Career arc led Brad Frost to national titles with Gophers women's hockey

DURHAM, N.H. – Long before this trip to the NCAA Women's Frozen Four, long before he helped turn the Gophers into a dynasty, Brad Frost was a skinny winger from Canada on one of the worst teams in college hockey.

Frost grew up with three brothers in the hockey-obsessed Toronto suburb of Burlington, Ontario. Their father is a Bethel University alum who met their mother while living in Minnesota. So when it came time for college, Frost crossed the border and picked that Arden Hills school, too.

"I was never recruited or anything," Frost said. "I just showed up and introduced myself to the coach."

Pete Aus, then Bethel's coach, had done his homework after hearing about the 5-9, 150-pound Frost.

"After I got the job, I called his house, and his aunt answered," Aus said. "I said, 'Is he any good?' And she said, 'I don't know, but he has trophies all over the place.' "

Frost, 42, has added to that collection at Minnesota, winning three of the past four national titles. The Gophers are shooting for another one this weekend, but they're underdogs heading into Friday's NCAA semifinal against Wisconsin.

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That's a familiar role for Frost, who spent some lean seasons at Division III Bethel. The Royals won only seven of their 64 MIAC games during his four years. But he became a captain, along with his best friend, Joel Johnson, who's now one of Frost's assistant coaches.

"We were awful," Johnson said. "Looking back, if someone would have asked, 'Would these guys ever be real good at hockey? No. But will they be good at impacting people in some positive ways?' I think people would have said, 'Yeah.' "

Divine plan

Frost said it had to be a divine plan that led to his position with the Gophers and charmed life with his wife, Dayna, and their three sons.

He has dual citizenship, with a Canadian-born father and a mother who hails from Wayzata. Frost knew he wanted to teach and coach when he was in high school. So he got his education degree at Bethel and began teaching at Northview Elementary School in Eagan.

He moved to New Life Academy in Woodbury, where he served as volleyball coach and eventually met his wife.

"Dayna's sister, Carrie, was on my volleyball team," Frost said. "Dayna had long graduated, but that's how we met."

Frost spent four years as the Eagan girls' JV coach. Meanwhile, Johnson became an assistant coach for the Gophers under Laura Halldorson. In 2000, Frost got a fateful chance to work with those two at a summer hockey camp in Detroit Lakes.

"That was good because I had an opportunity to get to know [Frost] both on and off the ice," Halldorson said. "He is so positive and outgoing and upbeat, and just always sees the best in people."

Frost returned to Bethel that year to work as an assistant coach under Aus with the men's hockey team. When Halldorson lost one of her assistants to the military that December, she called Aus, who recommended Frost, just as he had with Johnson a few years earlier.

Frost worked as a Gophers assistant under Halldorson for seven years, and the Gophers delivered NCAA titles in 2004 and 2005 before missing the NCAA tournament in 2007.

When Halldorson resigned that August, then-athletics director Joel Maturi didn't have time for a national search. So he named Frost the interim coach and then removed the interim tag after the Gophers went 27-7-4 that season.

"That's how I got here," Frost said. "I always say, 'It's a God thing.' "

Culture change

Early in Frost's tenure, Wisconsin and Minnesota Duluth were the nation's top powers. Frost's first four teams were good, but they combined to go 2-4 in the NCAA tournament without reaching the finals.

A turning point came in 2010, when Frost rehired Johnson, who had returned to Bethel and helped Aus resurrect that program. The Royals had gone from cellar-dwellers, when Frost and Johnson played, to MIAC champions in 2007.

Frost wanted Johnson's help to change the Gophers' culture.

"We would hold our banquet, and players and parents would still be super ticked off that we didn't win the national tournament," Frost said. "And I'm sitting there going, 'We had an unbelievable year. Why is everyone so upset?' And it was because I was the one saying we basically had to win or it's a failure of a season."

Taking a page from Bethel's football team, Frost and Johnson came up with four core values for the Gophers: being tough, grateful, disciplined and devoted. Starting in 2011, the team spent its preseason retreat discussing how to make those values a part of each player's daily checklist, on and off the ice.

The Gophers responded with an NCAA title in 2012, their first in seven years. They won another title the next year, going 41-0. After losing the 2014 national title game to Clarkson, they won another crown last season.

In January, Frost passed Halldorson as the Gophers' winningest coach. Now in his ninth season, he is 291-45-22.

"I'm just proud of him," Halldorson said. "He's taken this program to another level, and done it the right way, in my opinion, with the right priorities. He's teaching life lessons and making a difference in these players' lives."

Said senior defenseman Milica McMillen: "The coaches treat us as students and as people before we're players. And if anything interferes with hockey, they'd rather us take care of that first."

But how long can all this last? Frost is in the third year of a five-year contract that pays him $180,000 this season. He said he has no aspirations to coach any other team, men's or women's.

"I just think there's such a big thing about being content where you are," he said. "And I feel like I'm at the premier women's hockey program in the whole country. Put it this way: I hope to retire here. That would be my ultimate goal."