McKenna talked before the game about outdoor hockey being nothing new to him. Growing up in Whitehorse, Yukon, he spent countless hours skating on a backyard rink, usually with his father, Willy.
But entering through a parade of athletes from other sports and skating onto the ice in front of a crowd of nearly 75,000 people was something entirely different.
“Just the walk out, walking through those gates, was pretty special,” he said. “Having football, all those teams, walking through I’m fist-bumping them all. The crowd. It was amazing.”
Gadowsky also made sure he took in the moment. He was hired in 2011, tasked with shepherding the program with its move to Division-I status in 2012.
“I went to every coach on our staff and…