In Edina Everyone Still Likes Ike

But this low-key approach would not count for much if Ikola's players looked on him as some sort of benign baby-sitter. Be assured, he can jerk an errant player back in line with a speed that Bear Bryant would have appreciated. In one recent game, a defenseman was hit with a 10-minute major penalty for using vulgar language. Ikola was fuming over the incident between periods. "You clean up your rhetoric," he said to the player in the locker room. "This is high school hockey. This is not the NHL . Do you understand?" The defenseman stared at the floor. Ikola waited. Waited. Waited. Finally, breaking the crushing silence, the player mumbled, "Yes, Coach, I understand."

A lesson was taught. And learned. Says Edina athletic director Bud Bjerken, "Ike succeeds because of what he doesn't say. He doesn't overcoach and talk them to death, so when he does talk, he means it—and they listen."

"Our goal is not to get players in the NHL ," says Ikola. "Our goal is to get them in college." So far, 95 Edina players have gone to Division I-A schools on hockey scholarships, and five have been on Olympic or national teams.

Ranheim says, "Coach Ikola definitely knew when to push and when to laugh. He almost certainly would have produced more pros if he had urged year-round play. He doesn't. In fact, he's against it."

Says Ikola, "In the summer, kids should fish, swim. In the fall, they should play football. Later in the spring, they should run track, play baseball. Really, four months of hockey is plenty." Perspective. So it's in character that Ikola doesn't believe in meetings, either with players or coaches, nor does he believe in scouting his opponents. "When I see an opponent play," he says, "I always overrate them. I'd rather play them equal."

That is the way he judges his own teams. As many as 100 players have tried out for the 42 varsity and junior varsity spots open at Edina—population 46,073—some years. Ikola doesn't just congratulate the successful prospects in person; he also makes it a point to talk to each player he cuts. "I hate it," he says. "Just hate having to tell them." He always tries to lessen the disappointment by saying where the cut player might best find a spot on one of the community teams that are active in the Edina area.

One prospect that Ikola did not feel uncomfortable talking to last fall was senior goalie Jenny Hanley—the first female to make the varsity team. "She was the second-best goalie who tried out," Ikola says in typical low-key fashion. "Her biggest drawback is strength with the stick. But she's a pretty cool customer." Jenny, a senior, was 8-1 in games that she started. Taking a cue from her coach, Jenny is low-key about her situation. She says, "The coach treated me fine and all the guys accepted me. With the other teams, sometimes they had this look of amazement in their eyes. I chuckled."

Ikola insists that having Jenny in goal this season was no big deal. He does say, "When I saw her coming up through the system, I thought, Oh, well, I'll be retired by the time she gets here." That turned out to be a miscalculation, but it didn't faze Ikola.

For all Ikola's laid-back style, hockey is his life. "You can never get enough of it," he says. "There's no grind to it. Before you know it, practice is over. And then the game comes. And before you know it, the game is over. And then the season is over." And now that the final season is over, Ikola says, "It's going to be interesting to see how much I miss it. It's possible that it might be fun not to go to a hockey rink on Saturday nights." He's even thinking of traveling to Florida next winter, which is fine with Laurie, who hopes maybe they will "celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary [Dec. 28] somewhere besides a hockey rink."

In a basement room in Ikola's Edina house, the walls are covered with hockey memorabilia. He takes down a photograph. "Here's our Olympic team," he says, "It's getting a little faded." He looks at it for a long moment, then shakes his head. "It has been a lot of good years. Hockey has been good to me. I hope I've been good to hockey."