Growing Into the Spotlight: The inconceivable rise of Shawn Hunwick

Sometimes you have to be reminded Shawn’s story isn’t a fairy tale.

Early in the extra period, Bulldog forward Kyle Schmidt slashed through a tired Michigan defense, picked up a feed in front of the net and beat Shawn glove-side.

Game, season, storybook ending all gone in an instant.

“It would have been a fairy tale.” Shawn said. “Not expecting to play at all and then playing in the national championship on your birthday.

“It would have been unbelievable.”

He still doesn’t like talking about it.

“I still think about it all the time,” Shawn said. “Every time you lace up your skates, you think, ‘I could be a national champion,’ but you’re not. It’s hard to get over.

“It definitely had the fairy-tale story, it had the beginning and the middle, it just didn’t have the end.”

But every so often, he lets himself remember what could have been.

“If you watch the YouTube video of that last goal, it probably has 500 views and 450 are probably from me,” he said. “I try not to watch it anymore now that we are in season, but in the summertime, I watched it countless times.

“It’s difficult. You don’t really expect a run like that, and when you get there … once you get there and you are that close, when you are one shot away, when you are one bounce away from winning … you never know if you are going to get back. So that’s your motivation. Eventually you have to move on.”

***

This season, for the first time in his Michigan career, Shawn is the guy. No more splitting time, no more looking behind his shoulder, no more worrying about the competition. Shawn is now the grizzled veteran in the net, trying to deliver the fairy tale for Michigan.

You would think that the most important position on the current top-ranked team in the country would be filled by a highly touted player, or at least someone who was recruited heavily. Some sort of a plan for the position, at the very least.

You’d be wrong.

The special thing about Shawn’s journey is that no one predicted it. Not Berenson, not Rich and Robin, not Matt.

Even Shawn didn’t imagine things working out this way. You can only dream so big.

This happening at a storied program with some of the best recruiting in the nation is inexplicable. How does a player who stumbles onto the team land himself atop Michigan’s all-time goals against average and save percentage?

“As a coach, it just shows you — we don’t know everything,” Berenson said. “You don’t know everything about your players, you don’t know what’s inside a kid and you don’t know what the possibilities are.”

Shawn is one of the players who lights the old coach’s eyes up. Berenson could seemingly go on for hours on end about him.

Shawn went to Ecuador this summer, building a school for children for more than a week. He played soccer with the kids, not hockey, and didn’t even bring a puck.

He didn’t go for the publicity or for Michigan; he went because that’s what a kid who is not changed one bit by success does. He isn’t concerned about going to the NHL, and he understands Michigan might be his career highlight.

He’s never felt entitled. So he lets backup goaltender Adam Janecyk get minutes because he knows how it feels to never get in a game. He credits everybody but himself for shutouts, no matter how many saves he had.

And perhaps most importantly, he understands how unbelievable his journey has been. When you watch Shawn’s ESPN documentary in 10 years, just remember his passion. He cares about Michigan hockey, even if Michigan hockey originally didn’t care about him.

“You just need to prepare yourself to get to a threshold, that if you are given the opportunity then you can succeed,” Shawn said. “You just have to wait for a break.”

When Berenson sat down with Shawn at the beginning of his Michigan career, he said that the door for playing time wasn’t closed, but it was cracked just an inch.

Five years later, Shawn has busted that door down.

“Thank God Shawn is small so he can fit through that crack,” Robin said. “He snuck through.”

Shawn Hunwick arrived at Michigan with zero fanfare. A few diehards on the message boards thought he was a wasted roster spot, but besides that, nobody cared.

He might just leave as the most memorable goalie in Michigan history.

The following story was originally published by The Michigan Daily on October 21, 2011. Visit http://tinyurl.com/umdaily-hunwick or go to michigandaily.com