Chasing Valhalla
Guy Gadowsky's quest for something more than building.
Years ago, Guy Gadowsky is standing on a tee box, looking down the fairway as he sips a beer and takes a bite out of a hamburger.
“You need someone who understands the grind,” he said, lining up his next shot.
The conversation - relationships. He, long married with children, me in the early stages of dating the woman I’m set to marry in a few short months. Both of us chatting about the idea that married life is about being a team, and everyone knows it’s important to have a good teammate.
The word grind can be overused in sports. Most everyone you see playing on TV has been working very hard most of their life. Almost none of them got there by mistake. So grinding is pretty much part of the deal.
But for all its cliches, grind also pretty well describes Guy Gadowsky’s life in hockey. It is not a flashy resume, coaching an inline hockey team at one point, shipped off to Fairbanks, Alaska for another stop. There are a lot of LinkedIn updates between those two jobs, but the general idea is the same: it took a lot of work to get to where he is today - the head coach of Penn State men’s hockey, two wins from a national title.
“I take a lot of pride in that. I really do,” Gadowsky said on Tuesday, all these years later. “I had that conversation with my dad - I love the guys that had to take a really bumpy road and didn't have smooth sailing. I really do. I like the guys that had to grind it out in in lower leagues and and ride the busses with 24 hours of travel and zero budget. I love that. I think it forces you to do a better job than you're supposed to. I really value the places that I was able to coach at, that were not necessarily all, you know, bright and shiny, because it makes you learn how to overachieve.
“I consider that as a hockey career too, not just coaching. I was never drafted. I was really small and when I wanted to come back to North America. I had to fight my way, literally, through some free agent camps and try to make it as a guy that's gonna do everything to fight to get a job and and I think that's a great mentality to have. I don't think I would have ever lasted as a coach if I didn't have that as well.”
Back at Pegula Ice Area, there is a to-do list on the wall of Gadowsky’s office memorializing a number of program firsts dated and checked off. The program’s first win, the first Big Ten win, the first Big Ten Title, the first NCAA Tournament appearance. It’s a testament - to both the power of making lists with obtainable goals and to the growth of Penn State hockey - that most all of these objectives have long been checked off the board.
But among those - until recently - not yet checked:
A Frozen Four appearance.
A National Title.
Check off the first one now: 4/10/2025
And that opens the door to another side of the coaching world. In a way, coaching is embracing the idea that you are going to pour yourself into something with no promise of getting over the hump. It’s not quite that simple, but among all the coaches who have dedicated their lives to coaching, far more of them have ended their careers without setting foot atop the mountain.
“I never really think about that,” Gadowsky says after a brief pause.
Fair enough.
In truth that’s probably a good thing, you don’t get good at coaching if you’re obsessed with anything other than what’s in front of you. The expectations might be set high, but the focus is almost always one game and one practice at a time. Taking care of the little things so the big things take care of themselves.
But that’s not to say there hasn’t been heartbreak along the way. The Penn State team that played right up until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic might have been the program’s best ever. A title shot lost.
Two years ago it was a loss in overtime in the regional finals against Michigan, another *almost* on the books. A regional finals loss to Denver on the books as well - although less painful given how good that Denver team was. And as Gadowsky chases down 60 years of age and almost two decades at the same program, his own timeline only gets smaller, the opportunities only become ever more fleeting.
The question - if that starts to kill you on the inside, or if it gives you something to live for.
“When I first got into coaching, I think it might have been my very first year coaching, someone told me that you can't live and die with every win and loss, otherwise you'll be dead a lot,” Gadowsky said.
“And I remember that, and then I remember hearing it and not really getting it. And then near the end of the season, I was like, I get it. And I think what it is, is that you just live for that one chance, because someone has to win it every year. Someone has to. So as long as you have the belief that, hey, that eventually it might be us, then I think you can live with yourself.”
And that moment may have arrived. Penn State will face Boston University on April 10th for a chance to play for the national title a few days later. The Nittany Lions are no pushover either, they’ve been the hottest team in the sport for a few months now, getting lockdown goalie work and talented and opportunistic scoring along the way. For a program that built its reputation on scoring goals in bunches and simply daring teams to keep up, the Nittany Lions winning a 3-2 overtime game against a defensive group like UConn is a testament to the program’s own growth along the way.
Then again, the winner coming on a blind behind the back pass for a top-shelf snipe was far from a casual affair.
For Gadowsky it will be interesting to see what the future holds now over 40 years in the game of hockey and with more to go. The Nittany Lions are set to welcome another talented recruiting class, return quality players and continue to buck longterm recruiting trends and pipelines. Penn State has been a Frozen Four quality team two out of the last three seasons. It’s not unreasonable to think that could continue in the immediate future.
And it is - believe it or not - not unreasonable to think Penn State could have a national title under its belt in just over two weeks.
The moment has already gone a long way for Penn State as its faces an endless amount of exposure at one of the game’s marquee moments. Even for Gadowsky - he is well respected for the job he has done building multiple programs, Penn State in particular - but winning and really winning could further that status from simply a builder to among the game’s best, bucking the idea that building coaches might simply setting up success for whoever comes next.
“I’ve done it a few times, and I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from some really good people on how to do it,” Gadowsky said, now with over 400 career wins. “So I'm really confident in that. [When I came to Penn State] I was very hungry for a challenge to see if, yeah, change the moniker to [that of] a guy that can win at a higher level. And yea, I was very grateful to be given the opportunity to see if we could do it.”
A grind indeed.