Five Questions with Dave Poulin

NHL.com's Q&A feature called "Five Questions With …" runs every Tuesday. We talk to key figures in the game and ask them questions to gain insight into their lives, careers and the latest news.
This special Sunday Winter Classic Edition features TSN hockey analyst, former NHL player and University of Notre Dame alum Dave Poulin:

Dave Poulin doesn't bleed blue and gold, but there's no mistaking his feelings about the University of Notre Dame.
"From a beautiful, picturesque standpoint, it rivals anything in terms of its beauty," Poulin said.
Poulin played four seasons at Notre Dame (1978-82), and after a 13-season NHL career with the Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Bruins and Washington Capitals, he returned to his alma mater in 1995 and coached the Fighting Irish for 10 seasons.
He'll be back on campus, this time as a fan, to see the Boston Bruins play the Chicago Blackhawks in the
2019 Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic
at Notre Dame Stadium on Jan. 1 (1 p.m. ET; NBC, SN, TVAS).
Poulin has been to outdoor games before. He played for the Flyers in the alumni game at the 2012 Winter Classic at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, and he watched as vice president of hockey operations for the Toronto Maple Leafs at the 2014 Winter Classic at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, Michigan. But the 2019 Winter Classic will be extra special for him.
"The way they do things, there'll be a magical sense to it," Poulin said. "Every football game you go to, it's an event, every aspect of it. I'm sure the university will do this game in exactly the same manner. And the NHL, they've figured it out to a pretty good degree, how to do these games."
Here are Five Questions with ... Dave Poulin
Could you ever have imagined a hockey rink being dropped into the middle of Notre Dame Stadium?
"Absolutely. I remember the first football game we played, we had a pretty good quarterback named Joe Montana. Looking at the stadium, the uniqueness, there's no space around the field, no track around the field. It was built for football only so it's a very limited space. From the end zone to the start of the stadium is minimal distance. And from the sidelines outward to the start of the brick structure ... what you think is, a rink would fit perfect in here because it's so tiny. I was in the Big House (Michigan Stadium) in 2014, the Maple Leafs-Detroit game, and that's a massive stadium and the space outside the stadium has a full track, so it's so significant. This one doesn't. That's the uniqueness of it. I think the rink is going to look great in there."

How did you go from Timmins, Ontario, to Notre Dame?
"We had a big-time player on my Tier-2 junior team. He was being recruited by everyone; he was a straight-A student, so all the schools were coming up to see him. And I had generated interest from the [Ivy League schools], Cornell specifically, and it grew from there. He got letters from Notre Dame maybe in October, early November, and I remember the big, gold "ND" on the envelope and it was sitting on his stall in the locker room and I said, 'What's up with that?' He said, 'I'm getting letters from everybody.' I said, 'Are you going to use that?' He said, 'No, I'm going to Michigan State.' So I said, 'Can I have that letter?' And he said, 'Yeah, sure.' So I took that letter and it had an information sheet on it. I filled it out and wrote a cover letter saying thank you for your interest in me as a player and sent it in.
"You were allowed six recruiting trips at the time, so I picked three schools in the East and three in the Midwest. ... The break of it all is I went to Notre Dame first on my recruiting trip. I arrived on a Saturday morning, it was freezing cold, February, and I called my dad -- and I was going to be the first one from the family to go to college -- and said I'm going to tell them I'm going to come here. So I didn't take the other five trips."
If you were to take someone around campus who never had visited, what are the first spots you'd take them to?
"You start right in the middle at the (Golden) Dome. That's the head administration building, and that's the original college. Just to the left is the Basilica (of the Sacred Heart). I've been in basilicas all over the world and cathedrals and it's as stunning and beautiful as anyone I've ever been in worldwide, and that includes the Vatican, Notre Dame in Paris, all the way to Notre Dame in Montreal. And then the Grotto (of Our Lady of Lourdes) is just below that. The Grotto is a replica of the famous Grotto (in France). Those are probably the starting points."
How did Notre Dame prepare you for the NHL?
"It was the discipline of the place. It was a really competitive place academically and athletically. I was a good student, wasn't a great student, but I was in an environment with a lot of great students. A lot of how I learned to compete in the classroom helped me immensely on the ice. And then the break of it all was my sophomore year. I had a great freshman year, and the start of my sophomore year I got meningitis. It really kicked me bad. I ended up playing games that year but [I was] just was a shell of myself, lost a lot of weight, and that summer I stayed at summer school to catch up. That's when the whole lifting and conditioning went to a different level for me. I trained with the football team in the summer and it was like, I just totally bought into it. And that became a real conditioning drive. I was really tiny, I was a late bloomer growing, but that filled out the physical side."
You coached Notre Dame to its first NCAA Tournament berth in 2004. Did that accomplishment mean more to you as an alum?
"I think so, the pride part of it. And to this day, the pride of seeing where the program is now, as a nationally competitive program, top-10 program every year and vying for a national championship. (The Fighting Irish lost to Minnesota Duluth in the 2018 championship game.)
"When I got back in 1995 I was still operating with 12 scholarships and everyone else had 18. Gradually we just kept going. It's been through some different phases. Now you look at Compton Ice Arena and it's a magnificent facility, the rival of any facility in the country. You look at the program, you look at the success they've had and say well, that's always been there. But it hasn't always been there. There were a lot of steps along the way and a lot of people involved."