Previewing the 2026-27 Season

Let's start with the six new schools that hired new head coaches this year.

You've got Eric Roode at Alaska Anchorage, Tom Upton at Brown, Rob Rassi at Harvard, Brett Larson at Minnesota, and then a couple of former players returning to their alma maters to be the head coach, Nick Oliver at St.

Cloud State.

Jeff Hamilton at Yale.

I guess I'll get your general thoughts, but I think like each one of these situations is different and it seems hard to poke many or any holes in any of these hires.

Yeah.

You know, I think last year we had like the highest number of coaching turnover that we'd had ever in a season.

And so this year it's down a little bit, but still six is notable.

Um, A lot of them, you know, the funny thing is, is we all speculate on candidates and a lot of times you end up being wrong on who you think is going to be hired.

A lot of these are the ones that were the ones we kind of thought were going to be the top candidates, especially Brett Larson at Minnesota, Nick Oliver going back to St.

Cloud State.

A lot of these schools, too, had really impressive candidate lists.

I think that had to be something that It was interesting when you looked at the list of people who were interested in these jobs.

There just aren't that many.

You know, there's 63 head coaching jobs in Division I men's hockey.

And sometimes the coaches are there for a long time.

You know, sometimes you don't have a lot of turnover.

So a lot of people obviously

covet these jobs.

coaching body has definitely gotten younger you and i have talked a

lot

privately um about all the long time coaches the legends stepping down in the last two three and four years and we already know one coaching change for next year another long time coach tom serratore of bemidji state announced earlier this month this will be his this 26th season of bemidji state will be his final season behind the bench

Yeah, I don't have the list in front of me, but definitely top five in longest tenured.

I think he's maybe three or four.

He's fourth.