To steal a line from the great Buzz Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights," there's something wonderfully soulful about Mike Donaghue. 

The Fergus Falls head coach drives a 2012 Dodge Ram pickup because "the key turns on, and it goes forward for me."

His official title is a Career and Tech Education teacher at Fergus Falls High School. 

There, he teaches smartphone-obsessed teenagers to use their hands in the school's woodshop, use their imaginations with mechanical drafting, and mesh the worlds of practical and artificial intelligence in robotics.

He says that dealing with a hockey player in class is an advantage when trying to decipher the fragile emotions of boys still learning to become young men.

"You can just see the kids in the hallway, and that's where you can really start to build the relationships with them," Donaghue explained. "There're so many different quirky day-to-day things that happen within the school that you would have no idea about unless you're right in the buildings with those kids." 

Yes, Mike Donaghue drives a decade-old pickup, teaches at the school where he's coached since the 2009-2010 season, and teaches a class that is typically first on a school board's chopping block when the budget gets too tight.

He also happens to have arguably his most talented roster since he took the top job.

"We kind of knew that three or four years ago, we were loaded with freshmen and sophomores," Donaghue said. "We did not have a lot of players with experience. We had brought up a freshman goalie that year, which is always a huge adjustment for those kids. So we knew it would be some time for them to just develop."

"We knew that the window was getting there," Donaghue continued. "The sun was coming up over the mountain, just waiting and staying patient with them. And trying to develop their confidence and skill level, knowing that last year was going to be a success."

The patience paid off for the Otters, as the team went 15-4, with all four losses coming by a single goal, including a 2-1 overtime defeat at the hands of rival Little Falls in the Class A, Section 6 title game. 

Despite the heartbreak, the 2021-2022 season burns bright for the Otters. 

A handful of those underclassmen Donaghue mentioned have developed into major point-producers. The team brings back three of last year's four leading scorers, including junior Isaac Johnson and senior Michael DeBrito, who both eclipsed 35 points last season.

Donaghue also said that Concordia College baseball commit Carter Thielke will once again be a key member of the Otters' power play, and that Cole Wentworth's return should be a boon for the defensive corps. Wentworth missed the abbreviated 2021 season after breaking his foot lifting weights. 

Goaltender Ben Swanson is also back for his junior season after playing every minute of the 2021 campaign. Swanson posted a 15-4 record and a 2.21 goals-against-average, and four shutouts for the Otters.

Donaghue is quick to point out that the high school coaches' level of involvement with the youth program enables the staff to get a read on talented groups as they make their way through the youth pipeline. 

"Our high school coaches come out and run a skills development Monday nights with all our youth kids, so we're familiar with where they're at. I have a son that's a PeeWee, so I know where they're at, and we work very closely with our Bantam coaches this year that had played for me."

The familiarity evidenced by the coaching staff connections is a common theme in Fergus Falls, a town of just under 14,000, which has made serious advances in youth association numbers thanks to the local passion for the sport. 

"We're pretty fortunate in our little community that we have two sheets of ice. I think we have a record, I think, 250 kids in our youth association from our Mites all the way up this year," Donaghue said. 

The bump in numbers has come in part thanks to an event directed at girls youth players, which included help from the girls' high school program, plus free equipment and four nights of ice-time per week. Originally titled "Girls Rock", that initiative has been combined with a similar program for both boys and girls. 

"We've combined them now, and we just call it the "Girls Rock, Boys Roll" program," Donaghue said. "We limit it to 25 girls and 25 boys, and then we give them the opportunity to register for our association after that," Donaghue continued. "And I think we had 80% of them that ended up registering after just one week of exposure."

A homegrown crop of talented upperclassmen, a coach who teaches woodshop at the high school, and a locally-bootstrapped program that engages and retains players of all ages?

Is this a hockey version of Mayberry? Nope, it's just Fergus Falls.

And if the Otters make their way to Saint Paul for the Class A State Tournament for the first time since 2003, you can bet they'll be the darling of not only their town, but all of Minnesota. 

"I think we've got great support in our community," Donaghue said. "I would certainly think there'd be good support down there. The last time our girls were at the state tournament just a few years ago, they had tremendous support down there. I would certainly expect that they would be maybe shutting down a few businesses."

As exciting as it is to fantasize about a community sendoff on downtown's Main Street, a town sending their sons to the big city, Donaghue is going to focus on the regular season first. 

"(We need to) do what we need to do, Aand let everything else take care of itself from there," Donaghue said. 

"At the end of the day, that's what we can control, is our effort out there and our execution, and see what happens.