SHWAUBENON — Twenty-two years ago, Don Granato became an expansion junior hockey team’s coach and general manager, not fully convinced he was ready to be in those roles instead of still playing.
After winning two national championships in three seasons leading the Green Bay Gamblers of the United States Hockey League, he hand-picked his successor: Mark Osiecki, who carried on the program for seven seasons.
Consider the hockey landscape in the Green Bay area when Granato arrived in the mid-1990s. The professional team in town folded more than a decade earlier. The Division III college team at St. Norbert was barely more than a club. High school hockey wasn’t played at a state-sanctioned level.
Granato and Osiecki, both former Badgers skaters and now associate head coaches for the University of Wisconsin men’s hockey team, used their time in Green Bay as early points in what have proven to be successful coaching careers.
“It was all driven through the success that St. Norbert College had in their college program, and obviously what Don and Mark did in establishing the Gamblers program not only as a team in the USHL but to get junior-level players an opportunity to get some visibility in Green Bay,” said Cory McCracken, a longtime hockey coach in the Green Bay area who now guides the Green Bay Notre Dame program.
Seeing hockey in Green Bay take on a higher profile is a source of pride for Granato and Osiecki.
“Here’s the big thing: Kids and families across America that are moving into that level of play hold that in high regard,” Granato said. “I have a lot of appreciation for that. I enjoy that. That was my hope, that this thing lasts, that we have a Gambler history.”
When Sun Prairie’s John Stauffacher was awarded a USHL expansion franchise in Green Bay for the 1994-95 season, he turned to Granato, whose hockey camp his sons had attended, to be the coach.
Granato briefly led the Wisconsin Capitols of the USHL in 1993 but left to return to Ohio and play for Columbus of the East Coast Hockey League. He said he wasn’t sure he wanted to start a coaching career when Stauffacher called about the Gamblers position.
“But the combination of being in Green Bay, being able to run your own team and starting from scratch really appealed to me,” Granato said. “Because starting from scratch, you could put your imprint. You could build it how you wanted to build it. And that intrigued me.”
By the second year, the Gamblers swept the league titles and won the Junior A national championship. Granato turned down a job in Columbus to return in search of back-to-back national titles, which the Gamblers accomplished.
With the Gamblers program in good shape, he took that job in Columbus when it opened again late in the offseason in 1997. But Stauffacher asked him to find a replacement, and Granato looked to his former teammate at UW and Burnsville (Minn.) High School.
Osiecki was coming off an NCAA title season as an assistant at North Dakota in 1997 when he joined the Gamblers. He won a USHL playoff title in his time there but said coaching players on a path toward college and NHL success was what he remembered most.
“As a coach and a developer, that’s probably more gratifying than any championships you ever won,” Osiecki said.
Osiecki was the Gamblers coach in 2002 when the 8,700-seat Resch Center opened, taking hockey out of the old Brown County Arena and into a venue that has continued to change the hockey landscape.
Davison said he practiced at the Resch Center when he played with the Junior Gamblers youth program, arriving early to see the USHL players skate.
The redshirt junior didn’t get on the ice when the Badgers last played Northern Michigan there in 2014 because of a concussion.
“This will be my first time playing at the Resch Center wearing the cardinal and white,” Davison said. “So that’ll be pretty cool to play in front of family and friends and play for a university which I take so much pride in and there’s so much history.”
There’s hockey history in Green Bay, too. With the Gamblers, it started with Granato, Osiecki, the Brown County Arena and team offices in a room at the old Exel Inn motel off Highway 41.
“Programs that have longevity and stability, they have deep roots,” said Tim Coghlin, who has coached St. Norbert since 1993, the year before the Gamblers formed. “And they start with stories like having your office at the Exel Inn of America.”
Granato and Osiecki aren’t the only former Gamblers coaches who went on to big things. Jon Cooper now coaches the NHL’s Tampa Bay Lightning. Derek Lalonde leads the American Hockey League’s Iowa Wild.
“All I did was kind of get it started,” Granato said. “The people that came after me and the new arena, unbelievable job. For me to go back in there, it’s really cool.”
Source – https://madison.com/sports/college/hockey/article_d2bd6b5a-8902-53dd-886b-b58c43f1307f.html