UMass Magazine Online

Spring 2004

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Great Sport

Werner Sets Gold Standard

-Ian Aldrich

STEPHEN WERNER '06 KNEW. His teammates knew it too. The US Junior National Team, a collection of America’s best 18- and 19-year-old hockey players, knew they would not accept defeat. During almost two weeks in late December and early January the team gutted out an exhibition win and five tournament victories at the World Junior Championships in Helsinki, Finland.

There were nail-biters, such as the 4-3 thriller over Sweden that included a two-goal performance from Werner. During the 2-1 squeaker over the host team in the semis, it seemed like the whole world was rooting against them. Surprising everyone but themselves they had made it to the finals against Canada. For the first time in the tournament the Americans were trailing, down 3-1 after two periods. Making things worse was opposing net-minder Marc-Andrew Fluery, the first overall pick in the 2003 NHL draft.

“It was a little tense in those first two periods as a team, and for me personally,” says Werner, a right-wing forward for the Minutemen. “But coming into that last period we knew this was the last 20 minutes to get the job done. We always knew we were going to win.”

They got the job done, all right. Two quick goals early in the period and a third with just over five minutes to go propelled the US to a 4-3 win and landed its first-ever world junior hockey title.

In the fall of 2002 Werner came to UMass for what it didn’t have: a winning hockey program. Since joining Hockey East in 1995, the Minutemen had resided near the bottom of the conference. What it did have was a coach, Don “Toot” Cahoon, who had come from Princeton two years before and was committed to rebuilding the team into a perennial power.

“I remember him telling me about putting footprints in the sand,” says Werner, a native of Chevy Chase, Maryland. He had been scouted by numerous schools, among them Boston College, Notre Dame, and Boston University. “The other schools are good every year, Coach told me, but if I went to BC, I wouldn’t be on the first BC team to be successful.”

Werner, a psychology major, didn’t have to wait long to see his footprints. In 2003 the Minutemen finished sixth in Hockey East. For the year, Werner tallied 16 goals and 22 assists, earned a unanimous selection to the Hockey East All-Rookie Team, and won two Hockey East Rookie of the Week honors. Three months later, the team he grew up idolizing, the Washington Capitals, selected him in the third round of the NHL draft.

“He’s got very deceptive speed,” Cahoon says of the 6’1” 19-year-old. “And he’s able to change speeds, to give you a stutter-step and hurky jerky motion and then lose you.”

Less than 48 hours after capturing the gold in Finland, working on little sleep, Werner assisted on both goals in the Minutemen’s first-ever win at Boston University, giving him Hockey East’s Player of the Week honors and ending UMass’ eight-game winless streak.

“I didn’t feel like my year had been fulfilled,” says Werner of the win in Finland. “It actually filled up my tank again and I just wanted to play even more.”

Visit the UMass Amherst hockey team site at: http://umassathletics.collegesports.com/sports/m-hockey/umas-m-hockey-body.html

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