[Click here for the audio version: Hunwick 3-30-12]

Two years ago, Michigan’s hockey team was in danger of snapping its record 19-straight NCAA tournament bids.  They finished seventh in their league – unheard of, for Michigan – so the only way to keep the streak alive was to win six straight league playoff games to get an automatic NCAA bid.

Oh, and they had to do it with a back-up goalie named Shawn Hunwick, a 5-foot-6 walk-on who had never started a college game.  It didn’t look good.

But the kid caught fire.  Michigan won all six games, stretched its streak to 20 straight NCAA tournaments, and Hunwick won the league tournament MVP.  This never happens.

The next season, head coach Red Berenson alternated goalies until he had to pick one to play in the Big Chill game at Michigan’s football stadium – which would be the largest crowd ever to watch a hockey game, anywhere.  He picked Bryan Hogan, but in warm ups, Hogan pulled a muscle, so Berenson threw Hunwick in the net at the last minute.  The kid beat Michigan State, 5-0, and a star was re-born.

Once again, Hunwick took his team on a wild ride, finishing with eight straight wins to steal the conference crown on the last night.  Michigan made all the way to the NCAA finals – where the Wolverines went to overtime, and lost again.

Hunwick finished with the best statistics of any goalie in the league – but the league voters inexplicably left him off the first and second all-star teams.

His coaches and teammates were smarter.  They knew, going into this season, Hunwick was the key.  The Wolverines won just one game in November, then took 80-percent of the rest, to earn the NCAA tournament’s second overall seed.

There was no Cinderella talk anymore.  Hunwick set school records for goals-against-average and save percentage.  Most jobs in sports are hard to measure, but not this one.  Who’s the best free-throw shooter?  The guy who makes the most free throws.  Who cares how tall he is or what his form looks like?  The ball goes in the hoop.

And that’s how you’d think they’d measure goaltending.  Who’s the best one?  The guy who stops the puck the most.  But the league once again snubbed Hunwick – who didn’t seem to care.

A year before Bo Schembechler died, he said the best player he ever coached was not one of his dozens of All-Americans, but a 5-9 walk-on named Donnie Warner, who rose to become a starting defensive lineman.  Bo said the kid took what God gave him— “which, frankly, wasn’t very much” —and used it to cover everything He didn’t.  Warner simply would not let anyone – not even Bo Schembechler – talk him out of his dreams.

Using Bo’s yardstick, you’d have to conclude Shawn Hunwick just might be the greatest hockey player in Michigan history.

Yet, on Friday night, Michigan got knocked out of the NCAA tournament in overtime a third straight year, this time to Cornell.  When Hunwick saw the puck in the back of his net, he told me, “two years ago I would have pulled it out and shot it into the crowd.”  Instead, Hunwick picked up the puck, and skated it over to Cornell’s bench.  “I figured they might want to keep it.”  Cornell’s head coach called the gesture the “classiest thing I’ve seen in 25 years of coaching.”

On Tuesday night, I interviewed Hunwick on the radio about his plans.  He hadn’t been drafted, he didn’t have an agent – unheard of for such a good goalie — and thought he might play a year or two in the minors or Europe, “but obviously not the NHL.  Then, move on.”

But a funny thing happened.  The very next morning, the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets’ starting goalie injured himself in practice, so they called to see if little Shawn Hunwick could be their back up goalie that night, against the Red Wings.  Hunwick decided to skip his astronomy class, drive his 1992 pick up truck to Columbus, and suit up for the Blue Jackets – wearing his maize-and-blue pads and winged-helmet.

This never happens.

The next day, Thursday, the Blue Jackets signed him for the rest of the NHL season.Another impossible dream had come true, and still more could follow.

A long shot?  Sure. But would you care to bet against him?

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