In 1999, Guy Gadowsky headed to Fairbanks, Alaska, to begin his first stint as an NCAA head coach. 

He had previously spent three years coaching the Fresno Falcons in the now-defunct West Coast Hockey League, which was later replaced by the East Coast Hockey League. Gadowsky was heading to a program that, under previous head coach Dave Laurion, had an overall record of 80-122-9 since 1993. However, it didn’t take long for Gadowsky to make his mark.

Brian Renfrew, a Fairbanks native, was drawn to an assistant coaching position with Gadowsky and former Fairbanks center turned assistant coach, Tavis MacMillan, in July 1999. Renfrew is now an amateur scout for the Winnipeg Jets organization.

“It was an unpaid position my first year at Fairbanks. My family was there, and I was married and had a young daughter, so it was kind of the easiest way to make it work…Tavis bridged the gap with me, with Guy, and the relationship grew from there,” Renfrew said in January. “You lived and died with every win and loss. Guy did a tremendous job there. 

“I was a person from the community, you know, pretty much raised there. He was coming in from the outside…Guy should get a lot of credit for Alaska, saving that program at that time,  and making it become much more of a community-driven program. You know, prior to that, it was probably more university-isolated. Well, it became the community team. It was the thing to do. And he was the guy that bridged that and made that happen.”

His first year in Alaska, Renfrew and MacMillan helped Gadowsky get acclimated to the midnight sun state. With average winter temperatures ranging anywhere from 10 to -16.9 degrees Fahrenheit, Fairbanks winter weather was a far cry from Fresno’s.

“‘Hey, you might want to do this, your pipes are gonna freeze,’ or ‘You might need to do this to get your driveway plowed’…He just didn’t know. I would say that’s where Tavis and myself kind of both came into the situation that way,” Renfrew said. “As far as context, because the one thing about Alaska: everybody’s willing to help. So all of us said right away, I mean, people knock on our door, ‘How can I help, how can I help, how can I help?’” 

The first thing Gadowsky wanted to tackle on the ice when he entered the program, according to Renfrew, was to create a competitive environment and encourage the players to enjoy the game again. Taking on the role of leading a team that had had dismal records for four years prior to his arrival was no easy task.

“He created this framework for the players…[We] wanted to give the players an ability to feel like they weren’t paralyzed and they could go play,” Renfrew said. “So we would always come back to the framework that he created on the ice, regards to systems, habits – meaning the individual things the players did – but within that framework and their habits, they had the freedom to go play.”

Gadowsky’s record after his first year in Fairbanks was 6-25-3. But by the end of his time with the program, he would have rebuilt the Nanooks into a CCHA Tournament-contending team.

In 2001, Todd Jones joined Gadowsky’s program as an assistant coach. It was the first year that Gadowsky would lead the program to a season with more wins than losses and an appearance in the CCHA Quarterfinals. At the end of the season, Gadowsky led the team to a 22-12-3 record.

Coming into the program two years after Gadowsky’s entry, Jones recalled Gadowsky’s ability to engage fans and people in the community.

“I think he just drew people in and just everybody wanted to be part of the program,” Jones said.

Jason Lammers, now head coach of the men’s ice hockey team at Niagara University, joined Gawdosky’s program in 2003 as an assistant head coach.

To Lammers, it’s Gadowsky’s emphasis on the community that stands out when he looks back at his time with him in Fairbanks and at Princeton. Lammers was by Gadowsky’s side during his last year with the Nanooks and his first year with the Tigers.

“’Gads’ was a huge guy in the community,” Lammers said. “He expected us as his assistants to promote community involvement and engagement however that was – reading programs at school, going to hospitals, engaging with people after games. He used to set us up with dinners and expected us and players to communicate and sit at the tables at different restaurants that we were at for postgame meals.

“At Fairbanks, too, it was really cool that up there, not only did you represent the school, but you represented something much bigger than yourself, and that was the community.”

The 2003 season was Gadowksy’s final year with the Nanooks before he would head across the country to Princeton and rebuild its team in 2004.

Lammers’ incentive to join Gadowsky’s program was simple.

“It all comes back to Guy Gadowsky for me and his magnetic personality,” Lammers said. “When I told people I was going to Fairbanks, they just all kind of, you know, looked at you with one closed eye and a crooked other eye, and said, ‘What?’ I am so thankful and so grateful for the opportunity that he gave me as a young assistant, and I certainly would not have gone there if it wasn’t for Guy Gadowsky. It’s all due to Coach Gadowsky.”

When Gadowsky left Fairbanks for Princeton, he took Lammers with him. John Riley joined the program in 2005 as an assistant coach, alongside current Penn State men’s hockey assistant coach Keith Fisher. Current Penn State men’s hockey assistant coach Matt Lindsay would join the team two years later for the 2007-08 season as an assistant coach upon Riley’s departure from the program.

Having successfully rebuilt the Nanooks, Gadowsky was again taking on the task of rebuilding another collegiate team.

“Gads is a passionate guy,” said Riley, who is now involved in player development for the Philadelphia Flyers organization. “He’s driven. I guess, at that time, you would say he was a young coach, even though he had already rebuilt the Fairbanks program and brought them to the NCAA tournament. But, he’s passionate, he’s energetic, he does a great job of getting guys to believe in the mission.”

The mission was setting players up for success on the ice through balancing creativity with a structured system. It was allowing players to flourish and express their individuality while playing in a team environment, Riley added.

“He does a really good job of balancing that,” Riley said. “He gives guys the freedom to make plays. He wants guys to make plays. In the game of hockey, there’s that conundrum. You want to be creative, but you want to play with structure, because if you play with too much freedom, then it becomes chaotic, and then, things break down.

“That was the one thing about my time at Princeton, our guys played hard, and I think you see that when you watch Penn State play now,” Riley added. “They play hard. They may win, they may lose, but they compete…Guys want to play for [Gadowsky].”

Gadowsky is known for being a coach who values personal character. He wants his players to succeed on the ice. He wants them to win games and play hard. But, most importantly, he wants them to be good people. 

“First and foremost, he wanted everybody to be a good citizen,” Riley said. “He wanted everyone to represent Princeton in the finest way. We used to have, I don’t even remember exactly what the number was, 10 team rules. He would constantly start off meetings by picking a player randomly by spinning a marker on the ground…and the marker would point at somebody, and [he] would say, ‘Give me a team rule.’”

Jack Berger, who played under Gadowsky at Princeton for only one year, still has close ties with his former head coach. After all, his younger brother, Chase, played for Gadowsky between 2015 and 2019 at Penn State, and his youngest brother, Christian, is currently a freshman playing with the Nittany Lions.

For Jack and Chase, the lessons that Gadowsky instilled in them still hold strong today.

“I think it says so much about Guy, that I only played on his team for one year, but we’re still able to connect in a way that I’m really grateful for,” Jack said. “He’s just an incredible person, and friend, and mentor, and I certainly would have loved to play with him for four years. But every time we’re able to catch up, to sit down and share a meal or play ping pong or workout in the gym together, it feels like it was so much more time than that, and I think that says a lot about his character and just who he is as a person.”

Jack is currently an MD candidate at Columbia University, while Chase plays hockey for the Pittsburgh Penguins AHL affiliate, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.

Chase’s decision in going to Penn State was based largely on having Gadowsky as his head coach, not to mention the incredible coaching staff Gadowsky had curated.

“[Jack] felt like they cared about him as a person, not just a hockey player,” Chase said. “They wanted to make you a better man and a better person…They didn’t want you to just be a great hockey player.”

Jack and Chase both agreed that the culture Gadowsky cultivated in his programs set players up for long-term success on and off the ice.

Gadowsky is someone who players aren’t afraid to go to. He, while someone who isn’t afraid to lay down the hammer, is competitive, fun, and relatable to the players, according to Chase.

“That culture doesn’t leave there. I think one of the lines that’s in the locker room is, ‘You’re leaving our locker room, but not our standard of excellence,’” Chase said. “Essentially, it’s we’re not just doing the right things when we’re at the rink, we’re doing the right things in every aspect of our lives. When we go into the weight room, same kind of mentality. When we’re studying, same kind of mentality. It’s work hard, have fun, be a good person while you’re doing it. I kind of just have carried that throughout my life.”

Jack, the oldest of five, was the first Berger brother to play under Gadowsky. What stood out most to Jack, besides Gadowsky’s competitiveness, was his transparency.

Gadowsky had incredibly high expectations for his players on the ice. Even so, he always makes expectations reasonable.

“He was always very willing to sit and meet with players to dive into those details, but also did a very good job at taking a step back and framing things within a bigger picture and figuring out both at a high level, and a detailed level, what he could do as a coach to help the team reach his goals,” Jack said. 

Off of the ice, Gadowsky is remembered by his former assistant coaches and players as being incredibly competitive. 

“I remember me and Chris Funkey were taking racquetball as an elective our senior year, and Coach Gadowsky played racquetball growing up, and he’s like, ‘Oh, we gotta play, we gotta play’…So me and him went to IM Building, and he just kicked the crap out of me in racquetball,” Chase said. “He was pissed off. I think I won like three points, and he was super mad that he lost three points. He’s so competitive, he wants to win so bad, but it’s also fun that your head coach wants to go play racquetball with you.”

Having previously been hired after the coaching staff he was on was fired, Lammers credits Gadowsky to his career in collegiate hockey. 

“If it wasn’t for him, I don’t know that I would be in college hockey right now or coaching college,” Lammers said. “He took a chance on a young guy, a young man that he didn’t necessarily know very well, and gave me an opportunity. I’ll forever be grateful for the opportunity he gave me.”

Lammers brings lessons learned while working alongside Gadowsky into his own program as head coach. He places a strong emphasis on academic success and being an exemplary individual in all aspects. Like Gadowsky, he wants his players to be outstanding people, not just outstanding hockey players.

Outside of the rink, Lammers credits Gadowsky for showing him there was more to life than the game. 

“I got to watch him as a man and how he treated his wife, and how he was a father to his kids and how he put those two things ahead of hockey – and that’s definitely an indelible mark on me,” Lammers said. “I’ll never be able to remove just how loving he was, how much he cared about his wife… you could really feel the love he had for his family and how much of a family man he was.”

Other memorable moments from Gadowsky’s time at Fairbanks and Princeton include inviting assistant coaches over to his home for dinner, card games, and knee hockey tournaments with his two sons, Mac and Magnus. Renfrew remembers himself and Tavis poking fun at Gadowsky’s “80s hair,” and Gadowsky finally responding to his tormentors, “Why the hell do I ever want to have kids when I got you two idiots?”

To those that know Gadowsky, despite coaching at three different schools in three different states over the course of 22 years, he’s still “Gads.”

“I think one of his greatest strengths is that his qualities as a person haven’t changed,” Renfrew said. “He’s had three different spots, three different types of hurdles. I wouldn’t say hurdles, you have academic-type things at Princeton, the isolation of Fairbanks, to now, you’re at a Big Ten school.

“There’s lots of different hurdles you have to overcome, things you have to navigate. So I’m sure there’s growth, and he’s had to learn those certain situations. But by going through all that, his qualities have never changed.”