The Dean
His list of achievements in the college hockey circuit places him among the elite in the coaching ranks. He is not only the winningest coach in Badger history in any sport, but he is the WCHA’s most victorious.
Jeff Sauer spent 31 years behind the collegiate bench, including 20 in charge of the Badger hockey program. Since beginning his coaching career in 1966 as a 23-year-old assistant to the legendary Bob Johnson at Colorado College, Sauer is the only person in WCHA annals to coach 30 seasons in the league and is also its winningest.
Sauer holds numerous WCHA coaching records including those for longevity and for most games coached (1,244). His 655 wins rank eighth on the NCAA all-time coaches victory list.
At Wisconsin
In his 20 years at the UW, Sauer enjoyed unprecedented success. No coach won more UW games (489) or coached in more contests (841).
He became the first coach in college history to win a national title in his inaugural season at a school when the 1982–83 Badgers won the school’s fourth NCAA championship. His second national title came during the 1989–90 season when his team went 36-9-1 to record the school’s second-winningest season in history.
Sauer recorded four 30-win seasons (1982–83, 1987–88, 1989–90, 1999–2000), the most of any UW coach.
In WCHA play, the UW finished in the league’s top three 14 times during his tenure, winning league titles in 1990 and 2000.
Many of Sauer’s former players received national honors and went onto successful careers in pro hockey. Seventeen earned All-America honors, and names like Chelios, Driver, Flatley, Granato, Joseph, Mellanby and Richter adorned NHL jerseys for decades after playing collegiately for Sauer at Wisconsin.
The Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, born and St. Paul, Minnesota, raised Sauer went into the UW Athletics Hall of Fame in 2016.
Internationally Speaking...
One of the most-respected coaches in the game, he was a consummate diplomat for hockey — from instructing kids at summer camps, to speaking at high school assemblies and coaching international-level athletes in world tournaments.
Most recently, Sauer coached the U.S. sledge hockey team to gold at the 2014 Paralympics in Sochi, Russia.
He was president of the American Hearing Impaired Hockey Association. He helped select the last five U.S. Deaflympic Ice Hockey Teams, while leading the team as head coach in the last three Winter Deaflympics, including a gold medal at the 2007 Deaflympics in Salt Lake City, Utah.
In the summer of 2000, Sauer was honored by USA Hockey, when he received the JOFA/USA Hockey Distinguished Achievement Award. The award is given annually to a U.S. citizen who has made hockey his or her profession and has made outstanding contributions, on or off the ice, to the sport in America.
In 2011, Sauer was honored by the NHL as a winner of the Lester Patrick Trophy for contributions to hockey in the United States.
In 2014, Sauer secured one of hockey’s highest honors with his induction into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.
In August of 2000, Sauer coached his first-ever women’s team at the women’s Olympic Festival in Lake Placid, N.Y. Olympian Cammi Granato (a sister to former Badgers Tony, Don and Rob and a cousin to Kevin) was one of his players, becoming the fifth member of the Granato family to be coached by Sauer.
In August of 1998, Sauer was head coach for the inaugural WCHA All-Star Team that competed against elite teams from Germany and Switzerland in the Kolin Cup Tournament in Switzerland. It was the first time in collegiate hockey conference history that a league sent an all-star team overseas.
As an Assistant
Sauer began his coaching career at Colorado College as an assistant to the 'Badger' Bob Johnson. In addition to his coaching duties with the hockey program, Sauer was also an assistant baseball coach, a sport he played and lettered in as an undergraduate at CC.
In 1968, he followed Johnson to Wisconsin becoming his first full-time assistant at the UW. Sauer was an assistant coach for the Badgers when the UW made its first-ever appearance in the NCAA tournament in 1970. He served in that capacity until 1971, when he accepted the head coaching job at Colorado College.
At CC, where he served as head coach from 1971–82, Sauer won 166 games and was twice named WCHA Coach of the Year. His first award came following his rookie season, and the second followed the 1974-75 campaign when Colorado College posted a 23-16-0 record. The Tigers’ third-place WCHA finish that season was the highest in 15 years for a CC team.
