Eric Weinrich didn’t have any interest in playing his college hockey at the University of Maine. It didn’t matter that the big defenseman was from Gardiner. While playing at North Yarmouth Academy, Weinrich was drawing attention from schools around the country.

Especially from an assistant coach at Michigan State named Shawn Walsh.

“I used to get no less than five or six letters a week from him, just news clippings about the Michigan State program,” Weinrich said. “By the time he had taken over at Maine, I felt like I knew him personally. We had never met face to face, and I don’t know if we’d even talked on the phone.”

This week marked 25 years since Walsh died on Sept. 24, 2001, after a 15-month battle with kidney cancer. Walsh coached the Black Bears from 1984 until his death, turning the team into a college hockey power. His presence is still felt every day in the University of Maine hockey program. Not just because his name is on the Shawn Walsh Hockey Center at Alfond Arena, and not because you can’t help but think of Walsh when you see the two national championship banners hanging above the student section in Alfond, won by teams he coached in 1993 and 1999.

Walsh’s imprint is all over the Black Bear program, especially when the team is at its peak, playing gritty two-way hockey and grinding out every shift. Walsh emphasized that style whether he had the uber talented 1992-93 squad, where managing egos was as important as hockey Xs and Os, or if he had the 1998-99 team that Ben Guite, now the head coach at Bowdoin and a member of that team, called the land of broken toys.

“He understood the type of student, the type of athlete, who could succeed at Maine,” Guite said.

Weinrich sees a lot of Walsh in Maine’s current coach, Ben Barr.

“Except maybe a little less brash (than Walsh), but I think the excitement surrounding what he’s doing and the way he handles himself reminds me so much of how Shawn ran the program and how the players responded to him,” said Weinrich, who left Maine to join the U.S. national team for the 1988 Winter Olympics in Calgary before playing 1,157 NHL games during a 20-year pro career.

“The feeling you get when you’re around Ben, his charisma, his energy. It’s just like something he does, he can command the respect of his players,” Weinrich said. “I just see it on the ice, the way that they perform. They’re so detailed, and it just reminds me so much of the Shawn Walsh teams.”

Weinrich says it was Walsh’s attention to detail that was the deciding factor in his choosing Maine. Weinrich and his parents made a recruiting trip to Orono early in his senior year at North Yarmouth Academy. Alfond was packed and loud, and hanging from the student section, a banner read “Maine wants Eric W.”

That atmosphere, being wanted as an important piece of building something, that was all Weinrich needed to make his college decision.

“I’m sure he orchestrated this,” Weinrich said. “They rolled out the red carpet. He did everything that made it so enticing for a kid to come (to Maine) … Whether he rubbed people the wrong way or not, he made it a place where every kid in the country wanted to go.”

Walsh was far from perfect. He was suspended for a year, from Christmas 1995 to Christmas 1996, for multiple violations unearthed during an NCAA investigation. He owned his mistakes, and he was determined to bring Maine back to the top of college hockey after serving his punishment.

Guite was a freshman when Walsh returned to the bench midway through the 1996-97 season.

“He was a thorn in everybody’s side as far as his competitiveness. He was willing to outwork everybody else,” Guite said. “He demanded your best every day.”

That tenacity is a hallmark of what Barr is trying to accomplish at Maine now. After the Black Bears won the Hockey East title in 2025, last season was a step back. Success and expectations make an 18-14-3 record feel underwhelming. With the 2026-27 season starting next weekend, there’s a reset happening for the Black Bears.

“I know Ben’s got his back against the wall with the NIL money and those kinds of things. But when a player goes up there and plays a game there or just sits in the stands and watches a game, you come away with some excitement,” Weinrich said. “It’s an incredible place to play, and I’ve heard that from many kids I’ve crossed paths with over the last 15-20 years.”

Maine is holding events throughout the season to honor the 50th anniversary of Alfond Arena. Weinrich hopes they honor Walsh, too. He didn’t build the rink, but he built the teams that made it one of the best atmospheres in college hockey.

In the way he battled cancer, in the way he fought to turn a college hockey outpost into a national contender, Walsh showed what tenacity in the face of adversity can achieve, whether the adversity is of your own making or when it’s out of your control. Twenty-five years after his death, on the verge of another hockey season, it’s good to be reminded of that.