Connoly & Brown Named All-Americans

Apr 6, 2012

Northland Sports Online

Move over Norm Maciver, you now have some company and his name is Jack Connolly.

The University of Minnesota Duluth senior center landed American Hockey Coaches Association All-American honors for the third time in 2011-12, joining Maciver (1982-86) as the only Bulldogs to ever accomplish that feat. Connolly, a native of Duluth, was an All-West First Team selection both this year and in 2010-11 and a second team honoree as a sophomore.

Teammate J.T. Brown, a sophomore right winger who signed on with the National Hockey League’s Tampa Bay Lightning last week, was a member of the 2011-12 All-West Second team, marking the second straight year that multiple Bulldogs attained All-American distinction. (Jack Connolly and junior left winger Mike Connolly turned that trick last season).

Connolly, the first Bulldog to ever be named a Hobey Baker Memorial Award Top 10 Finalist twice and the first to earn All-Western Collegiate Hockey Association first team status three times, ranks second in the nation in both scoring (a career-high 60 points — the most by any Bulldog in eight years) and assists (40). He wrapped up the 2011-12 regular season as the WCHA scoring champion, racking up 43 points (16 goals and 27 assists) in league play. That was six more points than his next closest competitor and highest scoring yield by any player in six years.

The recipient of the 2011-12 Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award, Connolly amassed 66 goals and 131 assists for 197 career points, which placed him in the No. 8 spot on UMD’s all-time scoring charts. And talk about consistency: Going back to the end of his freshman season, the Duluth, Minn., native was held pointless for more than one game in a row only twice (on Jan. 27-28, 2012 when he was blanked in both ends of the Michigan Tech University series, which terminated his school single-season record 22-game scoring streak, and on Jan. 23 and Jan. 29, 2010). He also went without a goal or an assist only six times this winter and in those six outings the Bulldogs were a mere 1-4-1.

Connolly, the nation’s top returning scorer from a year ago (he finished third in the NCAA with a career-high 59 points), is the first Bulldog to post back-to-back 50-point seasons since Hobey Baker Memorial Award recipient Chris Marinucci turned the trick in 1993-94 (61) and 1992-93 (77). The three-time WCHA All-Academic Team honoree skated in school record 166 consecutive games since joining the Bulldog program three years ago. This past season, he captained UMD to a 25-10-6 overall record, a second place finish in the final WCHA standings and third NCAA tournament berth in the past four years.

A native of Burnsville, Minn., Brown established career-highs in virtually every offensive category this past season, including goals (a team-leading 24), assists (23), total points (47), power play goals (eight), and game winners (four) while skating in 39 of 41 games. He also currently tops the nation in both plus-minus rating (+29) and shots on goal (187). Earlier this winter, Brown, became the first Bulldog to record two hat tricks in the same season (three goals at the University of Nebraska-Omaha on Jan. 13 and four goals at the University of Alaska Anchorage three weeks later) since MacGregor Sharp did it in 2008-09.

In its 51 years as a member of the NCAA I ranks, UMD has produced 25 All-Americans, earning that honor eight times in the past nine seasons.

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