2022 hockey coaching search

more reasons for Brandon to grin today [David Wilcomes]
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Brandon Naurato Named Permanent Head Coach Of Michigan Hockey
Alex.Drain • March 31, 2023 • 4:56pm

We didn't post the Hunter Dickinson news because it's not 100% clear if it's an official exit yet and also we want to still be happy about Jadyn Davis. That rule thus applies to the next piece of news on this jampacked Friday afternoon, equally happy: 

In what seemed like a foregone conclusion, Michigan Athletics has decided to take the interim tag off of Brandon Naurato and make him the permanent head hockey coach. Naurato, now 38 years old, ascended to the job of interim head coach in August, after Mel Pearson was let go following an independent investigation into his conduct and the team culture of the Michigan Hockey program. Naurato had been on staff for one season under Pearson, before that being a private hockey skills consultant, consultant for the Detroit Red Wings, and hockey analyst/blogger. Naurato's playing days concluded in 2012 after four seasons in the ECHL, IHL, and Central Hockey League, following his four year career at Michigan, where he played under Red Berenson from 2005-09. 

After being thrust into the position rather late in the summer, Naurato spent the weeks he had re-shaping the program, hiring a new assistant coach (Rob Rassey), head of hockey ops (Topher Scott), and a new analytics department headed by Anthony Ciatti. With his guys now in place on the management side, Naurato made sure to keep the roster and incoming recruits together, a group that would be loaded with talent. The team started the season 7-1 but then ran into adversity as B1G play started, due to an outbreak of a respiratory virus that ravaged the locker room and nearly killed defenseman Steve Holtz.

Since losing the first game of the second half in disastrous fashion to Ohio State, Michigan has gone 14-3-2 in their past 19 games, winning the B1G Tournament for the second straight season and repeating as Frozen Four participants. The team looked choppy at points this season but in the back half, they have been playing excellent, composed hockey, appearing like the coach's systems were resonating with the players. In the aftermath of winning the Midwest Regional in Allentown, PA, last weekend, the administration did the only logical thing in handing Naurato the keys full-time. 

In less than one full season, Naurato has placed his fingerprints all over the program, not just in the hires he made in the off-season but also on the recruiting trail and his approach to player management. Tasked with cleaning up the cultural issues that pervaded under Pearson outlined in the report, Naurato has seemingly done an admirable job, a reported player's coach who is well-liked by his team. He has embraced innovative and progressive coaching tactics, including prioritizing the mental health of his players, and at this point, it's hard to argue with the results. 

There are now six days until Michigan Hockey takes the ice in Tampa for the Frozen Four, in search of their tenth national title, but when they do so, they will now have a much more stable coaching situation behind the bench. There is no content after the jump.

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We need to get more photos of this guy soon [David Wilcomes]
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Hockey Weekly Has A New Head Coach
Alex.Drain • August 10, 2022 • 3:00pm

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] 

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[NHL.com]
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Report: Brandon Naurato Named Interim Hockey Coach
Alex.Drain • August 7, 2022 • 3:10pm

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. 

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