mel pearson

We need to get more photos of this guy soon [David Wilcomes]

It's been a couple months since I last did a Hockey Weekly piece. The previous one checked in on the Mel saga, talked about the transfer portal, and then checked off a few odds and ends. Today's will be similar- we know how the Mel saga ended, so instead I will devote time to digging into new head coach Brandon Naurato before checking off some offseason topics including the non-conference schedule release, the NHL Draft, and the World Juniors. 

 

Hello: Brandon Naurato 

I wrote a little bit about Naurato on Sunday when he was announced as the interim head coach of Michigan Hockey and David and I discussed him on the HockeyCast yesterday. As a brief primer, I will quote what I wrote on Sunday here first: 

Naurato is a 37-year-old who has one year of experience as a coach at Michigan but glowing reviews. Michigan Hockey fans of the late 2000s may remember Naurato as a rather middling forward on the late 2000s juggernaut teams (including the 2008 Frozen Four squad), where he played 130 career games for the Wolverines, scoring 32 goals and 32 assists in his career. After that, Naurato bounced around the lower minor leagues before retiring from his playing career at age 27 in 2012. 

After retiring, Naurato became a skills specialist and hockey consultant in the Metro Detroit area (Naurato is a Livonia native), specializing in prospect development. He founded his own business, Naurato Consulting, and in the 2010s he worked with nearly every notable Michigan player who went to the NHL during the summers, from Connor to Copp to Hughes to Larkin to Werenski. His excellence as a development coach led the Red Wings to hire Nuarato in a player development capacity in both Detroit and Grand Rapids, with the AHL affiliate. Last fall, Michigan hired Naurato to join the staff as an assistant. 

That's the sort of information you can glean from the Michigan Hockey bio of Naurato, but let's try and dig a little deeper. As I said on the podcast, Mel's decision to hire Naurato seemed to come from asking his players "what did you do in the summer?" and they all replied "working with Brandon Naurato", after which he made the logical next step to bring the guy on board. He explained as much in this short video from around the time Naurato was hired: 

Little did he know, he was actually hiring his replacement. Connor Earegood of the Michigan Daily has a collection of good quotes from players last season citing Naurato as the reason they improved in different facets of the game and he wrote in his introductory column on Naurato that the youthful assistant's primary responsibility had been the power play. While there wasn't the sort of gigantic PP improvement like we saw with the PK when Kris Mayotte was on staff, Michigan did improve last year on the PP, from 23.7% (7th) to 26.8% (3rd). Coaching a PP with the talent Michigan had on it last season is kind of like teaching Clayton Kershaw how to pitch, but at least it's a point in Naurato's favor as a piece of evidence that he can coach team hockey.

[AFTER THE JUMP: digging into the paper trail] 

[NHL.com]

Not long after we heard multiple reports that Michigan would be deciding today whether to go the interim route or conduct a coaching search, Jon Morosi is reporting that they have named to assistant coach Brandon Naurato to be the interim head coach: 

I will keep this short because I want to do a longer piece on Naurato this week, but in summary, Naurato is a 37-year-old who has one year of experience as a coach at Michigan but glowing reviews. Michigan Hockey fans of the late 2000s may remember Naurato as a rather middling forward on the late 2000s juggernaut teams (including the 2008 Frozen Four squad), where he played 130 career games for the Wolverines, scoring 32 goals and 32 assists in his career. After that, Naurato bounced around the lower minor leagues before retiring from his playing career at age 27 in 2012. 

After retiring, Naurato became a skills specialist and hockey consultant in the Metro Detroit area (Naurato is a Livonia native), specializing in prospect development. He founded his own business, Naurato Consulting, and in the 2010s he worked with nearly every notable Michigan player who went to the NHL during the summers, from Connor to Copp to Hughes to Larkin to Werenski. His excellence as a development coach led the Red Wings to hire Nuarato in a player development capacity in both Detroit and Grand Rapids, with the AHL affiliate.

Last fall, Michigan hired Naurato to join the staff as an assistant. While he worked one year under Mel, that one year came while Mel was under investigation, and thus, you can assume, was more cautious about many of the more problematic cultural elements cited in the report. More importantly, Naurato was not affiliated with the program when the allegations surrounding COVID-19 contact tracing lying happened, as well as the ugly dispute with Steve Shields and Strauss Mann. For an internal hire, Naurato would appear very clean of much of the muck that has besmirched the program's name. 

At first glance, this hire makes a ton of sense. It's a continuity hire that will keep the roster and recruiting classes in place and the opinions that I have heard from various sources both affiliated with Michigan and not are uniformly glowing of Naurato's abilities and potential. While you'd like him to have more coaching experience than just one year as an assistant, that can be rectified by building a coaching staff with more experience running systems and coaching college (a Phil Martelli type would go a long way here). If Naurato succeeds, you make him the head guy in full next summer and he could be your coach for three decades (unless the NHL steals him). If he stumbles, there will be no shortage of elite candidates next summer. 

UPDATE: Michigan has made it official. 

There is no content after the jump.  

Mel is walking to collect his things [James Coller]

A messy, tiring, and embarrassing saga in Michigan Athletics history came to the only logical end today as interim university President Mary Sue Coleman and Athletic Director Warde Manuel announced that hockey coach Mel Pearson has been relieved of his duties: 

For those living under a rock, Pearson was under investigation by the WilmerHale law firm from fall 2021 until spring 2022 due to a complaint filed by former goalie consultant Steve Shields that Pearson retaliated against him in firing Shields in August 2021, in violation of the university's code. The investigation's report, which was finished on May 5 and leaked to the public on Tuesday through MLive, concluded that while Pearson did not technically violate university code in firing Shields, the tenure of Pearson and his right-hand man, former Director of Hockey Operations Rick Bancroft, was deeply troubling and problematic.

The report painted a rather muddled picture of the allegations that Pearson directed his players to lie on contact tracing forms during the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2021 and regarded the allegation that Bancroft's (supposed) knowledge of Dr. Robert Anderson's conduct was central to the feud between Shields and Pearson as unfounded. However, the report did uncover what could best be described as a toxic workplace culture towards female employees in the hockey department, largely perpetrated by Bancroft, forcing one employee into retirement rather than to continue to work for Michigan. The report didn't list a multitude of instances of negative conduct by Pearson towards women, but did highlight one troublesome incident involving Hockey Sports Information Director Kristy McNeil that Pearson was involved in. At the very least, the report described Pearson as enabling Bancroft's behavior. 

Finally, the report detailed a culture of intimidation between Pearson and some members of the Michigan team. It stated how Pearson set conditions around team captain Strauss Mann that pushed Mann towards departing the program after Mann spoke up in favor of greater "respect" for the players (Mann was closely associated with Shields), leading to Mann signing in Sweden in April 2021. After that, the university commissioned an anonymous survey of players and staffers, which found that between 30 and 35% felt that they were not "respected and treated fairly" by Pearson, that they "personally experienced offensive, intimidating, discriminatory, or harassing conduct", and that they rated the culture more negatively than positively (this was not in the report but was leaked to The Athletic on Tuesday in conjunction with the report). The report also documented a meeting between the eight seniors from the 2021-22 team and Sport Administrator Josh Richelew, in which the group stated that Pearson "holds grudges", that if players were to speak up or complain they "won't play", and that the Mann incident made them "afraid of the consequences" if they "came forward". 

If you would like to read the report in full, you can do so here, or you can read a full summary with excerpts included in a tweet thread from your author here

[James Coller]

After the report was released to the Athletic Department in early May, Warde Manuel and his department did.... basically nothing. Pearson's contract expired at midnight on May 1, 2022, and for three months, he remained as head coach without a contract, one of the stranger developments anyone can remember. Insiders on paid sites like 24/7 and Rivals continued to signal that the university intended to keep Pearson, but as the weeks went by with no extension announced, more confusion and doubt began to shroud the situation. In June, MLive reported that Bancroft had been let go, leading many (myself included) to theorize that Michigan intended to use Bancroft as the fall guy to keep Pearson. That said, as the dog days of summer began to arrive and still no news was around the corner, more questions began to be asked. Then, the report was leaked to the media. We got word it had been obtained by independent journalists (no word as to how) a week ago today, and then it was published on Tuesday. 

The report's shocking bombshells led many on this space and elsewhere to conclude on Tuesday that Pearson needed to be removed from his position. Interim President Mary Sue Coleman met with Manuel on Wednesday, who, it had been indicated to this blog privately, was still in firm support of Pearson. That was confirmed publicly yesterday morning when John U. Bacon reported that Manuel stood in opposition to Coleman, as well as the unanimous (8-0) assent of the Board of Regents, who all supported the firing of Pearson. It was then reported last night by Bacon that unanimity had been reached between Manuel, Coleman, and the Regents. Given that Coleman and the Regents are the superiors to Manuel, most saw the writing on the wall as to Pearson's future. Indeed, the news that was very predictable last night came to fruition today. 

[it the JUMP for a reflection on the Mel Era]

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It's August. Time's up.

Michigan Hockey Summer goes dada 

"Maybe you just spray him down with fabric softener."

a quick roundup of offseason happenings

Did the Lakers draft Jett?

farewell to an uber-talented team that came up a bit short

A very good team enters the postseason with nothing much accomplished yet 

never fun to write mostly about off-ice scandals

Olympics in the picture, the WJC down in flames, a cancelation kerfuffle, and a bulldozing of UMass. Lots going on!

a mixture of thoughts on a (mostly) good first half