Sports

Lumberjacks alum Penner wins NJCAA award

By Matthew Semisch

05/06/2014

The Dakota College at Bottineau’s hockey program’s most famous alumnus picked up a major honor last month from the nation’s governing body for junior college athletics.

Dustin Penner played for the Lumberjacks between 2000 and 2002 when the school was still named Minot State University-Bottineau. Now, he is one of four recipients of the 2014 National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Achievement Award.

The award, embodied in a plaque, is given to former NJCAA student-athletes who have gone on to play in professional, national, international or Olympic competition.

The plaque from the NJCAA is currently in the possession of DCB head coach Travis Rybchinski, who will be sending it to Penner.

A Winkler, Manitoba native, Penner broke into the National Hockey League in the 2005-06 season with the then Mighty Ducks of Anaheim - they became simply the Anaheim Ducks the following season - while also spending some time that season with the Portland Pirates of the American Hockey League.

The AHL is one step down from and feeds into the NHL in a farm club system similar to that in professional baseball.

Penner played for the Ducks in 2006-07 before joining the Edmonton Oilers for four seasons. He then spent another three with the Los Angeles Kings before returning to the Ducks this past season before being traded to the Washington Capitals on March 4.

Penner is a two-time Stanley Cup champion, having won hockey’s ultimate prize first with the Ducks in 2007 and then again with the Kings in 2012.

He was a late developer physically, though, and it wasn’t until after his time at MSU-Bottineau and then at the University of Maine that he really bulked up, but his potential was already on display when he played for the Lumberjacks.

However, according to Gary Warren, Penner’s coach during his first year in Bottineau before Warren took a coaching role at Minnesota-Crookston, Penner’s first year here was just about keeping his hockey career alive.

“He was a good solid player and certainly had potential,” Warren said, “Which a lot of kids have at that age, and he was a true freshman when he came to me and, quite honestly, he owes quite a lot to his cousin Darryl who helped him get placed here at that little school because it kept his hockey-playing days alive.

“(Dustin has) said himself that it got to the final days where he could register at school to almost about the last hour, and even then he was contemplating staying home and working in a cabinet factory in Winkler, and he came to us through his cousin.”

Penner was occasionally a healthy scratch early on in his first season, but building a role for himself on the ice with the Lumberjacks, he broke his femur during a knee-on-knee hit in a game with only a handful of them left in the season ahead of the NJCAA national tournament.

“He was developing as the year went on coming out of the high school ranks in Manitoba,” Warren continued, “And he was starting to generate things and accelerate as the season went on, and then it ended short with that injury, but he had potential.”

Rybchinski’s first year at the helm was Penner’s second and final year with the Lumberjacks. Penner performed well in that 2001-02 season, scoring 20 goals and picking up 13 assists for 33 points in 23 games.

This, by the way, was all well before Penner was at his current playing weight of 242 pounds. Since leaving Bottineau, he’s grown a lot more into himself than he had been as a Lumberjack.

“It was my first year of coaching so I didn’t always know what I was doing,” Rybchinski joked, “But he was a good person and he worked hard.

“He could always bury the puck but his skating struggled sometimes and he was just a late bloomer. When I first started coaching him, he couldn’t have weighed more than 160 pounds and was probably 180 when he left Bottineau, and now he’s playing at about 240.”

In winning the NJCAA Achievement Award, Penner joins incredibly good company from around the sporting world. 1980 United States Olympic hockey team goaltender Jim Craig, Minnesota Twins legend Kirby Puckett and baseball color barrier-breaker Jackie Robinson are all on the list of past winners of the award.

His post-high school hockey career all started in Bottineau, and Warren credited MSU-Bottineau’s and now DCB’s hockey program’s philosophies for the foundation Penner was able to build here.

“We had a philosophy where you wipe the slate clean and give kids an opportunity whether good, bad or indifferent,” Warren said, “And you look at them that way, and that’s what made that program what it’s been.

“It’s a development-type thing where kids can really grow in that environment, and the community and the school embraces their athletes.”

Penner and the Capitals haven’t responded to interview requests from the Bottineau Courant. However, Penner did release to the media a brief video through the Capitals accepting the NJCAA award.

“Thanks to everybody at the NJCAA board for selecting me for this honor,” Penner said in the video. “I’m very flattered and it’s nice to be appreciated, and I hope the league’s still going strong.

“And long live those Lumberjacks.”