The year was 1999, and Penn State coach Guy Gadowsky, then with Alaska Fairbanks, had just taken what may have been the worst loss of his entire career.

It’s a defeat that still shapes his teams, some 19 years after it happened.

Gadowsky’s Nanooks had fallen 3-0 in an early November matchup against a Michigan State team led by the late Ron Mason, whose 924 wins rank second all-time. The game wasn’t nearly as close as the score indicated.

“We had zero chance, like zero. I'd never been beat that bad in my entire life,” Gadowsky said.

After the game, in his first season as a college hockey head coach, Gadowsky sought advice from the coaching legend who had just picked his team apart so thoroughly.

What Mason told Gadowsky became a cornerstone of Penn State’s young program.

“Once your best player becomes your best leader, and they all follow him, you're done.”

With those words, Gadowsky began to transform from a young micro-manager to the coach he is now — the one who lets the players police themselves.

“The fact that he works with us makes us want to run through a wall for him,” captain Chase Berger said.

Gadowsky said last season he only occasionally spoke to 2016-17 captain James Robinson, leaving leadership responsibilities to the man known affectionately around the program as “Jimmy Pucks.”

As Gadowsky has matured, the space between himself and player leadership has widened. For the most part, he leaves the locker room to take care of itself.

It’s a tactic that resonates with his players.

“I think it's awesome,” Berger said. “I think behind closed doors he kind of vocalizes what he expects out of the captains and the team as a whole, and I think then he gives us the freedom to kind of express that however we want.

“For instance, it's the leader's job to make sure we're having good starts and be ready to go, but he's not telling us you've got to do this, this and this. He respects that everybody's different and has a different way of leading.”

Berger said he finds Gadowsky’s willingness to be flexible based on the feedback he receives from his players particularly important.

In his 20th season at the helm of a college hockey program, Gadowsky is a veteran head coach. But his label comes without the stiff upper lip and general unwillingness to adapt that often accompany it.

For instance, after last season, several players came to Gadowsky with ideas about how the Nittany Lions could get the most out of their practice time, Berger said.

Just one offseason later, those changes have already been made.

“We've always practiced hard, but I think it's going a little bit longer, making sure our conditioning's a little better,” Berger said. “We're working a little bit more skill stuff, which we always have, but they just invested some money in some really, really high-end products to give us everything possible to get better.”

So Gadowsky, having pumped life into previously hapless programs at Alaska Fairbanks and Princeton and built one from the ground up at Penn State, must have found some truth in Mason’s words in order to let his players make such important dictations, right?

“One hundred percent,” Gadowsky said. “I think it's more than one [player]. You can't just have a player. When your best players are the best leaders, it's amazing how much easier it makes our staff’s jobs. It's just true.”

The way Gadowsky figures, few people have more of an influence on the lives of a college player than his teammates over the course of their four years in school.

They attend classes together, they practice together, they live together. To Gadowsky, that makes them more fit to lead each other.

“It means a lot when a guy who you know is going through the same things as you are speaks up,” senior goaltender Chris Funkey said.

And that’s something that awaits every Penn State player when he steps inside the dressing room.

Though he’s employed it for years, Gadowsky’s leadership model isn’t one that the Nittany Lions sell to recruits.

Freshman Aarne Talvitie said he had no idea that players would have the kind of leadership responsibilities that they are entrusted with at Penn State until he got here.

Even Berger, whose brother played for Gadowsky at Princeton, said he wasn’t expecting it.

But, the players have embraced leading one another. After all, they have to implement the policy as Gadowsky watches from afar.

“Over the past four years, I would think that we've had a great leadership group every year,” Funkey said. “Stemming from the seniors that were here my freshman year, when you've got a fifth-year loudmouth like Tommy Olczyk making sure that his presence is known in the dressing room, all the way up through this year, when he have unbelievable leaders like Chase Berger, Brandon Biro, Kevin Kerr.”

Listen to Gadowsky speak enough, and you’ll find that a favorite refrain of his is “that’s up to the leadership.”

Gadowsky meets with the captains regularly to take the team’s pulse and provide some suggestions, but “the leadership” certainly does not mean himself.

Instead, he’s referring to Olczyk, Robinson, Berger, Biro and Kerr, all the way down the list through the teams he’s coached over the years.

Ever since that November night in Alaska, when Gadowsky’s Nanooks took just one shot from inside the slot throughout the entire 60 minutes, the men who lead Gadowsky’s team became those wearing skates and a helmet on game day, not a suit and tie.

“At the end of the day, we feed from him,” Berger said. “He's got an open growth mindset, so we have that as well. And, I think that's the best way to grow.”