Ron Mason reflects on his coaching career

Ron Mason at the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame induction ceremony in Detroit. (Photo by Michael Caples/MiHockey)

 

By Stefan Kubus –

As a head coach, Ron Mason grew accustomed to seeing his players receive all the accolades.

But on Dec. 2 at Motor City Casino in Detroit, it was Mason taking his turn to receive the honors, as he was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame.

“It’s something special, it sure is,” Mason said. “I’ve said all along this isn’t something that you dream about. You dream about winning the lottery maybe, but not something like this. If you put a lot of years in, like I did, both as a player and a coach, of course AD, it’s nice to be rewarded at the end of it.”

A well-deserved reward it was for Mason, too. The legendary head coach manned the benches of Lake Superior State, Bowling Green and Michigan State over the course of a 36-year career.

Believe it or not, Mason initially wanted to be a teacher or professor, not a coach. But as he found out, being a coach has a strong educational side to it.

“I never thought I was going to be a coach… I just kind of got sick of going to school.

“I came home one night and told my wife, ‘I can’t keep this up. After a while, going to school all those years got to me. I think I wouldn’t mind being a hockey coach.’ She said, ‘But you don’t have any experience doing that.’ I said, ‘Well, nowadays you have to teach to be the coach.’ That’s the way it was in the old days; you taught classes. So I was hired at Lake Superior State, first team, a big break for me.”

So, Mason began coaching at Lake Superior State back in 1966, sparking a career where he did nothing but win. At LSSU, he amassed a 130-44-8 overall record spanning seven seasons.

From there, he moved on to Bowling Green, captured three straight CCHA tournament championships and earned the first of what would be three consecutive NCAA tournament bids for the Falcons in 1977. Mason won 71-percent of his games with Bowling Green for another sparkling record behind the bench: 160-63-6.

But Mason was most known for his time at Michigan State, where he spent 23 years of his coaching career.

Nineteen NCAA tournament bids, seven Frozen Four berths, 10 CCHA tournament titles and seven CCHA regular season crowns highlight Mason’s success with the Spartans.

There, he coached countless players that went on to enjoy fruitful NHL careers, including Ken Morrow (‘Miracle on Ice’; New York Islanders) and George McPhee (Washington Capitals GM) at Bowling Green, and the likes of Duncan Keith (Chicago Blackhawks), Rod Brind’Amour (Carolina Hurricanes) and Ryan Miller (Buffalo Sabres) at Michigan State. Throw three Hobey Baker Award winners and 11 different finalists for the award into that mix and that’s a remarkably talented group.

Mason said there were a lot of players that were “very coachable” over the course of his career, but cited former Spartan Kelly Miller as a prime example.

“The ones that listened the most and found out what kind of player they were and believed in it, had more success than the others.

“I always say Kelly Miller, he was a pretty good scorer in college. But he would get mad when he didn’t score many goals and I wouldn’t have him on the power-play very much because he wasn’t a natural scorer. I said, ‘You’re not Mike Bossy.’ I told him he was like the captain of the Montreal Canadiens at the time (Bob Gainey) and you know what, he believed me. He went and never spent a day in the minors in the NHL, played 1,000 games. He had skills to do it, but he took on a different responsibility. Everybody has to find out what their niche is. You can’t play outside it and expect that you’re going to get much better. You have to know who you are; only certain guys can hit home runs and score goals.”

Though he may no longer be behind the MSU bench, Mason said having two grandsons in college hockey is the ultimate treat. Travis Walsh is a defenseman for his grandfather’s alma mater at Michigan State, while Tyler Walsh works for the program at Canisius College as Video Coordinator and Director of Hockey Operations.

“I don’t know if there’s anything I enjoy more than coming up and watching him play,” Mason said of Travis. “They’re both following their dad’s steps and their grandpa’s steps a little bit, being involved in college hockey.”

When it came to advice, Mason often turned to Scotty Bowman to help stay up on things. But he said he met the person who had the biggest impact on his life when he was just 11 years old, revolutionizing the way Mason thought the game from that point forward.

“A guy by the name of Johnny James came into town. He had been at St. Michael’s College in Toronto and he came to work in my small town. He took over coaching the team and he told me straight up, ‘You know you’re a center-man, you gotta learn to read and react. You can’t be running after the puck all the time. So when the puck goes in the corner, unless you’re first in there, you back somebody up, try to figure out where the puck is going to go.’ And I did it. I couldn’t believe how easy it was. I mean, it was just amazing. He was right and I took that same type of forecheck all the way through until I quit at Michigan State.”

That coaching style went unmatched in college hockey throughout his 36-year career, and led him to become the winningest NCAA hockey coach of all-time when he recorded his 674th victory, a 6-5 win over Kent State, in early 1993. Since then, Mason added 250 more victories for a final record of 924-380-83 (.696 winning percentage).

That’s a record that held up for nearly 20 years until Boston College’s Jerry York passed Mason on Dec. 29, 2012 with his 925th victory.

Mason remains the only person to have won NCAA ice hockey titles as head coach (1986) and athletic director (2007), a role he took on in 2002 after handing the hockey reins over to Rick Comley.

“It tells you that you did some things right, you worked hard at what you did and you loved your profession.”