Bill Muckalt

HOUGHTON — Most observers of the Michigan Tech hockey program didn’t even know the Huskies needed to find a new head coach.

But they have after the university announced Thursday that former assistant coach Bill Muckalt has been hired as their top coach, replacing Joe Shawhan, who the Associated Press erroneously reported had a less-than-stellar 54-120-29 record in eight seasons, which works out to winning barely a third of his games.

A look at an MTU Sports Information release on the new hire showed Shawhan was really 154-120-29 — that’s a hundred more wins — which actually works out to a winning percentage of nearly 56 percent.

While neither the AP nor Tech cited any reason for what looks like an abrupt change with a year remaining on Shawhan’s contract, several websites could only speculate about the move to a new coach, one observer reporting that “the university didn’t like the direction the team was going.”

It was also noted that the move to hire a new coach comes about 2 1/2 months after the Huskies’ season ended and almost exactly five months before the CCHA season begins in October.

If that sounds familiar to fans of Northern Michigan University hockey, there’s good reason. Even further into the offseason in 2024 — June 11, to be exact — NMU said that Wildcats head coach Grant Potulny was stepping down after seven seasons to pursue his coaching fortunes in pro hockey.

Just 15 days later, Northern athletic director Rick Comley announced that former Wildcats’ national championship player Dave Shyiak was hired to replace Potulny.

Despite the quick work by the search committee tasked at looking for NMU’s fourth head coach in its history — Comley was the original head man over its first 25 years — and that Shyiak had more than a quarter century experience as a head coach, associate head coach and assistant coach, the damage was done to the Wildcats’ roster.

With 14 players declaring for the NCAA transfer portal even before Potulny announced he was leaving, the Wildcats were left with just four players from the 2023-24 team, forcing Shyiak to find more than a dozen players from July on to come up with a 28-player roster.

It showed, with half the team being freshmen and getting out of the gates at 1-18-1 by the end of December. A good showing at the Great Lakes Invitational in Grand Rapids didn’t produce any wins, but a 2-0 loss to national No. 1 Michigan State and 4-3 overtime loss to perennial GLI host MTU seemed to spur on Northern.

They finished 4-9-1 for an overall mark of 5-27-2 and CCHA record of 4-20-2.

Whether the Huskies will have to go through that sort of, well, purgatory, remains to be seen.

A look at a website that tracks NCAA hockey transfer portal movement conducted by Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald hockey writer Brad Elliott Schlossman shows eight Tech players in the portal, including five who have committed to other schools.

The portal closed earlier this month, according to Schlossman, except that in the case of a school like Tech, it reopens for 30 days following the announcement of a head coaching change.

The Huskies players already announced at new schools include a pair of 20-plus-point forwards in Logan Morrell going to Arizona State and Isaac Gordon headed to North Dakota, along with three defensemen who had offensive contributions last year, too — Nick Williams going to St. Thomas, Matthew Campbell headed to Merrimack and Trevor Russell off to RPI.

The Huskies have picked up one player through the portal, according to Schlossman, Minnesota-Duluth goalie Klayton Knapp, who as a freshman was 6-6-2 with a 2.67 goals-against average and .907 saves percentage.

Unlike NMU, Michigan Tech will be bringing in its 23rd head coach in program history, really not surprising considering the Huskies were one of the original schools to play the sport on an NCAA Division I-like level.

Those past coaches include the legendary John MacInnes, who compiled a 555-295-39 record in Houghton from 1956-82. All kinds of things are named for the late MacInnes, including trophies, awards, roads and maybe most notably, the Huskies’ hockey arena, the 4,200-seat John MacInnes Student Ice Arena.

Muckalt was signed to a five-year contract after he served as an MTU assistant coach from 2011-15 under Mel Pearson. Last season, he was the head coach at Lindenwood University, a third-year Division I program in Saint Charles, Missouri, that set its wins record with a modest 8-22-2 record that included wins over Wisconsin and Notre Dame of the Big 10 and Omaha and Miami (Ohio) of the NCHC.

Between those stints, Muckalt was associate head coach and lead recruiter at the University of Michigan from 2017-23, where he had been a two-time national champion as a player in 1996 and 1998 before embarking on a five-year NHL career with four teams.

Muckalt was also a coach before those stints, working as general manager and head coach of the Tri-City Storm of the USHL from 2015-17.

MTU Vice President for Athletics & Recreation Suzanne Sanregret announced a press conference to welcome Muckalt will be held Tuesday.

Story contents based on a combination of an Associated Press story, news release from Michigan Tech University and information from other websites. Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.