OT: Lindenwood hockey hiring former UM assistant Bill Muckalt
https://www.collegehockeynews.com/news/2024/04/13_Lindenwood-Hiring-Bill-Muckalt.php
Lindenwood is finalizing an agreement with Bill Muckalt to become the program’s next head coach.
Muckalt and Bemidji State associate head coach Travis Winter were finalists for the job. A press conference will likely happen next week; details are being worked out. Lindenwood’s players were informed on Saturday.
Muckalt, 49, is a former Michigan captain and graduate. He played six professional seasons before retiring in 2004. He began his coaching career in 2006 at Eastern Michigan (ACHA) and was a head coach in the WSHL and NAHL before becoming an assistant coach under Mel Pearson at Michigan Tech in 2011. Muckalt was the GM/head coach of the Tri-City Storm from 2015-17 and worked with Pearson again at Michigan from 2017-22 as the associate head coach. Muckalt spent the 2022-23 season as the associate head coach for Brandon Naurato, but he left the program at the end of last season.
This will mark Muckalt’s first tenure as an NCAA head coach. He will replace Rick Zombo, who was let go by Lindenwood last month after two seasons. Zombo was the program’s club coach before it was elevated to Division I.
There was a vocal faction advocating for Muckalt to take over after Pearson was let go (or not retained, or whatever), but the general consensus was that he was too closely associated with Pearson's regime to lead given the way Pearson exited. It will be interesting to see how he fares.
Should have been Muckalt if anyone from current staff... If not then an outside program hire. It's nonsensical to have done otherwise. Both he and Naurato were subordinates of Pearson.
April 13th, 2024 at 10:21 PM ^
Two Final Fours not good enough for you, eh?
I was wondering who in the world would upvote such an odd, extreme post, and so I checked. Yep, makes sense
April 13th, 2024 at 11:27 PM ^
He’s going to go blind with all that self-up-votation.
April 14th, 2024 at 12:30 AM ^
Muckalt will make his mark on Lindenwood, he was a great assistant in his time at UM. Bummed for my Nanooks who play them regularly.
I wish Bill Muckalt the best at Lindenwood. The job there is a challenge for the best. There are a lot of people who follow the program who thought Muckalt should have been given the job over Naurato. I thought of Naurato having the higher ceiling and Muckalt the higher floor but I am not close enough to the program to know who was the better choice. I knew Muckalt would gone after the 2022-23 season because you could see the lack of chemistry between the two of them on the bench.
April 14th, 2024 at 10:43 AM ^
I hope it goes well for them because Lindenwood dropped practically their entire athletic department for hockey. After 2 years of having it they found out that traveling for almost all of their games is expensive. They dropped 10 sports and 248 scholarships.
I work not too far from Lindenwood and the day before they released the information to the press they gathered all of their coaches and athletes into an auditorium. A representative of the athletic director walked in and read a statement that the coaches would be losing their jobs at the end of their seasons and the athletes would lose their scholarships. As soon as they finish the letter they turned and walked out without fielding questions. It was a fucked up way to handle the situation.
Yeah, that was terrible, a ridiculous way to announce the news to their coaches and student-athletes. Shame on them.
They're not going about things in a measured way. They announced they were moving from D-2 to D-1 (FCS football) in February 2022. Just one month later, they announced they were starting a D-1 hockey program. Overall, by December 2023, they were sponsoring THIRTY (!!!) sports ----- the NCAA minimum if you're a D-1 program without an FBS football program is 14. They sponsored over double the minimum! They sponsored more sports than Michigan (29)!!!! That's all insane!
I get it, they're trying to use sports as a way to increase the University's visibility (and increase enrollment). But they bit off WAY too much all at once. It takes time, and it takes money. For instance, they haven't even played a football "buy game" versus an FBS yet, a standard way for FCS teams to help with revenue. They play their 1st versus Kansas this fall.
This job must be awful. I have to assume Lindenwood (and Stonehill) has hugely fewer resources than anyone else in college hockey.