Heart-to-heart talk fueled Salem hockey’s historic journey to Final 4

Magical mid-season high school hockey turn-arounds aren’t always ignited on the ice.

For Salem’s hockey team, the U-turn that steered it toward Friday and Saturday’s MHSAA Division 1 Final 4 unfolded in mid-January during a team-wide locker-room meeting.

At the time of the Jan. 17 confab, the Rocks were scuffling along with an un-Final 4-esque  5-10 record — disappointing to everyone involved in the program, considering their lofty pre-season expectations.

“I sat down with the entire team in mid-January and I spoke about how I felt our focus wasn’t totally on the aspect of winning all the time,” recounted Salem Head Coach Jake Sealy, a former standout player for the Rocks who took over the reins of the program three years ago.

“I explained how we had too many people worried about things like their shift times, their number of shifts, or whether they were getting the stats that show up online.

“It was a heart-to-heart talk about how if we were going to turn this thing around, everybody had to have the sole mindset that it didn’t matter who scored the goals, who got the assists. We had to develop the mindset that everybody had a part in this — from the top of the roster to the bottom.”

To say the meeting had a profound impact on the second half of the Rocks’ season would be an understatement.

On Jan. 18, Salem’s first post-meeting game, the Rocks defeated Brighton, 4-1 — a victory that would set the tone for a stretch of success in which Salem won nine of their next 11 games to surge into Friday’s 7:30 p.m. Division 1 semifinal game against Howell at the USA Hockey Arena in Plymouth Township.

Here’s what led to Rocks’ renaissance

Following the meeting, the Rocks started adhering to the message emphasized in a passage written by renowned sports psychologist Dr. Keith Bell titled “Winning Isn’t Normal”.

“The message of ‘Winning Isn’t Normal’ is basically nothing is given to you; you can’t train like everybody else. You have to train harder and longer than everybody else,” said senior Captain Nolan Kaminski. “Since then we’ve competed harder, put more into every puck battle and trying to win every detail of the game.”

Fellow Captain Cam Eichner recalled sitting in the stands at USA Hockey Arena last March watching the MHSAA Division 1 Final 4 and envisioning the Rocks playing in the sport’s premier showcase in 2025.

“With our talent and the way our regional stacked up, I really thought we had a shot to make it to the Final 4,” Eichner said. “To actually make it, it’s an unreal feeling.

“When we were struggling back in December, Nolan and I would text each other for hours after a loss, trying to figure out what we could do to turn this season around. It was frustrating. But once we all started playing for one another, everything fell into place.”

Owners of a somewhat modest 14-12 record heading into Friday, the Rocks understand that the high school hockey community throughout Michigan undoubtedly looks at them as underdogs.

Underdogs? ‘Not us’ Rocks insist

Salem players and coaches would like to politely disagree with that assessment.

“I know a lot of people are surprised we’re one of the four teams left in Division 1, but, honestly, I’m not surprised,” said Sealy.

“We pride ourselves on playing a top-10 schedule during the regular season to prepare ourselves for the tournament. First of all, we play in the KLAA, which is without question one of the top leagues in Michigan. Plus, we played a very competitive non-conference schedule that included mostly top-20 teams.”

Salem is the first team from the three-school Plymouth-Canton Education Park to ever advance to the MHSAA Final 4 since hockey became a varsity sport in 1999 — a remarkable accomplishment, Sealy noted, given the not-so-subtle adversities P-CEP teams face.

Overcoming adversities

“Players from most of the perennially successful high school hockey teams in Michigan come from one community — for instance, Trenton and Hartland — or they play for private schools like Catholic Central, which draw players from several communities,” Sealy said.

“We’re at a slight disadvantage because if a student-athlete who lives in Canton or Plymouth wants to play for Salem, there’s only a 33% chance that’s going to happen because everybody has to enter the three-school draw. That would be like a player wanting to play for Hartland drawing Howell. It makes what this team has done even more impressive, in my opinion.”

When asked to name the most-memorable moment of their magical 2024-25 season, both Kaminski and Eichner mentioned the Rocks’ 4-2 victory over Plymouth in last month’s regional final game.

“When Dom Chaput scored the go-ahead goal late in the third period against Plymouth, that was it for me,” said Kaminski. “Beating Plymouth was an unreal feeling.”

“Plymouth got us earlier in the year, so to win that game was huge,” Eichner added.

Adhering to superstitions

Kaminski, who played for Victory Honda’s AAA team throughout his first three years of high school before joining Salem for his final year, admitted he’s a bit superstitious when it comes to hockey.

“I always try to take a nap before our games,” said Kaminski, who netted four goals in Salem’s 7-4 quarterfinal win over Brighton. “After our recent streak started, I decided to wear the same clothes when I took my pre-game naps. And I’m always thinking, ‘What did I do before our last win? I need to keep doing that’.”

On Friday afternoon, a few hours before Salem battles Howell for an opportunity to play in Saturday’s MHSAA D1 championship game, you can count on Kaminski taking a nap in his usual napping clothes.

Just don’t wake him up until he’s absorbed enough ZZZ’s.

The huge legion of Salem hockey fans don’t want any distractions during what has evolved into a dream season.

Ed Wright can be reached at 734-664-4657 or edwright@socialhousenews.com.