MADISON, Wis. — Three hours before the Wisconsin Badgers were set to practice on a Tuesday afternoon in late January, the best coach in the history of women’s college hockey was telling a story about a deer.
“I’d like to get in the mindset of a deer,” Mark Johnson said during a coaches meeting inside the team offices at LaBahn Arena.
He talked for several minutes, trying to empathize with the deer that had jumped in front of his car — and then ran off — while Johnson was driving home from the rink a few days prior. He couldn’t quite figure out why the deer did what it did.
Johnson, 67, is always trying to see things from another perspective, whether it’s a deer on the road or the people around him.
“We’ve got these hockey players and we’re trying to figure them out,” he said.
That goal — trying to understand his players’ mindset — never leaves the foreground for Johnson and his coaching staff.
On that Tuesday, coming off a 2-2 tie against St. Cloud State — one of only three games the Badgers failed to win in regulation all season — Johnson decided not to break down video with the team. “Look ahead,” he urged them. The coaching staff planned drills with their next opponent, the University of Minnesota Duluth, in mind. And knowing it had been a…
