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  • Kristen Shilton, ESPN NHL reporterSep 25, 2023, 07:00 AM ET

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      Kristen Shilton is a national NHL reporter for ESPN.

The dawn of an NHL season offers unparalleled promise. It’s a slate wiped clean for the ultimate fresh start. Everyone’s on equal footing again, in an official erasure of whatever happened — good or bad — the prior campaign.

That opening puck drop doesn’t come without months of preparation, though, and we’re not just talking in the gym. Getting game-day ready goes beyond just the weight a player can handle on the squat rack — to how they manage the load of inevitable expectation on their shoulders.

“I think the hardest part of pro hockey and being in the NHL isn’t necessarily the physical part,” Anaheim Ducks forward Troy Terry told ESPN at the NHL’s player tour in Las Vegas this month. “It’s the mental side of things.”

And how. Terry is one of several top skaters within their organizations who’ve recently learned that lesson — among others — the hard way. Focusing on the body — how it’s fueled, trained and rested — is (relatively) easy to control. But there’s no guarantee it translates into on-ice results.

When there’s a disconnect between the two, doubt naturally creeps in. Pressure ramps up.

Terry felt that in Anaheim last season during what was just his second full NHL campaign. Tom Wilson, coming off his 10th season with the Washington Capitals, went through a frustrating ride of his own in 2022-23. Veterans and newbies alike can’t escape a down, disappointing, or demoralizing year. But they can all use it as an opportunity to snap back — and level up.

That’s why, after a too-long summer for too many NHLers, the 2023-24 season can’t begin soon enough. When it does, some skaters will be eyeing their own sort of resurgence — whether coming off injury, a disappointing individual performance or by simply trying to prove (to themselves, and everyone else) why this season will be better than ever.

TERRY COULDN’T UNDERSTAND what happened in mid-December last season.

After scoring 12 goals and 28 points in his first 31 games, he hit a wall.

Hard.

“I went 16 games at that point last year without scoring a goal, which was tough for me,” Terry said. “When I look back at it, I think I played well, I was getting points, but for whatever reason during that time I just could not score. And it put my goal totals off for the rest of this year.”

That roadblock was uncharted territory for Terry on the heels of his much-lauded breakout effort. The 26-year-old made waves in 2021-22 — his first full NHL season — producing 37 goals and 67 points in 75 games, becoming the youngest Ducks player in franchise history to record a point streak of 15 games or longer, and being voted to his first NHL All-Star Game appearance.

Those stats not only put Terry on the NHL’s radar in a major way, they earned him a seven-year, $49 million contract extension in the offseason that committed some of the best days of his playing career to Anaheim.

Terry anticipated not just meeting any newfound expectations associated with the long-term deal, but surpassing them. But on an Anaheim squad deep into rebuilding, it was Terry who found his own foundation shaken despite notching a solid 23 goals and 61 points through 70 games.

“It’s funny, I had similar point totals [in 2022-23 as before], but my goal [numbers] being off was hard,” he said. “But as a player, I think I took steps, and it’s nice when we have a young team, and I was lucky enough to sign a long deal. So, I think my focus is just being a good hockey player and being a good teammate this year. That usually helps translate into points.”

Taking a cue from his home base in the eternal summer of Southern California, Terry is determined to maintain a sunny mindset. His newest housemate has been an invaluable source of inspiration in that respect; Terry and his wife, Dani, welcomed Greyson James in April, a life-changing experience that put everything — including hockey — into much-needed perspective.

“Having a kid and everything that’s changed [because of that] in my life, you start to not live or die by how you’re doing on the ice,” Terry said. “You realize there’s more important things in your world. Not that hockey is not important, but you’re more than just a hockey player. And I think that’s been my mentality switch, and when you’re going through times like that [without scoring], it helps.”

Terry said he’s “really excited” now for the season ahead even as the Ducks’ continued retool is bound to bring about its own challenges. Like it or not, growing pains come with the domain for Terry, on the ice and at home. It’s the latter life, though, that truly brings Terry the most joy these days, even if — like his day job — there are highs and lows through which to wade.

“Fatherhood is harder than I ever thought it would be,” Terry admitted. “But I also love that guy more than I thought I could love something. So, it’s been pretty fun.”

VETERAN TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING DEFENSEMAN Mikhail Sergachev might appear soft-spoken.

But what he does say hits hard.

“I want to get to the top,” Sergachev said. “I want to be the best: on our team first, and then in the league.”

That’s exactly the mic drop mentality Tampa Bay needs from its burgeoning star. The 25-year-old blueliner was acquired by the Lightning in 2017 to eventually be where he is now — cresting their defensive depth chart as one of the team’s highest-paid players thanks to an eight-year, $68 million contract kicking in this season.

Sergachev doesn’t take the team’s commitment to him lightly. He produced the best season of his career across the board in 2022-23, tallying 10 goals and 64 points in 79 games, averaging a team-high 23 minutes, 49 seconds of ice time per game, and earning a significant role on the Lightning power play.

It was disappointing, then, for Sergachev — and the Lightning at large — to see how they came up short in a first-round playoff loss to Toronto. Tampa Bay’s run of back-to-back Stanley Cup victories, followed by another Cup Final appearance, set a high standard that Sergachev is determined not to let slip. Especially given the profound impact the team’s investment in his future has already had.

“I appreciate it a lot,” Sergachev said. “When they gave me an eight-year deal, like I don’t want to say I didn’t expect it, but I just felt that they trusted me and they believed in me, and it changed my perspective on a lot of things. It made me believe in myself more.”

What that translates to over the next few years is on Sergachev to create. It’s likely no coincidence the new pact coincided with Sergachev’s excellent season. The goal now is to recreate that success individually, and hope it also rubs off on the rest of his team.

“I understand things better now,” Sergachev said. “I signed a long-term deal. The team trusted me on the first power play [last season]. So, it’s a lot of responsibility going into this season. Every year, every summer, every training camp that I take, I have to focus on that [responsibility] and give it everything I have.”

ONE OF THE top rising stars in the league, Jason Robertson has a singular focus with the Dallas Stars this season.

And it’s echoing like a mantra: consistency.

“I don’t want to just be catching fire and then not really doing a whole lot later in the season,” Robertson said. “It’s just staying that same player I can be and having that high expectation to try to play the best I can offensively, but do it consistently and try to maintain the other aspects of the game as well at the same time.”

If Roberson’s goal-setting ability is anything like his goal-scoring one, then the Stars are in for a treat. Because their top-line winger is ready to fly even higher.

The 24-year-old was a behemoth on the ice in 2022-23, producing 46 goals and 109 points in 82 games to rank him seventh and sixth, respectively, overall in the NHL. For context, the only skaters who notched more points than Robertson were Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, David Pastrnak, Nikita Kucherov and Nathan MacKinnon.

But the postseason was a different story, as he scored just two goals and 10 assists in the opening two rounds (including no goals in seven games against the Kraken), before coming alive against Vegas in the conference finals.

Robertson talks about his game as a work in progress, and he’s dialed in on maintaining good habits.

“If I’m consistent in what I do and what I play, the numbers will take care of themselves,” he said. “That’s just what happens. You work hard, you don’t get complacent, then you know you’re going to get opportunities. You’re going to get chances. You play on too good of a team not to; too good of a roster not to get those opportunities. So, it’s up to me to just try to stick to that [mindset], keep working hard and don’t get complacent.”

The same could be said for the Stars overall. Dallas put together an 108-point season under first year head coach Pete DeBoer and advanced to the Western Conference finals. The Stars came up short there in a six-game loss to the eventual Cup champion Golden Knights, but the result has done nothing to curb Robertson’s enthusiasm for what Dallas can accomplish in the coming season.

“It’s winning it all,” he said. “That’s what you want to do. We have those expectations. We have the players, the coach that it takes the win. Everyone has a recipe to win. We’ve got a big forward group, great defensemen, an elite goalie. You have all those criteria that were checked off.

“So, we have high expectations this year, and we’re fortunate enough to where our GM [Jim Nill] has built this group well. And the young guys are going to step up and take control, like me and the younger guys. So, we’re excited.”

Here’s where Robertson will digress, though. Yes, as a fourth-year pro, there is a natural progression toward shouldering more locker room duties and being a good example. Just don’t anticipate Robertson breaking away from who he’s been all along. On and off the ice, Robertson’s moves have served him and the Stars well.

The right formula now is just generating more of what works — even more often.

“All I’ve got to do is keep working hard, keeping playing the right way and just lead by example,” he said. “I like to say I’m a leader. I have a big responsibility in myself to not put myself ahead of the team in any situation, so I think I’ve been doing a good job in that. I’m ready to get back at it.”

THERE’S WISDOM IN growing older as a person and a hockey player.

Capitals winger Tom Wilson can attest that’s the truth.

“You kind of learn to live in the moment,” Wilson said of getting deeper into his career. “You take it game by game. Right now, we have a really good group of guys in our room. Age obviously doesn’t really matter if everyone’s playing well and doing their thing and winning games. People like to look to the future and plan, but our job as players is to win each game, win every night, and if you do that, the rest will take care of itself.”

Ideally, Wilson would like to contribute more to the winning part this season than he was able to recently. The 29-year-old missed the first half of 2022-23 recovering from offseason ACL surgery. He made it back into the lineup by January and lasted a mere eight games before a blocked shot against Colorado caused a “small, small fracture” in an ankle that was big enough to sideline Wilson through mid-February.

Still, the winger was a productive player for Washington, producing 13 goals and 22 points in 33 games. And GM Brian MacLellan recognized Wilson’s value with a massive seven-year, $45.5 million contract extension that starts next season to carry Wilson through (presumably) the majority of his remaining NHL seasons.

But those extended absences last season were some of many that ultimately doomed the injury-plagued Capitals to a down season. Washington recorded the fourth-most man games lost amid ailments to Wilson, Nicklas Backstrom, T.J. Oshie and John Carlson; it was no surprise by the March trade deadline to see MacLellan trading players away, torpedoing any lingering hope Washington had of making the playoffs.

Wilson says now he’s “feeling good; a lot better” than the previous offseason and used an extended summer to get his body back in the game, so to speak.

Next is trying to bring Washington back from the brink. The Capitals have a new head coach in Spencer Carbery, a milestone machine on a mission in Alex Ovechkin and, with a healthy Carlson, Backstrom and Wilson, some legitimate optimism for the year ahead.

That’s what Wilson will cling too, anyway. Even if the 2022-23 season ended with a thud, there’s reason to believe the coming campaign can open with a bang.

“I think [my goals] all revolve around team success,” Wilson said. “We want to get back to where we want to be. We want to have that winning culture and mentality that we’ve built for the last 10-15 years in Washington. And if I’m doing my job, if I’m playing well, I think it’ll help the team win games, and that’s the most important thing.”

And if Wilson has to take over a bigger role — whether on the ice or in the dressing room — he’s prepared to learn on the fly there, too.

“I’m pretty fortunate to have had so many leaders to look to, and now I’m in the middle of my career and in the second wave [to start standing up],” he said. “But those guys [like Ovechkin and Backstrom] are the best and I love having them around and just try and soak it all in when you can.”

FORGET THE CLICHED “roller-coaster ride” analogy.

For the past two years, Nashville Predators forward Filip Forsberg has been on a carnivalesque Tilt-A-Whirl, complete with thrilling highs and stomach-dropping lows.

Let’s recap: It was only in 2021-22 when Forsberg emerged with a breakout season, collecting 42 goals and 84 points in 69 games for a Predators team that defied expectations earning a postseason berth. Forsberg parlayed his success into a mammoth new deal with Nashville, avoiding free agency in the summer of 2022 by agreeing to an eight-year, $68 million extension.

The Predators — and Forsberg along with them — seemed well positioned to rise even further in 2022-23. Until the wheels fell off.

Instead of thriving out of the gate, Nashville immediately fell into a fight just to keep pace in the playoff race. The Predators were four points out of a wild-card spot in February when Forsberg — then the team’s second-leading scorer with 19 goals and 42 points in 50 games — suffered a concussion against Philadelphia.

Forsberg never returned for the Predators. The team’s alarming number of injuries — to him, Roman Josi, Ryan Johansen, and others — led to Nashville spiraling out of postseason contention from there.

The fallout came fast and furious. Head coach Jon Hynes was fired (and eventually replaced by Andrew Brunette). GM David Poile finalized his retirement, with Barry Trotz taking over. And Trotz wasted no time giving Nashville a face-lift, buying out Matt Duchene‘s contract, trading Johansen to Colorado and adding veterans such as Ryan O’Reilly, Gustav Nyquist and Luke Schenn in free agency.

It’s been 24 months of whiplash, basically. What Forsberg needs now is some rejuvenation — with a side of stability.

“You kind of have to see it that way,” he said about rebounding this season. “You miss 32 games [in 2022-23], you feel like you had a tough year. It might not have been as bad as it felt, but at the same time, you don’t play for half the season, it’s obvious you’re going to have to bounce back and try to find something to build off. I’m excited just to get a chance to be out there competing with my teammates again.”

The Predators’ locker room looks different than before, too. Forsberg is one of a few remaining veterans from Nashville’s lineup in 2021-22, a clear indication of how the organization has pivoted toward its up-and-comers (including Philip Tomasino, Cody Glass and Thomas Novak).

If Forsberg is wearied by all that change, he doesn’t show it. If anything, he’s attempting to flourish from it, and holds faith that he and the Predators can make the most of what awaits this season.

“I feel great. I’m excited about [what’s next],” he said. “I think our [retooling] has been done correctly, so to speak. Obviously, you don’t want to see any of your friends and teammates leave, but at least we’ve done a good job trying to replace them with other players, and I’m excited to get to know Coach Brunette as well.”

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The changes that led to a year Boise State won’t forget

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December 31, 2024

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The changes that led to a year Boise State won't forget

  • Paolo Uggetti, ESPNDec 31, 2024, 08:00 AM ET

EVERY SUNDAY DURING the football season, Spencer Danielson logs onto a Zoom call.

Danielson, like many coaches, has crafted a life built around routines. It is the way the 36-year-old Boise State head coach is able to make sense of his job and still find time for himself, his family and important people in his life. This call, however, holds a special place in Danielson’s busy week. It has become an essential part of his routine and journey in his first season as the Broncos’ head football coach.

On the other end of those calls is Chris Petersen, who retired from coaching following the 2019 college football season.

“We Zoom for an hour, no matter what,” Danielson said. “He’s my mentor.”

Life changed quickly for Danielson last year. One minute he was the defensive coordinator, and the next he was being ushered into a room with Boise State athletic director Jeramiah Dickey and named the Broncos’ interim head coach after they fired Andy Avalos.

One of the first people Danielson turned to was Petersen, the former Broncos head coach who went 92-12 from 2006 to 2013 and had two undefeated seasons. Having started his career at Azusa Pacific University in Southern California and joined Boise as a graduate assistant in 2017, Danielson knew he needed help and wanted to get it from the individual responsible for the program’s greatest years.

“I called him and was like, ‘Coach, I want your help. I want to make this something consistent,'” Danielson said. “I knew that when I became a head coach, this is how I want it to be.”

After reenergizing the team and leading it to its fourth Mountain West title last season, Danielson officially got the job, but he knew that the task at hand went beyond a single season. One of the Mountain West’s premier programs had lost some of its luster and failed to secure a major bowl victory since beating Oregon in 2017. Danielson wanted to build something that would last, and Petersen became the ideal sounding board.

“I don’t see my role as solving his problems. My role is helping him think about his problems, maybe even in a different way and asking him questions so he can get to the solutions.” Petersen said. “It works pretty good because he’s so wide open to really everything and getting the best answers for his team and his program.”

The thread between Petersen and Danielson is a reflection of what Dickey and those now leading the program knew it needed: a return to the kind of cohesion Petersen fostered that made Boise State great, with an eye toward what will position it to be even better in the future.

Danielson, who is now 15-2 as head coach, has continued the program’s winning tradition while taking the team beyond where it has been before. This season, the Broncos produced a Heisman Trophy finalist in running back Ashton Jeanty, won the Mountain West for a fifth time and earned a spot in the inaugural 12-team College Football Playoff. They lost only once — to Oregon, the undefeated No. 1 team in the country — and grabbed an improbable first-round bye in the process.

“We were going to be prepared for that success when it happened,” Dickey said. “Now, there’s a momentum that’s contagious.”

But even though the Cinderella of the late aughts is ready to embrace the underdog role yet again against No. 3 Penn State in the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl tonight, the Broncos don’t want to be satisfied with just having a long-awaited seat at the table.

THERE IS SOMETHING in the Arizona air that seems to attract Boise blue.

Over the past 17 years, the Fiesta Bowl has become as much a part of the school’s lore as the bright blue field on which its football team practices and plays. It has been the site of some of the program’s greatest moments, a place where legends have been made and trick plays have been embossed in the sport’s history.

Despite hundreds of players and a handful of coaches cycling through Boise over the years, the destination in the desert keeps beckoning the Broncos back for more.

“There’s definitely some good energy there,” said Jared Zabransky, Boise State’s quarterback during its 2006 season.

Even after all these years, it doesn’t take much to unearth the chip on Zabransky’s shoulder. He recalls how the rhetoric surrounding Boise State was that its undefeated season was a farce and a product of a weak schedule.

“No one gave us a shot in that game against Oklahoma,” Zabransky said of the 2007 Fiesta Bowl against the Sooners. “But we knew what we had.”

The Broncos shocked the world, taking down a Big 12 champion despite being 7.5-point underdogs. Petersen and then-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin called three crucial trick plays: a hook-and-ladder touchdown that tied the game in regulation, a direct snap touchdown thrown by a wide receiver in overtime and the famous “Statue of Liberty” play where Zabransky faked a pass and handed the ball to running back Ian Johnson behind his back for the winning 2-point conversion.

“Every year, they start playing clips of that play,” Zabransky said. “If it’s not the most memorable game of all time, it’s definitely in the top three.”

Three years later, Boise State made it back to the Fiesta Bowl and beat No. 3 TCU by a touchdown. Five years later, it returned to the bowl and won again, taking down No. 12 Arizona by 8 points.

As Zabransky watched the final College Football Playoff ranking come out a few weeks ago, he could only smile and accept a familiar fate. It was fitting that the inaugural 12-team playoff would not just include Boise State, but that it would send it, improbably, to yet another Fiesta Bowl as the underdog with a chance to do something the Broncos could not back in the BCS days: play for a national title.

“I never got hung up in the old days about not getting an opportunity. To me, the opportunity was could we get into BCS games,” Petersen said. “But now that the system’s changed a little bit, I think it’s great that they have struck when they’re hot. It’s tremendous.”

Zabransky knows what they did in 2007 helped showcase the foundation the program had built, centered around an identity of relentless work ethic and a quest for perfection that Petersen preached.

“It was a special time,” he said. “And I see some of that in this [year’s] squad. There’s a connection and a complete unity going in the right direction.”

Tonight, Zabransky will walk back into State Farm Stadium, this time as a fan. With Boise State set to wear the same uniform combination of white jerseys, orange pants and blue helmets it has in each Fiesta Bowl appearance, Zabransky will allow his mind to wander into the past, in hopes of trying to will the future to bend in favor of the Broncos again.

JERAMIAH DICKEY KNEW that Boise State had plateaued. It was 2021, and he had just taken the job as the Broncos’ athletic director. As he surveyed both what the Broncos had internally and the landscape of the sport beyond Idaho, Dickey knew he had to push the program forward.

The Petersen era was well in the rearview mirror. The game was changing with name, image and likeness. The Broncos’ last Fiesta Bowl win and appearance had been 10 years ago. And the sport’s most storied programs were shape-shifting via conference realignment.

“We set the bar really high with three Fiesta Bowls, and maybe the perception is we hadn’t done enough from the last Fiesta Bowl to present day,” Dickey said. “But Boise State is, in the grand scheme of things, in the infant stages of being a university and being an FBS program. So what I saw was opportunity.”

Dickey quickly identified what he referred to as “low-hanging fruit” and implemented a plan to address the issues. Boise had to pay its coaches and coordinators more, and it had to improve the fan experience, the stadium and the team’s facilities, too. It had to set up an infrastructure for large donations and create a vision that Broncos fans could buy in to, literally and figuratively.

“We were living too much in the past and not enough in the present and future,” Dickey said. “And this is an industry, as soon as you stop, you die a slow death. So we had to mature as a program and grow up really quickly.”

The former Baylor administrator quickly instituted a new mentality among his staff and turned it into the department’s mantra: “What’s next?” It’s also the name of the fundraising initiative Dickey started.

“The job that has been done by Jeremiah has been amazing,” Petersen said. “I think sometimes people don’t understand really how hard that is to do at a place like Boise, to be able to then compete on a national stage.”

For Dickey, this has been a year of reaping. Not only are the Broncos competing in the CFP, but they are set to break ground Saturday on a north end zone renovation. They have added new video boards as well as a ticket sales team that has broken program revenue and attendance records. The capital campaign is ongoing with a $150 million goal for athletics, and in October, Boise State announced it would be moving to the new Pac-12 conference in 2026.

“If I can make a decision that is going to drastically impact my resources and revenues that I can then invest back into the department, to me it was a no-brainer,” Dickey said of the move. “Now, time will tell and ultimately I’ll be judged off that, but I’m always going to bet on myself. I’m always going to bet on our team and I’m going to bet on our community.”

Since the move to the Pac-12 was announced, Dickey has seen the response materialize in sold-out season tickets for basketball and six sold-out football games this season. It helps, of course, that the Broncos are in the playoff, but Dickey is adamant that the results are secondary.

“A lot of the success you’re seeing in the present day started four years ago,” Dickey said. “It all started before we knew what this season would be. So whether the CFP changed or not, we were always looking forward to how to better position ourselves. And sometimes you get lucky.”

DANIELSON HAD 45 minutes to prepare his speech. He had just been named the Broncos’ interim coach and had to deliver a message to the team. He knew that Avalos’ firing meant players could enter the portal at will. He knew coaches on the staff were thinking about where they’d end up once a new coach was hired.

So, he simply asked for two weeks.

“At that point, everything is telling you to look out for yourself,” Danielson said. “So I told them, I don’t know what’s after these two weeks. I don’t know what my future looks like, your future, but I do know we got a great group of seniors that have been through a lot: COVID, multiple head coaches, tough seasons. We owe it to each other, and we owe it to our team to finish these next two weeks.”

With the football team staring at its first losing season since 1997 (a year after the program moved up to Division I), former players such as Zabransky could tell, even from the outside, that something was wrong.

“I love Andy, but when you get to a place where things just aren’t working and you press and press again, there has to be a change,” Zabransky said.

Dickey took the temperature of the situation and made what he believed was a necessary move: firing Avalos and installing Danielson as interim coach. In retrospect, Dickey’s move now looks like a stroke of genius, but even he admits that he didn’t go into the process expecting to make Danielson the permanent head coach.

But players and coaches bought into Danielson’s message, won their remaining two games and turned what was a slim chance into another conference title. Over the course of those two weeks, Dickey saw how Danielson’s approach had, even in such short order, reinjected Boise with the kind of energy the program had been missing.

“The guy just didn’t have bad days,” Dickey said of Danielson. “I just saw [him] embrace the challenge and show up differently than I had seen a coach show up, and I saw a team respond at a level I had not seen.”

Initially, Petersen delivered a blunt message to Danielson: “You’re not going to get the job.” But Petersen noticed that instead of focusing on securing the position, Danielson turned the focus toward the players. Once he secured the job, Danielson, with Petersen’s help, knew he wanted his approach to be unique. He knew Boise State’s competitive advantage couldn’t be found inside a playbook or a checkbook.

“We’ve got to be different, we’ve got to be efficient and specific,” Danielson said. “Maybe we can’t pay this or that. Let’s capitalize on what we do better than anybody else, which is development, which is taking care of our players. We’re involved in every part of our players’ lives.”

In some ways, it’s hard to view this season as a proof of concept. The Broncos had a once-in-a-lifetime player in Jeanty who had a once-in-a-lifetime season. But Dickey and Danielson are focused on ensuring that Boise is able to not just recruit and develop the next Jeanty, but that it’s able to keep him. Danielson isn’t naive; he wants players who want to be at Boise State, or as Petersen used to call them, “OKGs — our kind of guys.” But he knows the right infrastructure has to be in place, too.

“Jeramiah asks me, ‘What do you need to be one of the best teams in the country consistently and not just a flash in the pan? How do we do this consistently?'” Danielson said. “And that’s funding. There is support here. This is one of the top growing cities in the country. There is money here bringing it in to support our players, not only financially, but in all facets of their life as college football becomes even more professionalized.”

Over the past 12 months, Danielson’s message to his staff has been a consistent one that has bore out in the 12 wins the team has compiled this season.

“We have more than enough to succeed here,” Danielson tells them. “We have enough at Boise State.”

On Dec. 6, Boise’s blue field was swarmed by a tsunami of fans wearing blue. The chants of “Heisman” for Jeanty filled the stadium. A portion of the goal posts even ended up in the nearby Boise River.

As the clock hit zero and the program won its second straight Mountain West Championship over UNLV, punching its ticket to the College Football Playoff, a smiling Petersen, wearing a Broncos hat, stood on the field and soaked it all in. He doesn’t get to many college football games these days, working as an in-studio analyst for Fox Sports, and he doesn’t remember the last time he was in Boise for a game on “the blue” either.

“In some ways it felt like, boy, that was a long time ago that I was there, but on the other hand, it felt like it was just yesterday,” Petersen said. “Just being in that stadium with those awesome fans … that place is underrated.”

Few know that sentiment better than Dirk Koetter. The current offensive coordinator for the Broncos left Oregon in 1998 to become Boise’s head coach before Petersen. It was the beginning of what would be the program’s golden era, but Koetter remembers how he felt one particular day during that year as he stood inside a room at the local hotel and watched snow blanket the city while handling an off-the-field situation in which one of his players stole books from a bookstore.

“I was thinking to myself, ‘Why did I leave Eugene, Oregon, to come to this?'” Koetter said. “That press box wasn’t there. This theater wasn’t here. That indoor [field] wasn’t there. Boise State was probably averaging about 19,000 fans a game.”

Koetter kept at it. The next season, the Broncos went 9-3, won their conference title and beat Louisville in their bowl game. They went on to win four bowl games in a row and lose no more than three times in a season through the 2004 season under Dan Hawkins (53-11), a year before Petersen became the head coach and took the team to another level. When Petersen left for Washington, his offensive coordinator, Bryan Harsin, ensured the winning continued, going 69-19 over the next seven seasons.

“I’m very proud of where this program has gone and how we’ve been able to keep the chain of coaches and of the culture in this program,” Koetter said. “To be in this playoff, I think it speaks volumes about the administration here, the fans here, the players here and the coaches here.”

Koetter has come full circle by ushering this season’s offense to success. After 42 years of coaching at the college level and in the NFL, this might be Koetter’s last run. At his pre-Fiesta Bowl news conference last week, Koetter acknowledged that it could be his last news conference ever.

“I hope it’s not,” Koetter said. “I hope we keep playing.”

Boise State’s season isn’t over; another Fiesta Bowl where the odds (Penn State is favored by 10.5 points on ESPN BET) are against its favor awaits. And as Koetter and every other coach and player who has worn the Boise blue since the turn of the century knows, it would be foolish to count the Broncos out in the desert.

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Bagpipes and a train commute: Scenes from the 2025 Winter Classic

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6 hours ago

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December 31, 2024

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Bagpipes and a train commute: Scenes from the 2025 Winter Classic

The NHL’s annual Winter Classic takes place on Tuesday as the Chicago Blackhawks face the St. Louis Blues at Wrigley Field.

The home of the Chicago Cubs and second-oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball has been transformed with an ice rink in the center. Wrigley also hosted the second-ever Winter Classic, when the Blackhawks faced the Detroit Red Wings in 2009.

It is the fourth Winter Classic and seventh outdoor game for Chicago, the most all-time. St. Louis played in the 2022 game against the Minnesota Wild at Target Field.

The Blackhawks got the day started with a special commute to Wrigley. Players took the CTA Train, similar to how fans arrive, while wearing “Team Chicago” gear. The look pays homage to first responders and includes Chicago Fire, Police and Emergency Management and Communications patches down their sleeves and pants.

Here are the top sights and sounds from the 2025 Winter Classic.

Stage is set

Bagpipes in full effect

Blues make their arrival

Each team’s threads

Bedard’s stick has all the details

Drone tour through Wrigley

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ASU’s Dillingham defends players’ brash comments

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10 hours ago

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December 31, 2024

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ASU's Dillingham defends players' brash comments

  • Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior WriterDec 31, 2024, 11:41 AM ET

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    • ACC reporter.
    • Joined ESPN.com in 2010.
    • Graduate of the University of Florida.

ATLANTA — Arizona State coach Kenny Dillingham defended the brash comments of players Cam Skattebo and Sam Leavitt heading into the College Football Playoff Quarterfinal at the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl.

During the final news conference Tuesday prior to the game against Texas, Dillingham was asked how he felt about his players coming across as confident and loose in the days before the matchup. He gave an impassioned response.

“Our players are just being themselves,” Dillingham said. “A lot of times there’s a lot of, ‘How are you supposed to talk to the media?’ What are you supposed to say?’ I just firmly believe in say what you believe. I’m not going to try to prevent our players from saying what they believe.”

Skattebo, who finished fifth in the Heisman Trophy voting, was asked repeatedly about facing the No. 1 Longhorns defense in Wednesday’s game and said, “They continue to keep saying that people are going to try to stop me. There’s nobody out there that can stop me.”

Leavitt recently said he was looking forward to squaring off against Quinn Ewers and proving “why I’m the better quarterback.”

Dillingham pointed out both players had an uphill climb to get to where they are, and at times were the only ones who believed they could make it this far. This is especially true for Skattebo, who started out taking the FCS route at Sacramento State before getting an opportunity with the Sun Devils. He had a breakthrough season this year, rushing for 1,568 yards and 19 touchdowns while catching 37 passes for 506 yards and three touchdowns.

“Nobody thought he was on an NFL draft board going into the year. If he didn’t have that own self-belief in himself that he believes he’s the best, then who else would have his entire life?” Dillingham said. “So when people ask him a question, and he gives you the truth of what he believes, because his belief is what got him here, and then people twist it on him as if he’s being cocky or confident, that’s not the nature of what he’s trying to say.

“What he’s trying to say is, ‘My entire life I was the only one who believed in me.’ I’m not changing that.”

Leavitt was the 2022 Gatorade Oregon Football Player of the Year but rated a three-star recruit with a handful of power-conference offers. He transferred to Arizona State this season after one year at Michigan State.

“Those guys have a lot of self-belief because there was a point with the chip on their shoulder that they were one of the only people that believed in themselves,” Dillingham said. “If you’re a competitor and you don’t believe you’re the best, are you really a competitor?

“Those are just two really, really competitive people. It’s nothing about the opponent. It’s about their own self-belief. Sam probably thinks he could beat Michael Jordan in basketball. Skatt thinks he’s probably the great running back of all time. Sometimes when you verbalize those things, it gets twisted in a negative light. But I’m happy that we have those guys on our team because they’re ultra-competitors, and I have their back.”

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