Bengal hockey team to begin second season with goal switching from ‘survive’ to ‘improve’

POCATELLO — The Idaho State University hockey team officially began its second season with a preseason back-to-back against Boise State University in Hailey.

Head coach Shawn Gardner told EastIdahoNews.com that last season was about survival. The team started its 2023-24 season with just 14 players — 12 skaters and two goalies — meaning rests were few and far between.

“We were playing shorthanded,” Gardner said. … “We were playing against existing programs with full rosters. It was a rough season.”

This year, the Bengals will enter the regular season with a full 22-man roster — 18 skaters and four goalies.

“We’re definitely going to be better than last year, just based on the fact that we’re going to have a full bench going into games — not hurting like we were last year,” Gardner added.

A retired professional rodeo cowboy, Gardner said he found hockey later in life. Mogul skiing, he said, was always an outlet when he wasn’t rodeoing, but nearly two decades ago, a doctor told him he could no longer ski moguls.

When asked what he could do for exercise, the doctor recommended ice skating.

“In my mind, skating meant I could go play hockey,” he said.

Gardner’s son, Dusty, took up the sport, so Shawn coached him beginning when the younger Gardner was four.

Dusty was one of the founding members of the ISU club hockey team. When that club went out in search of a coach, Shawn knew, despite his having retired from coaching hockey, he had to do it.

Shawn established a five-year plan for developing the team into a title contender — beginning with stage one, season one: survival.

The skimpy roster survived that first season, ending the season with just 10 skaters and two goalies. Hockey is played, normally, with three attackers, two defenders and a goaltender on the ice at once. So, players were asked to remain on the ice for far longer than Shawn would have liked.

Still, only one of those 12 has not returned for season two.

Shawn described the toughness of hockey players.

“Hockey players are just, freakin’, mentally tough,” he said. … “Hockey players are the only athletes who are as tough as rodeo cowboys.”

Part two of Shawn’s five-step plan is to, in a word, “improve.”

With a full roster this season, Shawn expects his team to be more competitive — though he understands that, with little collegiate-level experience, they will “take some lumps” this year. They already have taken some of those lumps, losing 14-0 and then 20-1 in their two exhibition games against the Boise State Broncos.

A .500 record, he continued, would be a win this season.

“Just the fact that we’re getting back on the ice — you start a program from nothing and build it to this (in one year): total success,” he said.

Getting through this season, while developing the players’ skills and a baseplate for success will lead into stage three — better recruiting.

Shawn said ISU gets the majority of its players from Idaho’s “hotbeds” of hockey: Idaho Falls, Boise, Sun Valley, and Salmon. They also have a few players from Utah, California, and Alaska.

With improved name recognition, Shawn said, the recruitment net will be cast wider next season, all leading to the endgame of the five-year plan: to compete with powers like Montana State for a American College Hockey Association (ACHA) division title.

The Bengals will begin their regular season Friday, when they host Utah Valley University at the Mountain America Center in Idaho Falls.

For more information, visit the team’s Facebook page.