Holding Pattern

Well, that was certainly an interesting 24 hours for me to say the least. I checked my phone every 12 seconds looking for an update. I became famous in Duluth. And College Hockey News earned first priority on linking stuff here in perpetuity by asking me for my opinion about stuff.

It short, I felt like an actual media person. And it was pretty cool, I won't lie. The net result was that my post about Scott Sandelin is already my fourth most viewed ever, even though it just went up early yesterday morning.

The unfortunate part is that those who are being introduced to me because of that might have the wrong impression of who I am and what I'm trying to do here. So in that spirit, let's take a step back and review.

Here's what we know about the men's coaching search. This is the common-knowledge stuff:

• Interviews took place this past week.
• There were three candidates interviewed (as well as three for the women).
• One of those candidates was Scott Sandelin.
• Another was Mark Johnson.  

Here's what I believe about the men's coaching search. This is all unconfirmed and based on what I've heard around the rumor mill, from people I trust:

• The third interview was Princeton's Guy Gadowsky.
• The original plan - prior to the interviews - was to make an offer yesterday, then an announcement Monday.
• Sandelin was the preferred choice going into the interviews and still is the preferred choice coming out.

Here's what threw a wrench into the second bullet point in that last group, at least in my opinion:

• Joe Battista was at the Sabres-Flyers game last night with Terry Pegula. Obviously the possibilities for topics of conversation between the two are pretty much infinite, so there's really no point in guessing about that, but spending your evening doing that doesn't strike me as the action of someone who is working out the final stages of a coaching agreement.
• Then again, Battista's a human dynamo and can fit a week's worth of activity into a day. 
• But realistically, I'm less confident in an announcement Monday than I was 24 hours ago. That puts us back to the original timetable on that: either early next week or possibly just after the American Hockey Coaches Association convention, during the week of May 2nd. 

Hopefully that helps clarify my position on maybe the hottest discussion topic in all of college hockey right now.

UPDATE 2:20 P.M.: College Hockey News has confirmed that the announcement will not be made until after the AHCA convention.