Hakstol adjusts to new era of college hockey as ASU’s head coach

Photo: (Yahoo Sports)

TEMPE – College hockey looked very different the last time Dave Hakstol coached it. In the final few years of his tenure at North Dakota, Hakstol was unable to even buy his team breakfast. One time, his coaching staff got approval to bring in bagels for a team breakfast.

The caveat? His players had to bring their own cream cheese — an unthinkable rule in the current era of NIL.

As Hakstol returns to college hockey to lead Arizona State, the very landscape and nature of the game has changed. Players can make money off their Name, Image and Likeness, with schools even involved in connecting them to businesses amid the ever-changing transfer portal and eligibility rules.

“The business of college hockey has changed, and it’s ever-changing,” Hakstol said. “We’re prepared for that. I’ve continued to be a college hockey fan. I’ve continued to study the game. I’ve watched the business side of it closely. So now I’m back into it. I have to learn that firsthand. I’ve got to do a good job of that. The changes with player movement, with NIL payments. There’s a ton of positives there for the players.”

While that alone is enough to be a major adjustment for the former NHL coach, he walked into likely the most unique situation in college hockey. Since the August 20 workout that left second-year defenseman Matthew Mayich on life support, ASU has looked like a broken coffee mug, waiting for someone to come pick up the pieces.

For the first two weeks of the season, the Sun Devils had no consistent figure in charge of their program. Once former head coach Greg Powers was placed on administrative leave and eventually parted ways with the school, while acting head coach Mike Corbett followed, ASU looked like a team lost out in the woods.

In came Hakstol.

“I found the guys want to be coached,” Hakstol said. They’re craving that. So the best thing that I can do is provide leadership. Provide leadership off the ice. Provide leadership, direction and coaching on the ice. We haven’t complicated that. I’m aware of everything. I’m aware of some of the things that these players are possibly dealing with. Yet I make no assumptions. So we just hit things head-on on a daily basis.”

However, the timing of Hakstol’s arrival proved to be less than ideal. For over a week after Powers was placed on administrative leave, names such as Brad Berry were floated as candidates for the team’s second-ever head coach. Eventually, athletic director Graham Rossini landed on Hakstol, Berry’s predecessor at North Dakota.

Hakstol left behind his assistant coach role with the Colorado Avalanche to meet the Sun Devils in Massachusetts, less than 48 hours before their first game against UMass Lowell. ASU’s road sweep of the River Hawks proved to be a positive start to the Hakstol era, as the timely bye week gave Hakstol enough time to run a “mini training camp” to better connect with his team on and off the ice.

“Get to know our players,” Hakstol said. “I don’t just mean get to know who they are on the ice, but also get to know them a little bit off the ice. Get to know what their abilities are, and try and understand that a little bit, so we know how to apply that to our team game. Coupled with that, lay the foundation of how we want to play systematically. So that’s going to take time. But it’s truly a blessing really to have the weekend off where we could do that. We could take five days and just turn our focus completely inwards.”

The five-day camp period surely helped bring a fractured team closer together toward a single identity, but likely did not solve all of ASU’s woes. In preseason, all college hockey teams spend months training, building their own brands to take into the season.

Hakstol still faces the challenge, both now and in the future, of succeeding in one of the toughest conferences in NCAA hockey. In its first two seasons — both of which ended with an NCHC team winning the national championship — ASU finished second and last.

Positively for the Sun Devils, the man behind their bench has already bred success in the conference, leading the Fighting Hawks to first- and second-place finishes, both of which ended in NCAA Frozen Four appearances. The league success may not be immediate, but adding Hakstol’s prior experience to the program only increases ASU’s chances to right the sinking ship of its hockey program.

“The league got off to a great start,” Hakstol said. “I was part of it early on, and I’ve watched it closely ever since, and the amount of success that the NCHC has had on a national level is amazing. I see nothing but that continuing in a highly competitive environment. It’s not an easy thing that’s been done. Certainly, it won’t be easy to continue that into the future for the league.”

Although there may be some early hurdles as the team opens NCHC play this weekend at St. Cloud State before hosting defending national champions No. 3 Denver, Hakstol has still emphasized building up the program for the future.

Even as the Sun Devils have provided fans with relative success, making two NCAA Tournaments in their first 11 years as a program, Powers and his staff never seemed able to take the next big step: developing consistent NHL talent and keeping them in Tempe.

ASU has only produced four players who have appeared in an NHL game: Joey Daccord, Josh Doan, Ty Murchison and Brinson Pasichnuk. Last season, it seemed as if the program was heading toward a possible corner turn once Cullen Potter became the program’s first-ever first-round NHL draft pick.

Following the disastrous end to the season, which included Potter suffering a season-ending injury, the Minnesota native packed his things and transferred to Michigan State, with NHL development playing a possible factor. To combat this, Hakstol plans to work with the NHL teams that own his players’ rights to give the Sun Devil players the best possible chance of reaching “the show”.

“We need to evaluate our developmental path,” Hakstol said. “I believe that’s one of the next steps for our program, and we’ll, you know, work hard to make sure that this is a great place for players to choose to come and not only grow and develop, but have an opportunity to play in the National Hockey League. We want them to be able to be successful and win while they do that with a great group of people in the dressing room.”