“Through These Doors,” North Dakota’s in-house digital series chronicling life inside the university’s men’s hockey program, reached a major milestone Thursday when the show’s 200th episode premiered on YouTube.
The show, aired weekly during the hockey season, is now in its 10th year. That’s six years on top of what David Folske, one of the show’s original producers, had envisioned.
“The whole thing was seeing the path of a student-athlete through the course of the program, and after the fourth season, you would’ve seen former freshmen graduate as seniors,” said Folske, who in 2011 teamed up in with former UND athletics new media director Matt Schill as well as Peter Bottini, now a social media marketing manager for the NHL.
“The thought was to cancel it after the fourth season, and it is hard to come up with fresh story lines every week, because after 200 episodes, there’s only a finite amount of things you can talk about.”
And yet, the show is still going strong.
Now led by executive producer Cassie Niles, “Through These Doors’” 200th episode takes viewers on a stroll down memory lane for a show that has documented three Frozen Four appearances and one national championship in 2016.
The show’s title is borrowed from a sign outside UND’s locker room reading, “Through these doors walk champions.” UND’s sports information department wanted to create content to match that ethos, and former coach Dave Hakstol, now behind the bench with the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, is to be thanked in part.
“Through These Doors” was launched in the season after a former program, “Inside Fighting Sioux Hockey,” featuring Hakstol and UND radio play-by-play commentator Tim Hennessy, was discontinued over high production costs. Hakstol came to UND staffers with an idea to create a series similar to what HBO produced in the lead-up to NHL Winter Classic outdoor games.
Hakstol and UND’s sports information department, led at the time by Jayson Hajdu, now the director of communications for College Hockey, Inc., were on the same wavelength.
“We were exploring new ways to give inside access to fans of the hockey program,” said Schill, now a senior video producer for UND’s marketing and creative services department.
“Internally, we were kicking around some ideas, and Dave was on a similar path in his head and thought it would be a cool way to show what happens behind the scenes. It came together where it’s a lot easier to do something when the head coach buys in.”
“Through These Doors” has largely been put together by UND students, and the series stands out on résumés of the people who have been involved.
“We’ve had interns move on to professional teams,” said Folske, now a motion design and video editor at Ralph Engelstad Arena, the now-Fighting Hawks’ home facility. “Peter (Bottini) works for the NHL, Andy Parr works for NBC Sports, and I’ve had interns move into pretty much every major sports network under the sun, not specifically to do projects like ‘Through These Doors,’ but having a project like that didn’t hurt.
“Peter got more opportunities in the NHL bubble (two seasons ago, after the COVID-19 pandemic began) because of filming ‘Through These Doors,’ and that project has helped so many people move onto other projects in life.”
UND coach Brad Berry, a former assistant under Hakstol, doesn’t take the program’s connection to “Through These Doors” for granted. Berry has pitched storylines during meetings in the late preseason months, and he and the show have a mutually beneficial relationship with regards to recruitment.
“Regional players obviously know a lot about our program, but when you recruit players from western Canada, eastern Canada, the eastern part of the U.S., we ask how familiar they are with our program,” Berry said. “It’s always, ‘Yeah, absolutely, I tune in every Thursday at 8 o’clock for ‘Through These Doors,’ and can’t wait to see the next episode.’ It’s built a brand, and it’s built something where recruits and young people see what’s going on in our program.
“We remain true to who we are, and when you peel the layers back of a program that has as much success and tradition as our program, it’s about showing why. We feel that we’re blessed with probably one of the best, if not the best facility in the country, but we feel that what’s inside this building is even better.”
Those stories keep getting told on a show whose longevity has taken its original producers by surprise.
“Ever since I left the athletic department, seeing the series continue has been cool,” Schill said. “It’s fun to see how new people interpret it and take it in their own way.”
