Anytime an athlete transfers to another school, there are inevitable questions. For Wisconsin goaltender Brett Bennett, there is one particular situation that tends to be brought up.

“BU?” Bennett asked with a laugh.

Exactly. Bennett played hockey for two years at Boston University before leaving the school following the 2007-08 season. He wouldn’t go into details about his departure, but said he didn’t regret the time he spent there.

“I went there for two years. I was fortunate enough to be recruited there and [be] starting goalie there. I enjoyed it a lot, I liked the program, I liked the coaching staff, I liked my teammates,” Bennett said. “Unfortunately, it didn’t work out and I found myself here now. But it was a good situation, a good learning experience, and I’m glad I’m here.”

Bennett, a junior in his first year at UW, played a season with the Indiana Ice of the United States Hockey League (USHL) after leaving Boston University. For Wisconsin head coach Mike Eaves, whatever happened in Boston would stay in Boston.

“Something happened there out in Boston, I don’t know exactly what it was. But he ended up leaving,” Eaves said. “Our biggest concern — we didn’t go back and track what happened — we wanted to know what kind of young man he was when he was in Indy. Was he a good teammate? Was he a good guy? Could he be a good team leader? Those were the things that concerned us.

“What happened before was in history; we wanted to know who the current young man was.”

Currently, Bennett shares starting goaltending duties with Scott Gudmandson and is fresh off an April championship run with the Ice. His move from BU to Indiana is peculiar, as the USHL is a junior hockey league, though it is considered the top junior league in the country.

Junior hockey comprises a number of mostly amateur leagues and is used as a developmental league for 16- to 20-year olds. Most players move from high school to juniors and then to the NCAA. UW forward Patrick Johnson played a season in Nebraska for the Lincoln Stars of the USHL before coming to Wisconsin and said it would have been awkward to go from college back to the juniors.

“It’d be challenging, it’d be very challenging. You’d have a lot of questions thrown at you, why are you doing it, what happened, and all that,” he said. “[Bennett has] had a good attitude, he’s fought through it. I don’t know the situation with him, but he’s fought through. He’s here now, and he’s done really well.”

Despite the rarity of his situation, Bennett decided to play juniors to try to find another college to recruit him. Eaves said UW started scouting him in mid-November of last year, once the need for a goaltender arose. He finished the season first-team All-USHL, going 35-17-4 with a 2.59 goals against average, in addition to helping the Ice capture the Clark Cup. After fielding offers from a number of schools, Bennett chose to sign with Wisconsin this past April.

“UW just, I mean, just look at the rink here. It’s unreal,” he said. “The campus is great, everyone you talk to is like, ‘Oh, it’s a big-time program, coach Eaves is highly regarded coach.’ I was lucky enough to play for coach Parker at BU, who was another highly regarded coach. You take lessons from those guys, and it’s pretty cool to play in front of 15,000 every night.”

Despite the lower overall level of competition in junior hockey compared to the NCAA, Bennett and Johnson agree the only real difference is physical strength, as most guys playing juniors are younger than college players.

“A lot of the guys here [are] a little bit stronger because of some of the conditioning that we do and all that,” Johnson said. “The game is just a little bit faster. Other than that, the puck moves just as fast.”

“Size and strength, guys are younger, they’re not as strong. USHL, all those guys come here and play college and usually are big-impact players,” Bennett said.

For Eaves, talks with Indiana Ice coach Jeff Blashill helped convince him that Bennett would be a good fit. And regardless of what league he was playing in, Bennett’s performance on the ice was evidence that he could transition back to the NCAA.

“The fact that he helped his team win a championship said his play was at a high level,” Eaves said. “He was one of the reasons they were successful, so that was part of our decision as well, knowing that he was keeping his play at a high level.”

Johnson agreed.

“A championship is a championship,” he said. “It’s a team concept, and if you can get that team concept going in the middle of the year toward the end of the year, anything can happen.”

While his road to Madison had a few detours, Bennett thinks the journey was beneficial in the long-run. He hopes to have brought some of the experience and fortune his Indiana team found this year back with him to UW.

“Once you win a championship, you look back and you [think], ‘What did this team have? What made us so special? Why did we win?’ and you kind of take something from that,” Bennett said. “You can’t even explain it, it’s just something that’s in the locker room and you just feel it. … That feeling, hopefully we can carry it over to Wisconsin and try to win a championship here.”