Scott Owens (ice hockey)

Scott Owens (born March 7, 1956) is a retired American ice hockey player and coach. Owens finished a long coaching career in 2014 when he resigned as head coach of Colorado College.

Career

Scott Owens made his first appearance for the Colorado College Tigers during the 1975–76 season during one of their better (though still nominally bad) periods.^[1] While none of his four years saw CC finish with a winning record, they did earn their only conference title in school history in 1978. Once he had graduated Owens became a player-assistant coach with TSV Kottern, which played in varying levels of West Germany's amateur leagues, for five years before returning to North America.

Owens' next job came in his home town if Madison as General manager for the newly formed Madison Capitols.^[2] After two seasons in that position Owens added the responsibilities as head coach to he duties with the Capitols, and under his leadership the team routinely finished in the top half of league standings. Owens left after the 1989–90 season to accept a position at Wisconsin as an assistant under his old head coach Jeff Sauer and moved back to his alma mater in the same capacity the following season. After four more seasons with the Tigers Owens headed back to the USHL as head coach of the Des Moines Buccaneers.^[3]

Despite a rocky start that saw his first losing record as a head coach, Owen's tenure in Des Moines was even more successful than his time with the Capitols. In his third year the Buccaneers won the Anderson Cup as the best regular season team and followed it up with a repeat performance in addition to a Clark Cup for winning the league title. Now a proven champion, Owens matriculated back to Colorado Springs to take over as head coach. With the departed Don Lucia having revived the moribund program Owens stepped in and had immediate success, making the NCAA three straight seasons early on.^[4] The fourth year culminated with Peter Sejna, a player Owens had coached in and recruited from Des Moines, winning the Hobey Baker Award, the first in school history.^[5]

Two years later Owens has his best season with Colorado College, winning 31 games and marching all the way into the 2005 Frozen Four and earning CC its second Hobey Baker winner, Marty Sertich. After the huge success in the early years Colorado College began to slip back into the rest of the pack. While still recording winning seasons over the next seven years, CC would only top 20 wins three times and win only one more game in the NCAA Tournament before CC posted its first losing season in 20 years at 18-19-5 in 2012–13. The following year was much worse as the Tigers won only seven games and after it was over Owens stepped down as head coach after 15 seasons.^[6] At the time of his retirement Owens was both the longest tenured and winngest coach in Colorado College's ice hockey program history. Though it isn't clear whether his retirement is permanent or not, Owens has yet to accept another coaching position.^[7]

College Head Coaching record^[8]

References

External links

• Scott Owens's career statistics at The Internet Hockey Database
• Scott Owens's career statistics at EliteProspects.com