Head Coach Candidate: Jim Fetter

Fetter and former Wayne State goalie Lindsey Park, after the two helped helped the West team win the NCAA Skills Challenge at the 2010 Frozen Four in Detroit

Fourth in a series taking uninformed, uneducated guesses at the candidates to become the first head coach of Penn State's NCAA women's team. Previously: Mercyhurst coach Mike Sisti, Lady Icers coach Mo Stroemel, Minnesota-Duluth coach Shannon Miller.

It turns out that I timed this short series perfectly, because with this post, I've officially exhausted the list of names I've seen associated with the Penn State women's job (and this connection is of the particularly weak message board variety). But the good news: according to Mark Horgas, the final interviews are this week, and the coach should be named by this weekend. As we saw on Easter, you can't go on break from 5 p.m. Friday until 8 a.m. Monday, weekends and holidays are fair game for an announcement.

So are any of the four coaches I've mentioned among the final interviews? I have no idea. Unlike with the men's coaching search, this one's been all about jumping on absolutely anything I see, put together with more guessing than even I'm accustomed to. So in the likely event that I haven't posted about the person who gets hired, I'll first post the PSU press release, then follow up by digging a little deeper, as I try to do in these posts.

Anyway, today's subject is Wayne State head coach Jim Fetter, a Waterloo, ON native and 1995 University of Lethbridge graduate who has resided in Detroit since August 2003.

Most men who coach women's hockey can trace their history with the women's game to a very specific point. Fetter's no exception. He got into coaching right out of college with a couple different (men's) midget programs, but quickly grew frustrated and decided to take a year off to evaluate his career choices.

In 1998, after taking a year off from coaching, his alma mater was just starting out its women’s hockey program. For weeks leading up to the new season, Fetter received continuous phone calls requesting he take the position as head coach, yet he refused.

“I kind of wanted to take the year off to evaluate what I wanted out of coaching if I wanted anything out of it, and during that time I was looking to go to major junior,” Fetter said.

Fetter admits he was skeptical about women’s hockey. By late August, Fetter received yet another phone call asking to help run a weekend practice.

“I went out to run practice on a Saturday, it was an hour and a half, and I was kind of impressed,” Fetter said. “Came back the next day designed the practice a little tougher, kind of put on a test physically, mentally and again they rose to the occasion and kind of impressed me.”

He never looked back. After that first year with the Pronghorns, he made one more transition - to U.S. college hockey - as one of Rick Filighera's assistants at Maine in 1999-2000. That turned out to be another single-season stop on the way to Mike Sisti's staff at Mercyhurst from 2000-2003.

We've already seen the tremendous success the Lakers have experienced, and Fetter was pretty close to the ground floor as he started there in year two of the program. More specifically, he was there for the beginning of Mercyhurst's ridiculous (and still active) ten-year streak of winning both the regular season and playoff championships, first in the GLWHA, now in CHA.

It's not uncommon for women's hockey coaches to have experience starting a program in the relatively new sport, but Fetter has helped get two off the ground. Perhaps Wayne State AD Rob Fournier had that in the back of his mind when hiring him from Mercyhurst in 2003. After all, the Warriors had a pretty new program themselves (founded 1999), but original head coach Tom O'Malley stumbled to a 21-86-5 record, leading to the job opening.

On the surface, it was a slow build at WSU - the Warriors lingered around .500 for Fetter's first four years. But underneath, there were signs of progress. In Fetter's third year (2005-2006), he was the CHA coach of the year as the Warriors finished second in the CHA standings, but had a pair of freshmen - Melissa Boal and Sam Poyton - tie for the league scoring title and take home first-team all-conference honors. The next year brought a trip to the conference championship game, WSU's first-ever win against a ranked program, and a co-CHA coach of the year honor for Fetter.

Former captain Lindsay DiPietro

The major breakthrough was 2007-2008 with a 22-9-3 mark. The Warriors snapped a 33-game winless streak against Mercyhurst - and even chipped away at their conference dominance by tying for the CHA regular season title and winning the top seed for the playoffs by virtue of a winning record against the Lakers.

Boal, boosted by playing for an improved team, elevated her game to an even higher level and was named a Patty Kazmeier Award top ten finalist. Boal and linemate Poyton were again first-team all-CHA, along with senior goalie Valery Turcotte. And yes, Fetter was coach of the year for a third straight time. However, the dream of winning an NCAA tournament at-large bid (remember, no autobid for the CHA) ended with an overtime loss to the nemesis Lakers in the CHA championship game.

21-9-2 was the follow-up to that in 2008-2009, but once again, Mercyhurst blocked the way to even greater success - WSU was 0-5-0 against the Lakers, the last defeat again coming in the conference title game. To be fair, Mercyhurst made the NCAA championship game that season, so there are worse teams to go 0-5-0 against.

After that? The bottom completely fell out. 17-39-6 is what the last two seasons have produced. So what happened? You can probably start with losing 2009's senior class, which included Boal, Poyton, captain Lindsay DiPietro and defender Natalie Payne - the team's top four scorers by a wide margin (Payne had 1.6 times as many points as fifth-place Veronique Laramee-Paquette). You can probably continue with the fact that Wayne State isn't the easiest place in the world to win - the school dropped their men's program after 2007-2008, and the team plays at an off-campus public rink with 500 seats.

Basically, the facilities, finances and name recognition at Wayne State aren't bottom of the barrel. The barrel is in fact resting on top of them. The death of former Warrior Brandi Frakie undoubtedly put a damper on this past season as well.

Really, guys?

Whatever the case, I'm pretty sure Fetter didn't forget how to coach overnight. If that was the case, he wouldn't keep receiving calls from Hockey Canada.

In the summer of 2006, he was selected to Hockey Canada's National Women's Program Coaching Pool. Fetter served as an assistant coach for Team Canada's Under-18 squad for 2007-08 and has also worked summer evaluation camps with the U-22 and National women's team. For the 2008-09 and 2009-10 seasons, he was chosen as an assistant coach for the Under-22 team before being selected head coach in 2010-11.

Fetter would be a nice hire in my opinion - one who has been successful, one who could blossom with the chance to be a part of a big-time athletic department, and perhaps most importantly, one who won't cost all that much. We'll find out soon enough if the Penn State administration agrees.

Head Coach Candidate: Shannon Miller

Third in a series taking uninformed, uneducated guesses at the candidates to become the first head coach of Penn State's NCAA women's team. Previously: Mercyhurst coach Mike Sisti, Lady Icers coach Mo Stroemel.

If you don't follow NCAA women's hockey, you probably have no idea who Minnesota-Duluth head coach Shannon Miller is, despite the fact that she's been every bit as successful as her much-better-known rival in Madison and is one of the pre-eminent coaches in the sport. Since I'm pretty much guilty on that count as well, I'll learn along with you.

Right up front, I have to admit that there's not a whole lot tying Miller to Penn State other than an apparently keen interest on our part in everything UMD has to offer - including the arena and the men's coach. And also right up front, I really don't see much incentive for her to leave. She's paid better than Mark Johnson (even post-extension), and she's proven that she can win multiple national championships in Duluth. I suppose there's always the challenge of building something new and the possibility of even more money though.

Through following our pursuit of Scott Sandelin, we know a couple things:

1. Duluth AD Bob Nielson, who doubles as their football coach, is tight-fisted either by necessity or by choice.
2. Miller made more money than Sandelin, a situation that had to be unique in college hockey - until Sandelin finally signed a recent extension. But before that, Sandelin pulled in a $160,000 base salary while Miller makes a base of $180,000 (for what it's worth, Miller's contract is through 2013, so some buyout would have to take place, although possibly not a monumental one).

Those two facts lead to two assumptions on my part:

1. If Penn State wants Miller badly enough, Penn State can get Miller. UMD will not win a bidding war...
2. ...although there might be a certain expectation of PSU on Miller's part. She's obviously not used to being treated like a second-class citizen.

While it's presumed that a guy like Johnson would only leave the Wisconsin women for a men's job, Miller seems to be more attainable for this particular situation. Really, and this goes for all candidates, I think the hire will say a lot about our athletic department's goals for the women's program. Are we gunning to be one of the nation's elite, or is this a matter of "well, we had to do this for Title IX, we're just trying not to lose too much money on the deal?" I hope it's the former, and hiring Miller would obviously be a sign of that being the case.

Miller is a 1985 University of Saskatchewan graduate and was a police officer in Calgary from 1988-1996. Of course, she was also involved in hockey during this time, including founding and coaching the 18U Alberta Women's Hockey team (the first girls minor hockey association in Calgary) in 1989 and continuing with Team Canada both in the Women's World Ice Hockey Championships (1992, 1994) and in the Olympics (1998).

On September 10, 1997, Minnesota-Duluth announced that it was starting a women's hockey program, and on April 20, 1998, Miller was hired as the first coach of the program fresh off of her silver medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics as head coach of Team Canada - not a bad way to start a program.

Here's a shameless copy/paste of UMD's Miller bio (with some minor updates from me since it doesn't include 2010-2011), because it does a good job capturing her Bulldogs career, and the spoils that come with her 313-87-34 career record:

As the only head coach UMD has ever employed, Miller...has led the Bulldogs to [ten] NCAA playoff appearances and four NCAA Championship titles, including three straight (2001, 2002 and 2003). She has led UMD into six NCAA Frozen Four berths, including two NCAA Championships in the past [four] seasons (2010 and 2008).  No other hockey program in the country has won five titles, let alone three consecutive NCAA trophies.

Aside from her record haul of NCAA titles, Miller reached her [300th] career win faster than any other head coach in NCAA Division I history on [Nov. 20, 2010].  As the third winningest coach ever in Division I women's hockey, Miller is just one of two NCAA Division I coaches ever to have collected 200 wins after just eight seasons behind the bench.  Miller is also just the fourth head coach ever to win 250 games while remaining at just one, very lucky,  NCAA Division I program.

For her efforts, Miller was named the 2000 and 2003 Western Collegiate Hockey Association Coach of the Year and the 2003 American Hockey Coaches Association (AHCA) Women’s Division I Coach of the Year. Along with the incredible NCAA runs, her Bulldogs have captured [three] WCHA regular season titles (2010, 2003, 2000) and five WCHA playoff titles (2010, 2008, 2003, 2001, 2000).

That's pretty big time. Here's a link that goes into more detail on some of the highlights of Miller's tenure.

Eleven former Bulldogs have participated in the Olympics, but interestingly, only three played for the United States (Jenny Potter) or Canada (Caroline Ouellette and Haley Irwin). So much like we saw with Mike Sisti, Miller has a demonstrated ability to go where the players are.

Potter is the leading scorer in US women's Olympic history.

One other Olympian, Sweden's Maria Rooth, returned to Duluth this past season as Miller's assistant. She still stands as the program's all-time goals leader, and while the Patty Kazmeier award has never visited the UMD campus, Rooth was a three-time top 10 finalist (2000-2002). Of course, one other international player, Russia's Iya Gavrilova, might be a reason why Penn State won't touch Miller. I'll let the Minnesota Daily explain:

Duluth forward Iya Gavrilova, a freshman from Krasnoyarsk, Russia, is currently under investigation by the NCAA and the school. Gavrilova played on two teams in Moscow, where players have been known to receive payment, food, board and transportation.

That would be a serious violation of NCAA regulations and could result in the Bulldogs forfeiting every game Gavrilova made an appearance in, a total of 19 WCHA wins.

Ultimately, according to Duluth play-by-play man Bruce Ciskie, UMD had to forfeit their 2007-2008 WCHA regular season title and the wins, although they were allowed to keep their 2008 WCHA playoff and NCAA championships.

I'll venture to guess that even if PSU were willing to lay out to get Miller, that would scare them off. A whiff of impropriety, even if Miller was completely without blame in the situation, is surely the last thing the administration wants, right now or ever.

And basically, we're talking about one of the top programs out there, with Wisconsin really the only other school with an argument for the No. 1 spot in women's college hockey history. Just in case that wasn't completely obvious by this point. Like I said at the top, I'm not sure there's much incentive for Miller to leave that situation short of wanting a new challenge and a massive payday (that I'm not sure we'll be offering on the women's side) - but there's no doubt that this hire would set the new program off to an explosive start in the unlikely event that it happens.

Head Coach Candidate: Mo Stroemel

Second in a series taking uninformed, uneducated guesses at the candidates to become the first head coach of Penn State's NCAA women's team. Previously: Mercyhurst coach Mike Sisti.

When I started this series on the men's side, I led off with Icers coach Scott Balboni. I suppose that it's now safe to admit that I did so mostly as a courtesy. I knew he wasn't going to be the guy and I'm sure he knew he wasn't going to be the guy too.

However this post, about Lady Icers coach Mo Stroemel, isn't the same thing. If the administration's goal is a splashy hire, or someone with proven success at the highest levels of NCAA women's hockey, he's obviously not going to be the guy. However, if you want a well-coached team that wins games, headed by a loyal Penn Stater, you could do a lot worse. And because Stroemel, uniquely among candidates, comes from a club background, he'll be able to do all of that efficiently - which may prove an important factor in all of this.

The West Chester native who played defenseman in high school tried out for the Icers in 1976, but didn't make it, and at one point gave up playing hockey altogether for 13 years. But as we all know, it's pretty much impossible to stay away from hockey forever. He re-entered the game through adult leagues in the late 1980s, then made his triumphant return to PSU as a member of the faculty. It didn't take very long for him to sign on as an assistant with the ACHA Men's Division 2 Ice Lions, a post he held from 1994 through 1997 before assuming the team's head coaching job. In Stroemel's final season as an assistant, the Ice Lions finished in the runner-up spot at the ACHA National Tournament, Penn State's best finish ever.

Stroemel was the Ice Lions head coach through 2004, and the nutshell version of his tenure reads as follows:

While coaching the Ice Lions, Stroemel piled up a 131-62-11 record, led his team to four national tournament berths, a final four appearance, and claimed the 2002-2003 and 2003-2004 ACHA Men's Division 2 Northeast Region Coach of the Year awards.

That final four appearance came in his final season of 2003-2004, where forward Ryan Tocicki and goalie Dan Koletsky helped PSU roll through Miami (OH), Colorado State and Central Michigan before a 1-0 overtime heartbreaker against New York University eliminated them in the semifinals.

I think Stroemel's level of success with an ACHA D2 program is quite impressive in light of a couple facts:

1. ACHA Division 2 is dominated by schools like Life University, Davenport (when they were in D2) and Grand Valley State (the current champ), where the teams are the highest level of hockey played on campus. In fact, to date, Penn State is the only D2 program in history to play for a national championship while an ACHA D1 program also existed at the school (a few others have done so with an NCAA Division I program taking away the attention, but at the same time, there's no competition for players in that scenario).
2. Division 2 has, depending on the year, roughly three or four times as many teams as Division 1, yet only 16 make the national tournament (others are eliminated in four regional tournaments). So four trips to nationals in seven seasons is outstanding in my view.

He moved from the Ice Lions to assisting with the Division 1 Icers for three seasons, 2004-2007, spanning both the Battista and Balboni regimes. I'm going to assume some knowledge on your part there and just quickly point out PSU's record of 85-22-5 with Stroemel as an assistant, as well as the fact that the Icers played for the ACHA national championship in each of those seasons.

Following Penn State's 2007 title game loss to Oakland, Stroemel flipped over to the women's side, and he recently completed his fourth season behind the Lady Icers' bench. It was in this present position where he's shown some ability to build. In his first two years, PSU was 15-34-0, far off the pace the Lady Icers had established as one of the solid programs in women's Division 1.

By Stroemel's third year, however, things started to click. Penn State went 12-13-1 in 2009-2010, and gained the No. 7 ranking at the end of the regular season - good enough for the Lady Icers' first trip to nationals since 2007. And while things didn't go quite as planned there, the program's foundation had been re-set.

One only needs to recall this past season to see Stroemel's expertise in play. While on the surface 11-14-2 and missing the ACHA National Tournament looks like a step back, I'd argue that not completely bottoming out was a tremendous achievement in many respects. Consider:

• While only one senior was lost from 2009-2010, that senior was Alicia Lepore - not only PSU's leading scorer, but the individual responsible for 26 percent of the Lady Icers' goals.
• The Lady Icers were still extremely young last season, with only two seniors.
• The team suffered a rash of concussions during the last three weekends of the season, with Kate Christoffersen, Amanda Yost and Abby Miller all going down. Christoffersen's concussion ended her career.
• And of course, Stroemel and four of his key players were selected to compete with the first women's hockey team sent to the World University Games by USA Hockey. Notably, those four players included both of PSU's goalies during a crucial time of the season.

Still, Stroemel and Pat Fung (who took over bench duties while the head coach was in Turkey) guided the team to an 8-4-0 fall semester record, and PSU remained solidly in the national championship picture until an inexcusable snub put them out of the tournament. Meanwhile Stroemel, goalies Heather Rossi and Katie Vaughan, defender Lindsay Reihl and forward Denise Rohlik helped Team USA finish fourth at the WUG - the highest finish ever at the event, by either the men or women, since USA Hockey re-opened its participation in 2001.

Allie Rothman was Penn State's leading scorer among defenders as a freshman last season. She's one member of an extremely young team hoping to make the jump in 2012.

While all of this sounds pretty solid, there's one major issue with Stroemel that I don't think I've had to raise with any other HCC post: he has substantial interests outside of hockey. For example, he's a faculty member in Penn State's School of Theatre, specializing in technical theatre. Here's his resume in that area:

MFA and BA from Penn State. Technical Director for more than fifty productions over the last fifteen years. Production Stage Manager, Stage Manager, Technical Director South Jersey Regional Theatre; Propsmaster, Claridge Hotel and Casino, Atlantic City; Technical Theatre Specialist at Penn State; Guest Lecturer, Stockton State College, Pomona, NJ. Set design for Take Note, WPSX-TV. Local crew for National Tours of Les Miserables, CATS, and Sesame Street Live; Ongoing design and technical consultation with local high schools, businesses and other organizations. Member USITT (United States Institute for Theatre Technology), SETC (Southeastern Theatre Conference).

It's one thing if that's it. It's quite another when...

More specifically:

Stroemel has been writing and performing for over twenty years. Based in Central Pennsylvania, he has appeared in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Nashville, New York, Atlantic City, Florida and London. His songs connect with people of all ages and his personable and easy-going style make his live appearances fun and intimate.

Mo currently performs as a solo act and as a bass player with the Family Brew (formerly the Phyrst Phamly), a house band with a 40 year tradition at the Brewery in State College, PA.

He has performed at festivals including The Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts and The People's Choice Festival.

He's independently released a couple albums as well, which draws from influences like Bob Dylan, Slaid Cleaves and Townes Van Zandt.

Maybe I'm wrong (I certainly have been before), but that doesn't sound like the type of passion you scale back for the demands of coaching at the NCAA level.

Head Coach Candidate: Mike Sisti

Since the hiring of Guy Gadowsky on the men's side, I had every intention of devoting most of my attention to the still-open women's job. But quite simply, I haven't seen dirt kicked around for the opening on nearly the same level as with the men. And to be brutally honest, I don't know the women's scene well enough to make educated guesses (it's a work in progress), as I did with a few of the men's Head Coach Candidate posts. So what I'm attempting to do now: drop the three to five of these that I might be able to squeeze out over the next couple weeks, then scramble to put together something on the man or woman who gets the job, which hopefully won't happen until after I'm done.

Mercyhurst coach Mike Sisti qualifies as the most-rumored candidate by virtue of being mentioned by two different people in message board posts (here and here). Granted, that's not exactly much to go on. But we do also know that Joe Battista and crew were at the women's Frozen Four this year, which Mercyhurst hosted. Said Battista:

That weekend I attended the NCAA Women's Frozen Four Hockey Championship in Erie, hosted by Mercyhurst College. I visited with an old hockey friend, Mercyhurst Women’s Coach Mike Sisti, who worked hockey camps for me years ago.

So Sisti and Battista are friendly and have worked together. The last time Battista was that open about speaking with a coach at a Frozen Four, it was Scott Sandelin. I've gone with worse than that.

There is some shared history with Sisti and the PSU men's program as opponents as well. As a player at Canisius (then an NCAA Division III team) from 1986-1990, Sisti went 2-0-0 against the Icers, including a 6-2 win at the Geneseo Invitational on November 4, 1988, against Battista's second team as Penn State's coach. Sisti had a great career for the Golden Griffins, putting up 163 points in 120 games, good enough to be inducted into the Canisius Hall of Fame in 2002.

A four-year letter winner in ice hockey, Sisti ranks fourth at Canisius in career scoring (163 points), third in career goals (74), and sixth in career assists (89). He shares the school record for single-game goals with four and holds the mark for single-season hat tricks with six...Sisti posted 13 goals and 19 assists to help the Griffs to a 21-11-0 record in 1986-87. He led Canisius in goals (33) and points (57) in 1988-89 and was named the team’s top forward.

With a resume like that, he undoubtedly had little problem getting a job behind the bench as a part-time assistant with his alma mater from 1990-1993. Canisius improved its record each season during that time, culminating in 1992-1993's 18-11-1 and ECAC West championship game appearance. Also included: another win against the Icers.

He left Buffalo in 1993, making the short trip down I-90 to Erie, and was an assistant coach with the Mercyhurst men's program from 1993-1999. Two more wins against PSU (we're up to 5-0-0 if you're counting) and an NCAA Division II runners-up slot (in 1994-1995) later, he was offered the chance to help start the Lakers' women's program.

After studying the situation and the state of women’s collegiate hockey, Sisti decided it was an offer too good to pass up.

“It was an awesome opportunity to be a head coach and not have to move,” Sisti said. “I love it. It turned out to be a great decision.”

It was a great decision for Mercyhurst, too. Sisti’s teams have averaged 25 wins a season for the [then] 10 years of women’s hockey, own a 74-3 record in College Hockey America and have been ranked in the top 10 in the coaches’ polls the last eight seasons. That success and ambitious scheduling has allowed little Mercyhurst to compete with big-time schools such as Wisconsin and Minnesota and prestigious institutions such as Brown, Colgate, Harvard and Syracuse.

Before I continue talking about Sisti's run coaching the Mercyhurst women, I think it's important to underscore all of it with what Mercyhurst College is: a Catholic school of about 4,400 students. In athletics, they're a Division II school (other than in men's and women's hockey), and basically anonymous outside of their immediate region. Yet Sisti has their women's hockey program rubbing shoulders with giants like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Minnesota-Duluth. That's noteworthy.

During the first three seasons of the Lakers' program, Mercyhurst played in the Great Lakes Women's Hockey Association. They got up to speed quickly, winning the 2001 and 2002 regular season championships, as well as the 2002 playoff championship. When College Hockey America formed for 2002-2003, Mercyhurst jumped at the chance to be a charter member and they remains in CHA today, along with Niagara, Robert Morris, Syracuse and Wayne State (there's also a lot of talk that this will ultimately be Penn State's conference).

Constructing a CHA championship history is actually quite easy: write in Mercyhurst for every single regular season and conference tournament title in history, including this past season. Done. In the last seven of those seasons, the Lakers have also received a bid to the NCAA tournament, which should be considered a separate achievement, as the CHA does not receive an NCAA autobid due to only having five teams. While a championship has been elusive to this point (2009's title game loss to Wisconsin is the closest Mercyhurst has come), the Lakers are far from your typical overmatched small-conference team - other than that championship game, they've only ever lost one NCAA tournament game by more than a goal.

Sisti, for his part, has taken home his share of accolades in all of this. His 311-84-26 record means that he's the fifth-winningest women's Division I coach of all time, seventh across all divisions. He was the 2006-2007 USCHO coach of the year, in addition to taking home 2004-2005 honors from the AHCA.

Star players have also been a big part of the formula at Mercyhurst. Vicki Bendus was the 2010 Patty Kazmaier Award winner, along with a host of other honors. Bailey Bram was also a Patty Kaz nominee. Most notably, of course, is Meghan Agosta, the all-time leading scorer in women's college hockey, and owner of two Olympic gold medals while skating for Team Canada in 2006 and 2010. In the 2010 games, her nine goals and 15 points helped win tournament MVP honors.

Agosta just sniped. Or she's mad at me for not using a picture of her pounding Molson after Team Canada's gold medal win  in the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Before you think Agosta was a one-woman program, consider that the Lakers made the Frozen Four in 2009-2010 without her, as she took the year off from school to train with the Olympic team. This is a program that runs surprisingly deep for a small school.

Players like Canadians Bendus, Bram and Agosta also highlight one particularly impressive thing about Sisti: his ability to recruit internationally. This past season, Mercyhurst's roster included just nine Americans and 14 from north of the border. Sweden, which has given Sisti players like former defender Johanna Malmstrom, has been another recruiting base in the past. While on the surface that seems to contradict the "Pennsylvania's a great hockey state, we can recruit within the region" party line, I think it shows great resourcefulness. He's finding the players to be an elite program wherever he can, with a budget that's undoubtedly significantly smaller than Mark Johnson's.

Academics? Check.

For 11 consecutive years, the team’s cumulative grade point average has been above a 3.0.

Pep talk? A little unoriginal, but sure.



Sounds like everything's in order for a quality hire, should PSU decide to go in this
direction. So let's jump out of this one with some more inspirational words from Sisti. Enjoy.

Head Coach Candidate: Scott Sandelin

Fourteenth in a series taking uninformed, uneducated guesses at the candidates to become the first head coach of Penn State's NCAA men's team. Previously: Icers coach Scott Balboni, Denver coach George Gwozdecky, Pittsburgh Penguins assistant Tony Granato, Robert Morris coach Derek Schooley, Wisconsin women's coach Mark Johnson, Nebraska-Omaha hockey czar and former coach Mike Kemp, Ottawa Senators assistant Greg Carvel, Minnesota coach Don Lucia, Miami assistant Brent Brekke, Notre Dame assistant Paul Pooley, Cornell assistant Casey Jones, Boston College assistant Mike Cavanaugh, Princeton coach Guy Gadowsky.

Right off the top, I want to thank Penn State hockey booster and former coach Mark Horgas for his assistance in piecing things together, both for this post and with the coaching search generally. Anything I say in this post that sounds like good information and doesn't have a link probably goes back to him in one way or another. The guy is a tremendous asset to Penn State and Pennsylvania hockey, and knows everyone involved in both. If you're not following him on Twitter (@MarkHorgas), you're missing out.

This post is probably going to look slightly different than others in the series, for the simple reason that this isn't me guessing a name (or seeing one printed in some random place), it's me taking an ironclad known candidate, one widely believed to be the leader for the job, and exploring the situation a little. I'll do a quicker-than-normal rundown of the biographical stuff (or at least I'll try, I know brevity is not my strong suit), then get into the fun stuff that's probably the real reason you want to read posts like this one. So without further ado, here's the playing career:

Season   Team                   Lge    GP    G    A  Pts  PIM
-------------------------------------------------------------
1982-83  U. of North Dakota     WCHA   30    1    6    7   10
1983-84  U. of North Dakota     WCHA   41    4   23   27   24
1984-85  U. of North Dakota     WCHA   38    4   17   21   30
1985-86  U. of North Dakota     WCHA   40    7   31   38   38
1985-86  Sherbrooke Canadiens   AHL     6    0    2    2    2
1986-87  Sherbrooke Canadiens   AHL    74    7   22   29   35 
1986-87  Montreal Canadiens     NHL     1    0    0    0    0 
1987-88  Sherbrooke Canadiens   AHL    58    8   14   22   35
1987-88  Montreal Canadiens     NHL     8    0    1    1    2
1988-89  Sherbrooke Canadiens   AHL    12    0    9    9    8
1988-89  Hershey Bears          AHL    39    6    9   15   38
1989-90  Hershey Bears          AHL    70    4   27   31   38
1990-91  Hershey Bears          AHL    39    3   10   13   21
1990-91  Philadelphia Flyers    NHL    15    0    3    3    0
1991-92  Kalamazoo Wings        IHL    49    3   18   21   32
1991-92  Minnesota North Stars  NHL     1    0    0    0    0
-------------------------------------------------------------

His senior year at North Dakota was nothing short of a massive awards haul: Hobey Baker finalist, first-team All-WCHA, second-team All-American, team MVP and captain. Unfortunately for Sandelin, North Dakota won national championships the year before he showed up and the year after he left, but not during his time in Grand Forks. He did make one trip to the Frozen Four, but then this happened (Sandelin is No. 5 for UND):



A pretty substantial professional playing career followed for the defenseman from Hibbing, MN, spent entirely in the NHL and AAA-level minor leagues. That three-season run with Hershey towards the end of his career is particularly significant, because...

Sandelin's wife, Wendy, is from the Central Pennsylvania area and a [1988] Penn State [nursing] graduate. The two met while he was playing with Hershey, then the AHL affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers.

After a chronic back injury forced the end of his playing career, Sandelin served as GM and coach of the Fargo-Moorhead Express of the American Hockey Association in 1992-1993, a league that didn't even survive long enough to declare its first champion. But at least the Express were in first place at the time, so give Sandelin credit for winning while probably worrying whether he'd be paid. The next season he coached juniors, also in the Fargo-Moorhead area.

From there, six years (1994-2000) were spent assisting Dean Blais (now Nebraska-Omaha's coach) at North Dakota, where he'd make up for the missing out on the NCAA championship thing. Twice. What's pretty impressive about that run is that in its entire storied hockey history, the Sioux have only suffered three consecutive losing seasons twice. Blais and Sandelin arrived in town following the latter of those stretches, and by year three, 1996-1997, they were national champions. And in Sandelin's last four seasons there, they won either the MacNaughton Cup (WCHA regular season title), the Broadmoor Trophy (WCHA tournament championship) or both each season, as well as another national title in 2000.

Not surprisingly, Minnesota-Duluth, which had fallen off significantly since the time of Brett Hull, took a shot on the guy who had played a huge role in most areas of the Sioux program, and head coach of the Bulldogs has been Sandelin's job title for the last 11 years of his life. Those seasons divide pretty neatly into three stages.

In each of the first four, Duluth's record improved, culminating with a 28-13-4 record in 2003-2004, which included a Spencer Penrose Award (coach of the year) for Sandelin, a Hobey Baker Award for right wing Junior Lessard and a Frozen Four run.

Next up were four consecutive losing seasons, the only major blemish on Sandelin's resume. Things got kind of rough up Duluth way, even to the point where firing Sandelin was considered a viable option (in the comments, not the original post), although it seems like he had supporters throughout as well.

Finally, there's a reload starting with 2008-2009 and a Broadmoor Trophy that year and including players like Jack Connolly, Mike Connolly and Justin Fontaine (who formed one of the best lines in college hockey) and Pittsburgh-native goalie Kenny Reiter. We all know how that second reload ended:



Two more things you need to know about Sandelin: 1. He was just named as one of Blais' Team USA assistants for the World Junior Championships this coming December and January, a tremendous honor for any college hockey coach, and 2. He's entering the final year of his contract with UM-D and is currently negotiating an extension.

Sandelin, 46, has one year remaining on a two-year UMD contract. He finished the 2010-11 season 26-10-6 in winning the Division I title April 9. He’s 192-200-52 in 11 seasons at UMD.

He talked about a UMD contract extension last Friday with athletic director Bob Nielson, and is to meet again Tuesday.

“We’ll continue to talk and see where that goes,” Sandelin said of discussions with Nielson.

“Our desire is for Scott to be our hockey coach for a long time,” said Nielson. “He’s done a great job and we are working toward a new contract, but I also know that successful coaches have opportunities to talk to other schools and explore other possibilities. I’ve never faulted a coach for doing that.”

What adds some intrigue is that Sandelin's interview at Penn State took place yesterday, two days after the meeting with the Duluth brass. Undoubtedly, Sandelin came to Happy Valley armed with what he was being offered at UM-D, and so far, there's no indication whatsoever that Joe Battista and company blinked.

So how does Penn State go from a tight budget to possibly hiring away a guy who just won a national championship and is leveraging competing offers against each other? Well, look no further than Penn State's wrestling program, Cael Sanderson and Ira Lubert for that answer.

Of course, when it comes to Penn State hockey and deep-pocketed boosters, Terry Pegula heads the list. And if Pegula likes the guy Battista wants to hire, I think it's obvious that he'll help pay the difference between the budget and the demand - not to mention any of the other accommodations that might be required to draw a guy like Sandelin away from the upper midwest for the first time in his coaching career. Even beyond the money, people from all around the hockey world have taken note of what's been going on in Buffalo since Pegula took the reins. The franchise has been reborn in its 40th year, and has almost instantly gone from also-ran to chic destination. People, even national championship-winning coaches, want to be associated with a guy who makes things like that happen. Some people even go so far as to name blogs after them.

One of the possible accommodations I alluded to? UM-D assistant Derek Plante is a former Sabre. The idea that he might be part of the Sandelin package probably didn't hurt when selling the plan to Pegula.

Is Scott Sandelin the Cael Sanderson of Penn State hockey? If he's ultimately the guy, I certainly hope so. While a national championship in year two might be asking a little much, getting there eventually is the goal. And Sandelin's been there already. Three times. 



If you squint, you can almost picture this being the Pegula Ice Arena - and quicker than some would have you believe.


Horgas believes that the hire will be made before the American Hockey Coaches Association convention, which begins on April 28th, better known at this point as "next Thursday." Based on the agenda, and the fact that meetings start early that day (with a couple things the evening before as well), Wednesday seems like a travel day to me. Not to say that a flight to Florida and a press conference can't be done in the same day, but it seems a little less likely.

In other words, I should probably acknowledge that this post possibly concludes this series. If Horgas is right, by next Wednesday we'll either have a head coach, or the noise about an announcement will render another post pointless.

If this in fact it, I hope that you've found these posts as informative as I have - researching them has provided me with a great opportunity to learn a lot, not just about some of the best coaches out there, but also about some of the programs that make up the great sport of college hockey. It's been a great run, and it's made me even more excited to be a part of the NCAA picture in 2012.

Head Coach Candidate: Guy Gadowsky

Gadowski with former players Cam MacIntyre (center) and Zane Kalemba (right). Kalemba became just the second Hobey Baker Award nominee to come from Baker's school in 2009. Speaking of Baker, the rink named for him makes up the background.

Thirteenth in a series taking uninformed, uneducated guesses at the candidates to become the first head coach of Penn State's NCAA men's team. Previously: Icers coach Scott Balboni, Denver coach George Gwozdecky, Pittsburgh Penguins assistant Tony Granato, Robert Morris coach Derek Schooley, Wisconsin women's coach Mark Johnson, Nebraska-Omaha hockey czar and former coach Mike Kemp, Ottawa Senators assistant Greg Carvel, Minnesota coach Don Lucia, Miami assistant Brent Brekke, Notre Dame assistant Paul Pooley, Cornell assistant Casey Jones, Boston College assistant Mike Cavanaugh.

SPIN MOVE! Given what broke on Monday, you thought for sure it was going to be Scott Sandelin this week, didn't you? Well, it kind of is. Based on what I know, this series doesn't have much of a run left. Specifically, this whole thing could be over next week, or at the latest, the week of May 2nd, immediately following the American Hockey Coaches Association's annual convention, which runs from April 28th through May 1st.

With that in mind - not to mention my goal of actually hitting the guy who's ultimately hired without regard to the number of guesses I take at it - we'll cover Gadowsky today, Sandelin Friday, and probably two more next week. In the meantime, let's not forget that Sandelin isn't the only interview taking place, it's just the one that's leaked out so far.

For our purposes, the Edmonton native's story starts in Colorado Springs. He played 134 games in four years for the Colorado College Tigers, where he served as captain and wore my favorite number, 16 (bonus points already, and we've barely started). CC was generally awful in those years, but still, he managed to parlay that into five seasons of bouncing around the minor leagues, from the IHL to the ECHL to the AHL, and even to Germany. Let's stat it up:
                                     
Season   Team                   Lge    GP    G    A  Pts  PIM
-------------------------------------------------------------
1985-86  Colorado College       WCHA   38    5    7   12    6
1986-87  Colorado College       WCHA   40    9    7   16   32
1987-88  Colorado College       WCHA   25    3    8   11   10
1988-89  Colorado College       WCHA   31    3    4    7   16
1991-92  San Diego Gulls        IHL     9    1    4    5   13
1991-92  Richmond Renegades     ECHL   21   16   14   30   51
1992-93  St. John's Maple Leafs AHL     6    0    2    2    0  
1992-93  Richmond Renegades     ECHL   19   19   16   35    2
1993-94  Canadian National Team Intl    6    3    3    6    2
1993-94  Straubing EHC          GerOb   4    6    6   12    4
1994-95  PEI Senators           AHL    38    4    5    9   12 
1995-96  Fresno Falcons         WCHL   51   52   29   81   75 

Roller Hockey
   1994  San Jose Rhinos        RHI    13    8   10   18   19

Roller hockey? Freaking awesome. More bonus points.

What those stats don't say: Gadowsky had a pretty good idea where he wanted to end up in life, even while he was still making his living on the ice. He learned the ropes of the trade as an assistant playing coach both with Richmond in 1992-1993 and later with Fresno in 1995-1996.

That 1995-1996 season was pretty impressive for Gadowsky even beyond his stat line. He won the WCHL's MVP award as well and helped lead the Falcons to the finals in the inaugural season of the now-defunct league. So, at the very least, we know he can multi-task.

He decided to step aside as a player following that career year and get into coaching full time, this time as the Falcons' head coach, a position he held for three seasons, going 126-80-12. The team made the WCHL playoffs each season and Gadowsky won coach-of-the-year honors in 1996-1997 (a recurring theme, as you'll see).

It isn't often that I have a reason to talk about what coaches do in the offseason - recruiting, camps, etc. - but Gadowsky's a little bit of an exception, as he spent the summers of 1996-1999 coaching in Roller Hockey International - first with the Oklahoma Coyotes in 1996, then with his former team, the San Jose Rhinos, from 1997-1999. He collected an RHI coach-of-the-year award in 1997 as the Rhinos won the Western Conference title.

When I do these posts, I always like to see a diverse background with success in different types of settings. It's my belief that every coaching situation is unique (ours for obvious reasons), so the ability to adapt, to me, indicates a better chance of a guy turning out to be a quality hire. And a successful stint coaching RHI certainly qualifies as "diverse," particularly from a coaching standpoint.

From here it gets a little more conventional, in the form of a nice run coaching the Alaska Nanooks of the CCHA from 1999-2004. While the overall record of 68-87-22 doesn't sound too impressive, let's get some context on that mark. Alaska wasn't exactly happy to see him go.

Gadowsky is credited with taking a program that had endured five consecutive losing seasons before his arrival in 1999 and turning it into a team that earned home ice for the Central Collegiate Hockey Association playoffs in two of the last three seasons.

Gadowsky has an overall 68-87-22 record at UAF and was 53-45-11 in the last three seasons.

"He's obviously leaving a big void. He's not only taught us players to become better players, but he's also taught us to become better people," said Corbin Schmidt of Anchorage, who will be a senior for the Nanooks.

Average attendance at the Carlson Center jumped from 2,962 per game the season before Gadowsky arrived to 4,055 last season.

Basically, he took a bad program and made them respectable. And he one-upped that accomplishment at Princeton, where he's been since 2004.

Darroll Powe played for Gadowsky at Princeton. Also, the article I, uh, borrowed this picture from was written by Nick Seravalli's brother, so check that out.

The Tigers were simply pathetic immediately before Gadowsky's arrival, winning a combined eight games over two seasons. He matched that total in year one, then bettered it each year from years two through five. The culmination of this progression was 21-14-0 in 2007-2008 and 22-12-1 in 2008-2009. That 2007-2008 season earned Princeton its first NCAA tournament bid since 1998 (via winning the ECAC tournament), scored Gadowsky ECAC coach-of-the-year honors as well as national honors from some corners.

That next year brought Princeton's best record since some guy named Lloyd Neidlinger coached the team to a 15-4-0 mark, which happened during Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first term. Seriously. Another NCAA bid came from that, but the Tigers lost in the first round (coincidentally to Sandelin's Minnesota-Duluth) in pretty unbelievable fashion.

A predictable step back came in 2009-2010, but Gadowsky's crew was back on the winning side of the ledger this past season at 17-13-2, and with a fairly young team (16 freshmen and sophomores), they should be well-positioned to climb back towards the NCAA tournament in the next couple years.

While I've touched on academics in a lot of these pieces, Gadowski takes it to another level. Just from his Princeton bio, we get the following:

• He was a three-time WCHA All-Academic Team member.
• His degree was in economics, not exactly rocks for jocks.
• While at Alaska, the Nanooks set team grade point average records.

That last bullet point inspired me to pull up some grad rate data, so let's add the following:

• Took over an Alaska program that had a graduation rate of 47 percent just before he came to town and had it up to 66 percent in the 2000-2003 cohorts, which covers the bulk of his recruiting classes.  That change in culture, in addition to the team GPA records, helped lead to Alaska's first two hockey Academic All-Americans in 2009 and 2010.

Gadowsky will bash your skull in if you don't work hard in the classroom.

So he wins while emphasizing academics. Sounds like a Penn State kind of guy to me. Recently, there's been a decent amount of buzz around Gadowsky as it relates to the PSU opening. That's probably a good sign for him this far into the process, and I personally believe him to be one of the final-stage candidates. Here's a quote from the article I just linked:

Princeton coach Guy Gadowsky is a name that comes up a lot. He is on the Division I Men's Ice Hockey Committee, and so I saw him a lot at the Frozen Four. Without getting into specifics about himself, personally, which he wouldn't want to publicly divulge anyway, Gadowsky said that the Penn State opening is far more attractive to coaches than say Massachusetts-Lowell. This is no offense to Lowell, it's just that the prospect of starting your own program from scratch is appealing to coaches.

"I'm not saying I'm interested per se, but I could see why a lot of people are." Got it, coach. <winky face>

One theme that seems to be emerging during this process: the idea of the candidate list being divided into two groups, "Joe Battista guys" and "Terry Pegula guys." That's not at all to suggest that the two most important people in Penn State hockey are at odds with each other or that bad coaches are being involved in the process. It simply means that there are essentially two possible explanations for a guy having made it to this stage of the hiring process.

I'll get a little more into that distinction Friday with Sandelin (look at the assistant coaches he might bring with him, the NHL team(s) they played for and the amount of money it would take to pry Sandelin from a national championship program if you want a hint), but for now, suffice it to say that Gadowsky is a Battista guy. We've gone over the academics, always a big selling point with JoeBa. He's also worked Penn State hockey camps, not something that tends to happen if you don't get along with the people running a program.

Let's step out of this one with a Gadowsky endorsement from a guy whose opinion I respect, CBS Sports' Dave Starman:

HC gigs at PSU, Mich Tech, Providence and Lowell all were/are open....can someone tell me how Guy Gadowsky's name isn't #1/#2 on every list?

Head Coach Candidate: Mike Cavanaugh

Twelfth in a series taking uninformed, uneducated guesses at the candidates to become the first head coach of Penn State's NCAA men's team. Previously: Icers coach Scott Balboni, Denver coach George Gwozdecky, Pittsburgh Penguins assistant Tony Granato, Robert Morris coach Derek Schooley, Wisconsin women's coach Mark Johnson, Nebraska-Omaha hockey czar and former coach Mike Kemp, Ottawa Senators assistant Greg Carvel, Minnesota coach Don Lucia, Miami assistant Brent Brekke, Notre Dame assistant Paul Pooley, Cornell assistant Casey Jones.

When I first considered doing one of these on Mike Cavanaugh, I hesitated. Why? Quite simply, he's been on Jerry York's staff at Boston College for sixteen years, the last seven of those as associate head coach. In that time. And after a couple seasons of building, BC has become probably the dominant program in college hockey. To sample that, here's some of the track record since 1997-1998:

• Three national championships (2001, 2008, 2010).
• Nine Frozen Four appearances (1998-2001, 2004, 2006-2008, 2010).
• A Hockey East regular season or tournament championship every year except four (five regular season and eight tournament in all) - and in two of those four, they made up for it by getting to the national championship game.
• Five Beanpot titles (2001, 2004, 2008, 2010, 2011).
• A litany of NHLers and seven different Hobey Baker finalists, including Mike Mottau (who won in 2000), Brian Gionta, Jeff Farkas, Ben Eaves, Tony Voce and Chris Collins. Oh, and this guy:

Nate Gerbe doing what he does: outworking someone while wearing one of the best jerseys ever.

I could go deeper, but you get the idea. They're pretty freaking good. But there's a question that I couldn't get over: On the back of that track record, how in the hell is Mike Cavanaugh still employed there? Shouldn't some pretty decent program have gratefully handed him the keys about five years ago? I mean, isn't that generally what happens with assistants with much less on their resume than this guy? So what's the deal? Did he get a program on probation at some point? Is he a registered sex offender? Did he at some point say that he and his Irish surname were parked in Boston for all eternity and that only one million billion dollars and a tanker full of chowdah every week could change his mind?

Turns out, it just hasn't happened, for whatever reason. He was one of the finalists for the Ohio State job last off-season that Casey Jones also didn't get. It could just be a matter of him realizing that he doesn't have it completely horribly, combined with the fact that job openings at successful major programs aren't all that common.

I mean, really, is being the head coach at Michigan Tech better than being York's right hand on Chestnut Hill in any way whatsoever, other than the ability to say you're a DI head coach? Job security? Success? Reputation? Even compensation? Not to pick on MTU, they have it tough enough as it is, but I think you can at least argue that being the top assistant at the top program is a superior gig to a head job anywhere in the bottom half of DI.

Speaking of the bottom half of DI and Cavanaugh getting a head coaching job, he's considered a finalist for the open job at Providence, so there's a decent chance he might be completely off the table for PSU, since PC is probably going to make their hire first.

According to sources close to the PC program, Cranston native David Quinn --coach of the AHL's Lake Erie Monsters, and a former associate head coach at his alma mater, Boston University, where he was an all-Hockey East defenseman -- was on campus [Monday] for an interview.

He'll be followed into town, sources say, by Mike Cavanaugh, associate head coach of the Boston College Eagles, and Nate Leaman, the head coach at Union.

Driscoll, who was in Minnesota over the weekend in his role as chairman of the NCAA Ice Hockey Championship Committee, would say only that he hopes to have a new coach in place no later than the middle of next week.

This previous article also mentions that he was in the running at Brown a couple years ago, and there's been some noise about the position at UMass-Lowell too. Not all Friars fans are sold though:

I don't want Cavanaugh. If he's good he's a short timer, if he's nothing without the BC jacket on I don't need to have a shellgame played.

...and those also happen to be the two biggest (only?) anti-Cavanaugh arguments, put much more succinctly than you generally get out of me. For what it's worth, someone in that same message board string provided a nice counterpoint to the second.

Do you realize the pressure of recruiting at BC? Due to the success of their program and the expectations, year after year you have to find the best of the best. The all too involved "Pike's Peak Club" will certainly let you know when they are not impressed. At a place like Union, you can certainly exceed expectations a lot easier than at BC. One could argue that BC did not live up to expectations this year because they didn't make the frozen four, Union makes the tourney and suddenly their coach is Bob Johnson.

For something like the Penn State job, you might have to throw in his willingness to get out of New England as a third potential snag. Even if it kind of seems that way, the North Andover, MA native hasn't been chained to the Bay State for his entire life. But even when he's not there, he's generally not far away.

Cavanaugh played collegiately at NCAA Division III Bowdoin College in Brunswick, ME, where he served as captain in his senior year of 1989-90 and also crossed paths with former Icers goalie coach Darren Hersh. I imagine Cavanaugh did his part to keep Hersh clean against UConn that year in an effort that wound up in the Bowdoin record books.

From there, it was a year overseas as a player/coach with the Richmond Flyers of the now-defunct British Hockey League. Cavanaugh tore it up with 62 goals and 99 points in just 28 games, but the Flyers ceased operations after that 1990-1991 season when their rink was demolished to make room for apartments. Sounds like something that would've happened to some opponent of the 1930s-1940s Penn State men's hockey team.

After that, Cavanaugh came back across the pond and spent 1991-1992 assisting at Belmont Hill School (Belmont, MA), 1992-1993 assisting York at Bowling Green, and 1993-1995 assisting Roger Demment at Dartmouth. There was a whole lot of losing in his life during these years (19-21-1 at Bowling Green, 14-37-3 at Dartmouth). Still, as I've learned putting these posts together, good coaches don't always win. Accordingly, York thought enough of Cavanaugh to bring him over to BC, a relationship that's proven pretty fruitful on both sides.

While at BG, Cavanaugh ran into Parma, OH native Brian Holzinger, who led the team in scoring that year. And yeah, it was pretty tempting to go with another Sabres pic, since Holzinger played in Buffalo from 1994-2000. But hey, I have love for the Falcons too.

Head Coach Candidate: Casey Jones

Eleventh in a series taking uninformed, uneducated guesses at the candidates to become the first head coach of Penn State's NCAA men's team. Previously: Icers coach Scott Balboni, Denver coach George Gwozdecky, Pittsburgh Penguins assistant Tony Granato, Robert Morris coach Derek Schooley, Wisconsin women's coach Mark Johnson, Nebraska-Omaha hockey czar and former coach Mike Kemp, Ottawa Senators assistant Greg Carvel, Minnesota coach Don Lucia, Miami assistant Brent Brekke, Notre Dame assistant Paul Pooley.

With the new wave of names I suddenly had at my disposal for this series as of last week, I decided to approach things this way: get the people with Ohio State ties over with as quickly as possible, then take about six showers. On that note, I present current Cornell and former OSU assistant Casey Jones. Let's hope Chandler Bing there is a better coach than photograph subject.

It seems like the coaches I've profiled generally fall into two distinct age categories, with George Gwozdecky (graduated from college in 1978), Mark Johnson (1980), Don Lucia (1981) and Paul Pooley (1984) falling into the more-experienced group, with Greg Carvel (1993), Derek Schooley (1994) and Brent Brekke (1994) representing the up-and-comers. Jones (Cornell, 1990) is in the latter group as well. Stats:

Season   Team                     Lge    GP    G    A  Pts  PIM
---------------------------------------------------------------
1986-87  Cornell University       ECAC   27    6   12   18   38
1987-88  Cornell University       ECAC   27   10   22   32   26
1988-89  Cornell University       ECAC   29    8   27   35   22
1989-90  Cornell University       ECAC   27    6   21   27   22

A pro playing career wasn't in the cards, so after a year of teaching high school, he jumped right into coaching at his alma mater, as Brian McCutcheon's assistant from 1991-1993. The Big Red weren't particularly good in these seasons (20-30-5), but courtesy of one official bio standby of rationalizing bad records, we get this information:

During his initial time at Cornell, Jones recruited many of the players who would ultimately capture the 1995-96 and 1996-97 ECAC Hockey Championships, the first two seasons of Mike Schafer's coaching tenure at Cornell.

Recruiting. Despite my (completely valid, you know you've seen that one before) crack just above, it's a recurring theme with Jones almost anywhere you look for information. And he didn't need the rationalization in his next stop, two years of 43-19-9 as a Clarkson assistant from 1993-1995, including the 1995 ECAC regular season championship and an NCAA tournament berth.

From there, it's on to Ohio State with new head coach John Markell, where Jones finally decided to buy instead of rent, staying for 13 years. With the Buckeyes, he served as recruiting coordinator, in addition to his defense and special teams responsibilities. Let's not lose sight of the fact that he's still only five years out of college at this point. I spent my first five years out of college dropping out of law school, then working in retail and as a telemarketer before finally getting it together. Lesson for soon-to-be college graduates reading this: stay the hell away from Cleveland.

Like I said about Notre Dame not too long ago, those only familiar with college football and basketball probably don't realize that OSU isn't one of the major players in college hockey history. So it was a little bit of a stunner when, in Jones' third season in Columbus, the Buckeyes went from 12-25-2 to 27-13-2 and their first-ever NCAA tournament appearance in 1998. They even added to the surprise by cashing in with a Frozen Four trip. The follow-up was another appearance the next season, then after retooling, three more from 2003-2005. The 2004 bid came courtesy of winning the CCHA tournament.

I don't mean to brush past 13 seasons of team accomplishments in one paragraph, but I want to give Jones' run as recruiting coordinator its due. Look at what was passing through the program in those years.

• Hugo Boisvert - Only two-time All-American in school history (1998, 1999).
• Jeff Manud - 1999 All-American.
• Eric Meloche - He's still playing believe it or not, in Germany. His inclusion here is mostly so I can reminisce about the Cleveland Barons site I worked on in college (sorry, can't find any remnants on the internet) about as much as this blog. Because this guy is his father:

Okay, now for the lumber:

• RJ Umberger - NHL first-round draft pick (VAN, 2001). The current Blue Jacket has 273 points in 471 career NHL games as of this writing. Oh, and he's a Pittsburgh native.
• Dave Steckel - NHL first-round draft pick (LA, 2001). The defensive and faceoff specialist was a key piece of some of the pretty good recent Caps teams, but was traded to the Devils at the deadline this season.
• Ryan Kesler - NHL first-round draft pick (VAN, 2003). If you need me to tell you about him, get out more. One of the emerging stars in the NHL and probably, along with Detroit's Pavel Datsyuk, the best defensive forwards in the game who also provide legitimate scoring.
• Tom Fritsche - NHL second-round draft pick (COL, 2005). Doesn't quite have the resume of the guys above him, but I'll give Parma, OH some love. Just don't try to look for a job there (I'm serious about that).

Ohio State started to slide backwards after the 2005 NCAA appearance, and perhaps sensing Markell's end was near (it was, despite a brief resurgence), Jones went back to Cornell in 2008. Still, OSU thought enough of Jones to give him serious consideration for the head coaching job once Markell was fired after last season. Adam Wodon of College Hockey News gave Jones a pretty strong endorsement around that time:

Jones, a Cornell alumnus, left Clarkson to join Markell's staff as an assistant in the mid-'90s. Jones is largely credited with being the main Xs and Os guy there, as well as a great recruiter. The talent level OSU brought in clearly skyrocketed in his time, and he helped Ohio State to five NCAA appearances in his time there, and left the program in good hands when he left two seasons ago. The talent he left them with won 23 games and made the NCAAs last season, but this season, the team's play tailed off dramatically, finishing with 12 regular-season wins until its three playoff victories.

Ultimately, the job went to Mark Osiecki, and Jones is still at Cornell, where he and head coach Mike Schafer have done pretty good work, including the 2010 ECAC tournament championship, and NCAA tournament appearances in 2009 and 2010. But as Wodon points out in praising Jones, he's not just sitting around waiting for Schafer to leave town - he will jump at the chance to be a head coach at a major program. Even a new one.

Casey Jones told me that he would apply for the PSU job if it ever went varsity. He also laughed and said that PSU would incur a "beatdown".

The other half of the story, of course, is Penn State's interest level, which might be there as well. We'll know for sure soon enough.