The State of Hockey lost a legend.

Former Eveleth High School state champion, Olympic silver medalist and eight-time Minnesota state high school championship coach Willard Ikola passed away Monday night at age 92.

Ikola is best known in more recent years for his record eight state high school hockey champions with the Edina Hornets, a fixture behind the bench in his houndstooth hat. However, his legend began to grow as a player in the Minnesota State Hockey Tournament from 1947-50.

As a freshman goalie, his team lost in the semifinals in 1947. He never lost a high school game again. With Ikola in goal, Eveleth won state championships the next three years.

Ikola went on to play goalie for the University of Michigan, where he won two NCAA national championships. He later went on to win a silver medal in Cortina, Italy, with the 1956 U.S. Olympic team, alongside other Minnesota hockey legends like John Mayasich and former Gov. Wendell Anderson.

Even after retiring in 1991, Ikola continued to be a regular fixture in the crowd at Braemar Arena at Edina High School hockey games. A statue was unveiled outside the arena in 2020.

“It’s tough to win (a state championship) in high school hockey,” he told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS in a profile in 2016. “You know it’s a one-game elimination.”

He won 616 games, including eight state titles in 10 championship games. He said one of his two losses in the championship game stung the most. In 1970, Edina lost to Minneapolis Southwest 1-0.

“It was an undefeated team going in there and it was a senior team,” Ikola said. His teams won the state championship in 1969 and 1971, so many of those same players still won championships with the coach known simply as “Coach Ike.”

Ikola’s 33-year career at Edina was so long he started coaching the team on outdoor ice on the old Edina campus off Highway 100. They used to practice on nearby Lake Harvey. One of his favorite stories was about how they knew when the ice was safe to skate on. He would send the biggest kid on the team out to check it out. One player became known as “Paul the Ice Tester.”

“I’d say, ‘Go check the ice to see if it’s safe to go,’” he said with a smile. “He’d say, ‘OK coach.’ All of us would be watching hoping he wouldn’t disappear from us. And he’d skate and pretty soon he’d say, ‘Coach, it’s OK!’ Then we’d all go out there.

“Typical hockey guys. I might have gotten fired if someone went through the ice.”

For all his accomplishments, Ikola was also legendarily humble. When asked how he felt to be responsible for eight of Edina’s state championships, he answered in typical “Ike” fashion: “Well, I never scored a goal or stopped a puck, you know.”

One of the players from his first state championship team in 1969 says Ikola had a major impact on his life.

“I learned more about being and acting as an adult from Ike than anything else,” says former player Jim Knutson. “For example, his favorite saying to us, ‘You say little when you lose and less when you win.'”