Steve Carroll remembers the silence of bus rides to Edina boys hockey road games. Players were locked in, focused solely on the task to come.

Each ride started with the Hornets all trudging onto the bus. Legendary coach Willard Ikola was the last one on, and he’d utter the same words nearly every time: “Everybody got their blades, mouthpiece, here we go.”

There was nothing more to be said. That wasn’t Ikola’s style.

“In the games, there wasn’t a ton of time on the whiteboards explaining this and that,” Carroll said. “He was generally pretty quiet.”

Even at practice, Ikola would don his sweatpants, shin guards and a baseball cap. A 3x5 notecard containing the practice plan was always tucked neatly into the latter. Ikola would pull it out, blow his whistle and announce the next item on the agenda. And off to work his players went.

“There wasn’t a ton of chatter,” Carroll said, “unless we needed a little reinforcement to do better.”

Those moments were rare. Through his simplicity and consistency, Ikola created a hockey dynasty in Edina.

“As a player, being from Edina, you always wanted to play for the Hornets and play for coach Ike,” said Carroll, who went on to play college hockey and is now a longtime assistant coach at Gustavus Adolphus. “As soon as you could lace your skates, you’d go to the Hornets games, watch those guys and how the cool the atmosphere was at a Braemar Arena. You saw the legendary coach behind the bench and knew he was helping these high school kids go on to play college hockey and get in the NHL and win Stanley Cups, and you wanted to be a part of that.

“By the time you got to the high school program, most of the players were so motivated to play as well as they could, and they wanted to obviously play for their teammates, play for their school, but also not to disappoint coach Ikola.”

Ikola died Monday evening at the age of 92.

But he leaves a legacy behind as one of the true titans of Minnesota high school hockey.

The coach morphed Edina into a statewide power. In 33 years at the helm, Ikola guided the Hornets to 616 wins, 22 conference titles, 19 section titles and eight state championships.

Prior to that, he was excellent in his own right in net. Ikola went undefeated over his final three seasons as Eveleth’s starting goaltender en route to state titles from 1948-50. He eventually went on to play for the University of Michigan, where he won two NCAA crowns in two tries. Ikola is a top-10 player in Minnesota high school hockey history.

He was also the goalie on the U.S. Olympic team that captured silver in 1956 in Italy. Ikola replayed the loss to the Soviets in his head thousands of times.

There was a point in his college career when Ikola was on Detroit’s negotiation list — opening the door for a potential path to the pro game. But Detroit wanted Ikola to drop out of college and play juniors in Canada.

Ikola declined, wanting instead to remain in ROTC to move up in rank. He did navigation training in the Air Force.

“The NHL, they weren’t paying the kind of money they are now,” Ikola said years ago.

Passing on the pro game didn’t bother Ikola, whose goal was always to coach and teach. A chance to do so in Edina came thanks to the help of John Mariucci. Ikola got the job on a temporary basis. The son of the Iron Range initially asked if Edina was located in St. Paul.

Ikola didn’t know much about the game, beyond goaltending, when he got to Edina. And information wasn’t readily available. But he found a few drills to get by. He not-so-fondly recalled his first game on the bench, in which the Hornets couldn’t clear the puck out of the zone. The rest of that season was spent focused entirely on the basics.

Ikola noted Edina “took a chance” in bringing him back for the following season. He responded by bringing the Hornets to the state tournament, where they beat Eveleth in the consolation bracket. And a dynasty was born.

There’s a statue of the coach that stands outside Braemar Arena in Edina. Next to it is a plaque that denotes all of “Coach Ike’s” achievements, as well as one of his famous quotes: “I never scored a goal or prevented one, either, all the credit for our success belongs to the kids.”

“You think about the pressure that the Edina teams were under all the time to be successful,” said Carroll, one of six Carrolls to play for the coach. “He was really good at not getting too high with all the highs that he had, and not getting too low when things weren’t going as well as he would’ve liked them to go. … It was the same approach — you know what to do, so go out, do your best and let’s get ‘er done.

“He was gracious in victory and gracious in defeat, and very well respected.”