Willard ikola hockey scores

Curt Giles, who is in his 26th season coaching the Hornets, never played for or coached under Ikola, but he’s heard plenty of stories from those who did.

“The one thing you would always hear about Willard, out of so many positive things, was he cared for his kids,” said Giles, who has led the Hornets to five state titles. “He wasn’t shooting for records. He was a humble guy. He talked about his teams and his kids. It was never about him.”

Ikola often spoke fondly about socializing with other coaches, when beverages would flow freely and power-play alignments would be sketched out on cocktail napkins. Lake Conference coaches were a tight bunch in Ikola’s heyday, and he was among the ringleaders organizing regular dinner outings for the group, including their wives.

“Willlard set the bar for all of us, not only for his record, which stands for itself, but for the way he treated people,” said Bruce Johnson, the former Robbinsdale Armstrong coach who also served as the executive director of the Minnesota Hockey Coaches Association. “The word that comes to my mind is classy. He was such a classy guy. He never looked at other coaches as inferior in any sort of way, no matter where you were in terms of your program’s success.”

Johnson, like Giles, heard countless stories from former Edina players, many of whom would become Armstrong assistants, about Ikola’s coaching style. It was well known that Ikola, who served in the U.S. Air Force, could be a strict disciplinarian. For road games, he set the departure time for the team bus and stuck to it, no matter who might be running late. Ikola wasn’t a fan of boomboxes in the locker room or players wearing mismatched socks on the practice ice. Practices with no pucks — all skating and conditioning — were regular occurrences when Ikola really got his ire raised.

“(Former players) would tell me stories of Ike&rsqu

Former Eveleth High School state champion, Olympic silver medalist and eight-time Minnesota state high school championship coach Willard Ikola passed away Monday night at age 92.

During an interview with WDIO in 2019, Willard Ikola said, “They always used to say about Eveleth, you know, if you’re born in Eveleth, you’re born with a hockey stick in your hand.”

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Ikola got his start as a goalie at Eveleth High School when he was a freshman. His team lost in the semifinals in 1947, but he never lost a high school game again. With Ikola in goal, Eveleth won state championships in the next three years.

He played goalie for the University of Michigan, where he won two NCAA national championships. He later went on to win a silver medal in Cortina, Italy, with the 1956 U.S. Olympic team, alongside other Minnesota hockey legends like John Mayasich and former Gov. Wendell Anderson.

From 1958-1991, Willard Ikola was the head coach at Edina. He earned a 616-149-38 record during 33 years of coaching, with a record eight state high school hockey championships with the Edina Hornets. Ikola was named Minnesota High School Hockey Coach of the Year six times.

After retiring in 1991, he became a scout for the New York Islanders.

According to Hubbard’s KSTP records, Ikola’s 33-year career at Edina was so long he started coaching the team on outdoor ice on the old Edina campus off Highway 100. They used to practice on nearby Lake Harvey. One of his favorite stories was about how they knew when the ice was safe to skate on. He would send the biggest kid on the team out to check it out.

Willard Ikola was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990 and the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.

“I really like Duluth. In high school, we used to play Duluth East quite a bit. And when I was playing for Eveleth, we played Duluth

Minnesota hockey legend Willard Ikola — who won three state high school titles as a player with Eveleth, then coached Edina to eight more — has died.

Edina High School officials announced that Ikola died Monday evening at the age of 92.

Ikola started playing hockey at a young age while growing up in Eveleth on the Iron Range. He was in goal as Eveleth High School won consecutive state titles in 1948, 1949 and 1950 — his sophomore, junior and senior seasons.

Ikola shared memories of those state tournament appearances in an MPR interview in 1993.

“We had a tremendous opportunity up there to play the game as youngsters. We had two inside arenas when I was up there, and of course, it was during the war years, when we were in the early grades there, in early junior high — and we had the opportunity to use those rinks because there was no city team or junior college team because of World War II,” he recalled. “Once we hit the high school squad, we were a pretty well-oiled machine.”

Ikola went on to play for the University of Michigan, winning two national titles. While serving in the U.S. Air Force, he played for the U.S. Olympic team and earned a silver medal at the 1956 Olympics in Italy.

Ikola — “Coach Ike” — then began a 33-year run as coach at Edina, leading the Hornets to eight state titles in 19 state tournament appearances.

“Ike will be remembered for many things, but probably his most notable trademark is his houndstooth hat and his modest attitude towards all his coaching accolades, stating, ‘I never scored a goal or prevented one either, all the credit for our success belongs to the kids,’” read a statement from Edina High School.

Ikola was named Minnesota High School Hockey Coach of the Year six times before he retired in 1991. He was inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990