As the NCAA Rapidly Changes, To Just ‘Let It Be’ Means Losing Something Special
by Adam Wodon/Managing Editor (@CHN_AdamWodon)
Colgate’s Don Vaughan, who retired after last season.
So since we’re in awards season, and I have some role in it, I was sitting here the other day wondering what I’d do about picking a Coach of the Year.
Thing is, the coaching right now in college hockey is off the charts. The quality of players coming into college hockey has elevated the sport, but so has the coaching. So, how are we to decide? Metrics like wins — or win increase — are the lazy way out, but often all we have.
A coach nowadays is more like a combination of NHL general manager and sports psychologist. The Xs and Os are there. Almost no one today is lacking in their ability to make up systems and game plans. It’s how well you communicate that vision, how you get players to buy in, how steady you are under pressure, finding the right combination of tough love and figurative hugs, how you can get players to improve — and, most of all, how you can piece a team together, and keep them together, cohesively, given how transient everything is these days.
Let’s just run down the list in order of Pairwise.
Greg Brown (BC) and Jay Pandolfo (BU) in year two, two former NHL players continuing to prove their mettle. David Carle (Denver) and Adam Nightingale (MSU), the relative youngsters. Their success is speaking for itself. Ben Barr (Maine) has helped turn things around there.
Brad Berry (NoDak) — every time North Dakota loses a game, the sky is falling to its fans. But this guy has won four of the last five NCHC regular-season titles, and this year turned over more than half his roster, and won it again. Yes the transfer portal is a gift to schools like this, but Berry and his staff still need to find the right guys and make it work.
Bob Motzko (Minnesota) won our CHN award last year — he’s done a masterful job this season after a lot of turnover and the Frozen Four heartbreak to get the team right back in contention. Mike Hastings (Wisconsin), already a two-time CHN Coach of the Year. Rand Pecknold (Quinnipiac) — I mean …
Brandon Naurato (Michigan), keeping that train going has not been easy in the aftermath of what…
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