DENVER • What’s about to happen with Bobby Brink is no accident.
This was the plan — all of it.
Did the Denver Pioneers hockey star know he would make his Frozen Four debut with the Pios on Thursday against Michigan in Boston? Know is a strong word, but he kind of knew, yeah.
“Biggest goal that we set,” says Brink, a 5-foot-9, 166-pound junior forward with the Pioneers.
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Go back further, too, when 3-year-old Bobby would skate with the 13-year-old Pee Wee players coached by his dad, Andi Brink. “For Bob, it was like having 15 different older brothers,” Dad says. Did the older kids know that years later they would be texting with Andi to say, “Wow! Bobby’s up for the Hobey Baker!” as a finalist for national player of the year?
Ehhh. Probably not.
But …
“When you stick to your daily process like Bob did,” Andi Brink says, “one day you wake up, and all those things you dream about came true.”
Now this is about to happen with Bobby Brink: Frozen Four semifinal Thursday, Hobey Baker announcement Friday, maybe the NCAA title game Saturday … then, right after all that, he could be off to the NHL with the Philadelphia Flyers, who drafted him 34th overall in 2019.
“Not even thinking about that yet,” Brink tells me, and I actually believe him. I believe him, because sticking to his daily process is how he’s become one of the most decorated players in DU hockey’s awesome history and the leading scorer in Division I hockey.
One day at a time is his whole deal. The Brinks are doers more than planners, except when it comes to a couple of things: the family dog and Bobby’s golf game.
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Andi Brink is a longtime hockey coach who co-founded the Breakaway Academy, a private school with a hockey focus in Eden Prairie, Minn. Dad’s job this week was dog transportation: “Kaner,” a mini-goldendoodle named after NHL star Patrick Kane, sat shotgun on a 25-hour drive from Minnesota to Florida. Just a couple dudes on a road trip, listening to Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings. “Spring break,” Dad says, and then it’s up to Boston for the Frozen Four.
Then there’s Bobby’s golf game. He hits a big, sweeping hook, the kind that requires planning. Bobby used it on his first hole-in-one. He was 11, and he holed out from 145 with a 7-iron.
“Good player,” says his dad, who played varsity golf and hockey at the University of Minnesota.
Nothing with Bobby Brink is by accident. He’s only 5-9, 166, but you’d never know it from the way Brink actively hunts physical contact. Brink couldn’t always play as fast as he does now due to limited ankle mobility. With the guidance of DU training guru Matt Shaw, Brink developed better strength in his hips, legs and core through a focus in “single-leg base training,” Shaw says.
“And he’s an absolute rink rat,” Shaw says.
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“You look at the height and weight and say, ‘How is this kid going to play in the NHL?’” said Shaw, the senior associate athletic director of sports performance at DU. “But there are some similarities to a Johnny Gaudreau (a 5-9, 150-pound star with the Calgary Flames). They play tough and creative and exploit the areas they can exploit. Plus, he’s got some real fire to him.”
“As a smaller guy, I need to try to outwork the opponent,” Bobby Brink adds. “They’re bigger than I am, probably stronger. But I need to make up for it in effort and will.”
It was the presence of Shaw — “The best (performance coach) in the business,” Andi Brink says — that encouraged Bobby to stick with DU. That was in question when DU coach Jim Montgomery, who recruited Brink, took the Dallas Stars job. “A bunch of programs sniffed around, seeing if he wanted to flip,” Andi Brink says, but Bobby stuck to his commitment.
The people running the Pios program — more than the stature of the program itself — is why. Credit David Carle, the coach, assistant coach Tavis MacMillan and Shaw, the strength coach.
“For me, as a parent, it was the character of David Carle,” Andi Brink says.
See, none of Brink’s success is by accident, and that could be said for all the athletes in a Frozen Four, Final Four or otherwise still competing in a national championship-level bracket.
Their arrival was by design, all of them.
Bobby Brink’s probably gone after DU’s Frozen Four. He’s good enough to turn pro and probably will forgo his senior season at DU. But … he hasn’t broached that subject with his agent yet, and the Brinks are the kind of folks who aren’t looking past today.
As they left the Budweiser Events Center in Loveland last week after a thrilling win in the West regional, Bobby’s mom, Holly, turned to his dad and said, “That was the most fun I’ve ever had in my entire life.”
“I haven’t really talked to anyone about that (turning pro). I don’t want to take away from what’s going on now,” Bobby says. “This is a really special time, and we can accomplish something really big.”
Living in the now is Brink’s whole deal, and look at all that’s about to happen because of it.
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