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Ryan Warsofsky’s alma mater, Curry College, has reached Division III Frozen Four for the first time ever.
For the San Jose Sharks head coach, his years at Curry, located in Milton, MA were truly meaningful, both as a player and a coach.
While they were eliminated in a 2-1 OT loss to Utica in the Frozen Four on Friday, the Colonels earned the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament after a 24-3 regular season and had racked up a 17-game win streak – the longest active streak in DIII hockey at the time and Curry’s longest in at least 30 years – in their seventh-ever NCAA tournament appearance.
This was Curry’s best-ever season.
Warsofsky had great seasons there too, finding the “joy of the game again” after leaving D1 Sacred Heart.
“I played there, we won two league championships and lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament,” Warsofsky said of Curry. “It’s obviously a hell of an accomplishment to get to this point.”
Ahead of Friday’s loss, Warsofsky said he spoke to their coach Peter Roundy earlier in the week.
“Pete’s done a really good job there, started with T.J. [Manastersky] before that, bringing in some good recruits and really building that program,” Warsofsky said. “Really have gone very international with recruiting and moved to a newer rink, I think that has helped. It’s a great campus right outside of Boston, so it’s a good selling point for the kids.”
The San Jose Sharks bench boss noted that two of Teemu Selanne’s sons, Eetu and Leevi, played there recently.
Before Curry, Warsofsky had played three seasons at Sacred Heart, before transferring in the middle of the 2009-10 season, from DI to DIII.
“It helped me enjoy the game of hockey again. That’s something that when I reflect back on of going there, I was in a tough spot where, to be honest, I didn’t enjoy going to the rink, and I needed to make a change,” Warsofsky said. “I played for an unbelievable coach in Rob Davies, who I still talk to every single day, and was hard on me, but taught me a lot of life lessons that I still take today.”
Warsofsky said he was influenced to make the change to Curry College after a candid conversation with Hall of Famer Ray Bourque.
“Bourque told me, if you’re not enjoying going to the rink, it’s time to make a decision, either you hang up the skates or you make a move. And that was the one conversation that we had, and I’ll never forget that,” Warsofsky said. “It didn’t really matter the division [that] I was playing, it was you need to enjoy your life, and you need to enjoy playing the game that you love.”
In his two seasons with Curry, Warsofsky was named an assistant captain, and earned Northeast First Team honors.
Curry College later became Warsofsky’s first coaching gig, as they took him on as an assistant coach, kickstarting a path that would take him to an NHL head coaching job in just 12 years. He spent one year at Curry College assistant coach before getting the same job with the ECHL’s South Carolina Stingrays.
Bourque came through there too, as Stingrays GM/head coach Spencer Carbery was impressed to see Bourque and Mike Sullivan listed as references.
While the Colonels fell short of a national championship, it looks like they, like the San Jose Sharks, are on the up and up.
Preview/Lines #72: Sharks Organization’s Defensive Depth Being Tested
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