By Dan­ny Barletta
The Dai­ly Campus
April 16, 2019

As head coach of the women’s hock­ey team, Chris Macken­zie has worked to reestab­lish a win­ning cul­ture in Storrs (Pho­to cour­tesy of UConn Athletics)

Some coach­es only care about their team’s record. It’s all about the wins and loss­es, the X’s and O’s and the per­for­mances on the field, ice or court.

For oth­er coach­es, like UConn women’s hock­ey coach Chris MacKen­zie, there are oth­er things that mat­ter more, such as cul­ture, team chem­istry and play­er devel­op­ment. MacKen­zie said that this mind­set has come with the years of expe­ri­ence he has in coaching.

“I would say ear­ly in my career, I was look­ing more at wins and loss­es,” MacKen­zie said in a per­son­al inter­view. “Just in the last few years, I’ve real­ly focused more on the cul­ture. The cul­ture piece is way more impor­tant to me than the actu­al results. I just real­ly think that once your cul­ture is set in place, the results will take care of themselves.”

That prob­a­bly explains why he stops to get the whole team ice cream if they sweep a series on the road. Or why he helped push a car out of a ditch on the side of the road in a snow­storm when the team was on its way up to Maine. He is cre­at­ing an atmos­phere for his play­ers to be able to suc­ceed on and off the ice.

His play­ers real­ly love play­ing for him too, and not just because of the ice cream. Junior for­ward Cather­ine Craw­ley said he was a big rea­son why she decid­ed to come to UConn and play.

“When he was recruit­ing me, his pas­sion and love for UConn real­ly drew me into the school,” Craw­ley said. “You can tell some­one loves their team and their job ver­sus when some­one sim­ply does a job for mon­ey, and Coach Mac absolute­ly loves com­ing to the rink every day. He also made me feel inspired that I could make an impact here at school.”

Sopho­more for­ward Savan­nah Bouzide said that his ener­gy and love for hock­ey make for an awe­some expe­ri­ence play­ing hock­ey at UConn.

“I love play­ing for Coach Mac, and I could­n’t imag­ine hav­ing any oth­er coach oth­er than him,” Bouzide said. “His love for the game is sec­ond to none, which makes play­ing for him so much more enjoy­able. His pos­i­tiv­i­ty and excite­ment makes me love com­ing to the rink everyday.”

MacKenzie’s love for hock­ey stretch­es back through most of his life, all the way to when he was grow­ing up in Nia­gara Falls, Ontario. He start­ed play­ing hock­ey at the age of 4, and some of his favorite child­hood mem­o­ries were when he would trav­el with his team­mates for hock­ey tournaments.

MacKen­zie grew up a huge New Jer­sey Dev­ils fan because his favorite play­er was “Mr. Dev­il” him­self, defense­man Ken Daneyko.

A good defense­man in his own right, MacKen­zie played col­lege hock­ey for Nia­gara Uni­ver­si­ty, where he was a four-year cap­tain and set school records for most goals, assists and points by a defenseman.

After col­lege, MacKen­zie played pro­fes­sion­al­ly for one year in Fin­land before going into coach­ing. He said he knew he want­ed to coach because in col­lege, both he and assis­tant coach Casey Han­dra­han worked at a hock­ey camp for 10 weeks in the sum­mer, and he real­ly loved teach­ing the game. Also, he said that he was inspired by his own coaches.

“I had great expe­ri­ences with the coach­es I had com­ing up, and I always thought I could do it,” MacKen­zie said. “Just see­ing, in my col­lege expe­ri­ence, how my coach­es there oper­at­ed, I real­ly liked it.”

MacKen­zie start­ed as an assis­tant coach for the UMass Low­ell men’s hock­ey team for eight years. Then, he went to his alma mater Nia­gara Uni­ver­si­ty to coach its women’s hock­ey team as a head coach for two years. Then, he spent one sea­son at Ohio State as the women’s hock­ey head coach before com­ing to UConn, where he has been the head coach for the past six seasons.

MacKen­zie said that UConn is a great place to coach and that he has found a home here.

“[UConn], hands down I think, respects female ath­letes on cam­pus beyond those oth­er schools that I’ve been at,” MacKen­zie said. “It real­ly val­ues what we bring to the depart­ment, acknowl­edges our suc­cess­es and sup­ports us through all challenges.”

While MacKen­zie tends to focus more on the team cul­ture and less on the results, the results have not been bad at all. He has coached to a 81–108-32 record in six sea­sons in Storrs, includ­ing the first two win­ning sea­sons for the pro­gram in this decade. He has led the team to the Hock­ey East Tour­na­ment in all six sea­sons, includ­ing an improb­a­ble run to the cham­pi­onship game in 2018, which he said was his favorite on-the-ice mem­o­ry of his time here so far.

MacKen­zie said the most reward­ing part of coach­ing is being a part of some­thing big­ger than him­self and hav­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pos­i­tive­ly impact somebody’s life. Craw­ley said that he has cer­tain­ly done that for her.

“He has helped me improve my lev­el of play tremen­dous­ly since I came in as a fresh­man,” Craw­ley said. “As a per­son, I have learned more about myself and my strengths as a per­son than I have in my entire life since being at UConn. I’ve gained more con­fi­dence in myself and also learned how to use my own strengths to my advantage.”

MacKen­zie said that the biggest chal­lenge of coach­ing is being con­fi­dent while being flexible.

“You have to have a cer­tain lev­el of con­fi­dence in what you’re doing but a cer­tain lev­el of doubt in that you need to find the best way,” MacKen­zie said. “Not your way or any­one else’s way. Find the best way for your program.”

He prac­tices what he preach­es. Bouzide said that MacKen­zie always lis­tens to the play­ers’ input regard­ing how to pre­pare for cer­tain games. This fur­ther shows the tight-knit fam­i­ly cul­ture that he instills in his team.

MacKen­zie said that it is so impor­tant for him to have a bal­ance between work­ing hard and hav­ing fun, and to remain con­sis­tent on both fronts.

“We’re work­ing hard to achieve our goals but we’re going to have fun doing it,” MacKen­zie said. “I think we’re cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment of growth.”

This envi­ron­ment is well-received by his play­ers, who seem to buy into his fam­i­ly-like culture.

“Coach Mac instills a cul­ture of hard-work and fam­i­ly,” Craw­ley said. “He has high expec­ta­tions for our team know­ing we can achieve any­thing because what you put in is what you get out. He gen­uine­ly cares about every one of us and goes out of his way to ensure we know that.”

MacKen­zie is able to get the most out of his play­ers because he cares about them and because he puts such an empha­sis on their indi­vid­ual growth. His men­tal­i­ty and approach to coach­ing gets his team good results on the ice but even bet­ter results off of it.

“If it’s an ear­ly morn­ing prac­tice or just a rough day for the team, we are always able to look to coach to give us that moti­va­tion to keep going,” Bouzide said. “His ener­gy is tru­ly contagious.”

When he’s not at the rink, MacKen­zie is spend­ing time with his fam­i­ly and get­ting involved with his own kids’ activ­i­ties, such as T‑ball for his son and horse rid­ing for his daugh­ter. Even when he is at work though, he said it doesn’t feel like work because he absolute­ly loves what he does.

“It beats a real job,” MacKen­zie said with a big smile.