sport-school balance than any other student-athlete. When she took over hockey eight years ago, she had no idea that players missed school for development camps, the world junior summer showcase, prospect tournaments, world junior evaluation camps, and in some cases the world juniors, which land in the middle of exams. Part of the reason they take online classes is because it’s so hard for them to stay competitive in live ones.

The players recently nominated her for staff member of the month, which included each of them writing nice things about her as part of the submission. She credits Granato.

“(Granato) bought in and as a result we have changed the culture of this team,” she says. “They represent a very dedicated student group.”

5:30 p.m.

Though the players start to arrive back at the rink around 4:15 p.m., the pregame routines don’t begin until more than an hour later.

Granato enters the room of half-dressed players and touches on a few things to watch for against Penn State and wraps up quickly before the players sprint down the hall to play an elimination game of keep-up soccer or throw around a football.

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At 5:50, the sound of a whistle rings out from down the hall and the players know it’s time to drop what they’re doing and race to the gym, where Snider awaits to lead a pregame stretch.

Back in the dressing room after the stretch, players begin placing bets (fake money due to NCAA rules) on who is going to score that night. Emberson is the first to say he’s got his money on No. 7, freshman Mike Vorlicky, who is without a goal. The room breaks out into cheers, agreeing with the bet.

“What dumbass said No. 7?” Vorlicky asks. “I haven’t scored in practice since November.” 

Above them, a clock counts down and they know that 39:00 and 8:00 are their two cues to leave for warmups and the game.

Before they leave, Granato enters the room once more with a send-off message before giving the floor to backup goalie Johan Blomquist, the resident hype man and starting lineup introducer.

“Let’s fuck these guys up!” he screams.

“Woo!” the room shouts back.

“We got Bycer, we got Cole, Wyatt, Emby, Zimmer and Leb!” he yells as they jump up and begin their march into the Kohl Center.

Minutes later, as fate would have it, No. 7 scores the opening goal of the game. The bench erupts as Vorlicky nearly falls over celebrating.

They ride that high into a 3-1 first intermission lead and spend the break pumping each other up. Baker complains of pain in his lower back, which Lindmark massages with a Hypervolt percussion massage gun, while Turcotte tells Hrodey he feels fine in his return. 

“Come on boys, keep going!” Granato yells as they prepare to head back out.

After blowing the two-goal lead, however, the room remains confident during the second intermission.

“Atta boy, Leb,” Emberson says to his goalie.

“Fuckin’ rights,” the rest of the team encourages while Snider circulates with midgame wafers meant to help them refuel.

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Players chat and retape their sticks as Granato enters again.

“Pretty simple: You guys throw that period out. We didn’t play it. Play hard, play for each other,” he says to a round of applause.

Holloway plays hero with a one-timer in the final two minutes of the third period for a 4-3 win. The postgame celebrations are loud, with Vorlicky getting the team’s Madison firefighter hat for being named the player of the game. The team erupts in a raucous celebration, including a pose for a celebratory photo.

“SPEECH!” they shout at Vorlicky.

“Hell of a win boys, let’s get one tomorrow,” he says.

Granato enters one last time, labelling it a goaltender win. “Rock and roll, baby!” Lebedeff responds.

“Lots of things we have got clean up for tomorrow,” Granato says. “We made it hard on ourselves. Tomorrow we’ll be better.”

Eventually, the victory music fades as players grab their pre-made postgame meals out of a heated fridge and begin heading home, in need of sleep before they do it all over again a day later.

Saturday, February 15, 12:30 p.m.

Just after a half-hour group meditation in the gym, Max Zimmer sits at a high top stool in the lounge as he lifts his shirt to check his blood sugar level. He was diagnosed as diabetic when he was 2 years old but he has just recently updated his pump and its device.

“This,” he says, gesturing to it, “has made it a lot easier, instead of having to prick my fingers 10 times a day.”

Zimmer, a 2016 fourth-round pick of the Hurricanes, has become an inspiration to his teammates and many in the diabetic community.

“Those younger guys look up to me. I’m just helping them get to where they want to go and get in the right mindset to continue to grow,” he says.

Zimmer has built a relationship with the Madison chapter of JDRF, an international organization focused on Type 1 diabetes research. Last night, after arranging tickets to the game for a group of local children with diabetes, he gave them a tour of the room.

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Life as a diabetic elite athlete comes with its complications. He has to pay closer attention to what he eats than his peers and he constantly checks his blood sugar levels throughout games and practices. Hrodey keeps tabs on Zimmer, ready if his levels dip too low on the ice.

As Zimmer prepares to say goodbye to his collegiate career, he wonders aloud about what lies ahead.

“The ultimate goal right now is to play hockey,” Zimmer says. “If I have an opportunity, awesome. If I can honestly tell myself I did everything I could and got the most out of each day, then it is what it is.”

More than anything else, he can’t believe it’s almost over.

“It’s crazy. I remember my freshman year when some of the seniors were saying ‘Hey you think high school goes fast, college goes by twice as fast,” he says. “As an 18-year-old freshman I’m like ‘yeah, whatever,’ but looking back on it there were a lot of good times, a lot of bad times, just learning a lot of lessons and being a better person at the end of it …” 

His voice trails off. 

A few hours later, it’s Zimmer who speaks up before the game to make sure the Badgers don’t get ahead of themselves.

“We won one fucking game,” he says. “Now we have to show we can go on a run.”

5:25 p.m.

In place of yet another team video session, associate coach Mark Osiecki hands his laptop to Emberson, who has just been named assistant captain, and tells him to lead the team through some clips.

Emberson spends the session poking fun at the way the coaches talk. 

“Eat it. Bump it. Good comms,” he mimics. 

The players spend the hours before the game chirping at each other before Granato enters to try to get them back on task.

“We are this close to not just being a good team, to being better than a good team. We’re this close,” he says, pressing his index finger to his thumb. “To be better than a good team, you’ve got to have results every night. Now the next part of it is digging down within yourselves and finding the mental toughness to commit to being better yourself. Can we do it?” he asks.

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“Yep!” the players shout.

“Let’s fucking go!” the coach yells back.

Saturday doesn’t play out like Friday did, though. The encouraging intermission player-to-player pep talks don’t work this time. Turcotte asks for ibuprofen for his knee. Emberson tells his teammates to be desperate. Zimmer checks the blood sugar levels underneath the lip of his pants, like he always does. 

But the Badgers lose 3-2.

When Granato enters the room after the game, nobody’s posing for pictures.

“That’s a really good team over there that we could have beaten twice. We let them off the hook. Again, it’s about what we want out of this season. Do we want more stuff about ourselves or do we want more stuff about each other and start doing we, we, we instead of me, me, me?” he says. “We’re right there with everybody. Every team we’ve played this year, who is a better team than we are? Who has better players? Which team in college hockey?” 

“No one,” they say together. 

“So what’s the difference then? What’s the difference between where we’re at and where they’re at?” Granato asks.

“Experience,” Lebedeff says.

“How do you get experience?” Granato says. “By battling through things like this and figuring it out and learning the lessons after each game about why we were so close. We’ve got two games next week against Arizona State and we’re not going to play them like they’re exhibition games. Those are fucking playoff games in our head, they have to be. Because tonight was a winnable game. But we didn’t dig down hard enough to find a way to get it done. You’ve got to dig down and find more inside you. You have to!”

10:00 p.m.

As the players make their way down the hall for their end-of-week hugs from family and friends, they’re back in their suits, their hair wet from showers. 

It has been a particularly long week for Lindmark, a fifth-round pick in 2019. He has a cold and spent 15 hours in the academic center on Thursday. One of the better students on the team, he hopes to follow Emberson and Messner into the business school, which means one of the tougher schedules.

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He’s tired.

“It’s crazy. I’ve had so much homework. I’ve just been bogged down. It definitely wears on your sleep. That’s the biggest difference between juniors and college. In juniors you do school but at the same time it’s pretty much all hockey,” he says. “Here, there actually is a balance between school and hockey and the classes aren’t easy.” 

Lindmark’s journey to Madison is longer than the one travelled by the teammates that surround him. He was born in Enid, Okla., but he has lost count of the number of times he has moved (he guesses it’s eight or nine). His dad, Steve, was in the Air Force for 21 years and is now a pilot for Southwest Airlines.

They finally settled down in Naperville, Ill., when he was in eighth grade, shortly before he committed to Wisconsin as a freshman in high school.

Around that time, they also adopted Lindmark’s biggest fan: his younger brother, Abram. As the Panthers prospect chats with his mom, Monica, Abram sports his jersey.

The Lindmarks don’t know much about Abram’s family, other than that he was left at a children’s orphanage in Ethiopia by his mother shortly after he was born. Eight years ago, before Abram’s first birthday, Steve and Monica made two trips to Ethiopia through a Christian adoption organization. The first was for paperwork. The second was to bring him home.

This weekend, the Lindmarks made the 2½-hour drive from Naperville to Madison twice because Abram had hockey of his own back home. Lindmark hopes he can go to Ethiopia with his youngest brother someday.

“He’s awesome. It just gives you a different perspective because when he first got here, you’d see a little African-American baby with a white family and you’d just get looks and whatnot,” he says. “But he’s awesome and he looks up to me a lot. He loves playing hockey. My mom will send him videos of him shooting in our basement on the net that I used to shoot on. It’s really cool.”

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Whenever Lindmark gets down, he thinks about everything Abram has been through (and will have to go through) as a way to contextualize how easy he’s got it.

Lindmark doesn’t take the highs and lows of the season quite as hard as his teammates in part because of his life experience, because of Abram. 

He’s happy with how he has progressed in his freshman year even as the Badgers have struggled.

Around him, as his teammates all meet with their biggest fans, each get their own little sliver of perspective, of all of the things more important than hockey — and more important than the outcome of the last four days.

In the months that follow, many will go their separate ways. 

For some, the NHL is on the horizon. For others, the end of their hockey careers. But for now, they’ve got classes, workouts, practices and games. 

For now, they’ve got each other.

(Top photo by Greg Anderson/UW Athletics)

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