red berenson succession derby

Brian-Wiseman-UM

Wiseman will stay behind Michigan's bench

Per George Sipple of the Detroit News, Brian Wiseman will continue in his capacity as a Michigan assistant coach under Mel Pearson. Billy Powers will not. FWIW, I've heard from various sources that Wiseman was doing yeoman work in a difficult recruiting situation the last few years; he's probably a good guy to keep around. I have not confirmed but suspect that he was the driving force behind Michigan's brilliant 2015-16 umbrella power play, as well.

Sipple has a list of potential second assistants for Pearson:

Madden is unlikely since he is an AHL coach who has a good shot at moving up to the NHL ranks in the near future. As previously mentioned, Muckalt is a USHL head coach/GM; I have no idea whether being an assistant at Michigan is a move up or down in terms of status. Some guy who seems to know what he's talking about on the USCHO message boards asserted that someone in Muckalt's role is probably pulling down 90-100k a year; Powers made 138k this year. Michigan can offer a major salary bump for him. Sipple had previously asserted that unless Muckalt was the new head coach at Tech he expected him behind Michigan's bench.

Tamer and Komisarek are both former Michigan defensemen who had long NHL careers. Tamer is currently an assistant for the USA women's team. Komisarek just retired from the NHL in 2014 and returned to Michigan to complete his undergrad degree; he was working with the team as a student assistant. Neither has the resume of Muckalt but both are very familiar with Pearson.

I'd imagine Steve Shields would stay on as the volunteer goalie coach since he goes way back with Mel and did great work this year with not one not two but three goalies.

As for Powers, this would seem to be a natural fit:

That might not be as much of a recruiting boon as it seems. Most NTDP guys are already committed to a college by the time they join the program. Having Danton Cole around certainly didn't help MSU's recruiting efforts. But it can't hurt.

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Mel Pearson is Michigan's hockey coach now, and that's fine. Your author started stumping for Pearson shortly after he arrived at Michigan Tech and their program took off. This was year one, pre-realignment WCHA:

Tech won 13 games the next year and 14 in 2013-14, the first year of college hockey's new landscape. This alone is impressive in the modern context of Tech hockey; that's the first time Tech had won double-digit games since Bob Mancini did it from 1993 to 1996.

That alone would not be impressive enough to grab the Michigan job, but then Pearson had the following three seasons:

  • 29-10-2, at-large bid to tourney as #2 seed, #5 ES Corsi*
  • 23-9-5, WCHA regular season champs, #3 ES Corsi
  • 23-15-7, WCHA playoff champs, NCAA bid, #3 ES Corsi

It's likely that 2016-17 Tech would have had close to the same winning percentage Pearson's previous two teams did except for the fact that they spent about 8 games playing two goalies with .883 and .857 save percentages before freshman Angus Redmond emerged as the clear starter.

Schedule strength is a concern for WCHA schools so Dave broke down Pearson's "relevant" Corsi outings from the last three years. We defined relevant teams as Big Ten, NCHC, and HE schools plus Yale, an at-large bid from the ECAC in 2016. Red are clear Corsi losses, yellow tie-ish games, and green are clear wins. Keep in mind that some of these MSU and Wisconsin teams are very bad teams, as is this year's Michigan outfit. Nonetheless this is very impressive for a guy working at a severe talent disadvantage to most of these schools:

Pearson Relevant Corsi

Dave helpfully exclaimed about the 72-29 and 63-33 hamblastings of your Michigan Wolverines this year.

The modern WCHA is a mid-major conference but given what Tech was before Pearson arrived this is very close to hiring Lavall Jordan if he has a six-year tenure at Wisconsin-Milwaukee that includes two tourney bids and a regular season title. IE, the kind of hire major schools make all the time. Mel's deep roots with the program are certainly a bonus, but if Pearson's name was Neverheardof Annarbor he would still be a strong candidate.

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There is an undercurrent of discontent from Demand Excellence sorts. I do know that Michigan reached out to both Jeff Blashill and Mike Babcock at various points over the last few years and was unsurprisingly turned down by a pair of sitting NHL coaches. I have not heard that Michigan made overtures to any of the three slam-dunk college coaches (Nate Leaman, Norm Bazin, and Jim Montgomery) but I would not be surprised if anyone contacted offered a polite thanks-but-no-thanks. All three of those guys have essentially infinite job security at programs that are competing at a national title level. Taking over for a legend who left behind a very bad team is a recipe for a quick exit, pursued by a mob. Rich Rodriguez is nodding vigorously for reasons that are mysterious to him at this very moment. Michigan could have come in with a big offer and it might not do much other than get the coach in question a nice bump.

Mel's only a fallback because there's an unprecedented number of college hockey coaches who kind of look like Urban Meyer at Utah. In most circumstances the guy who took Tech to the tourney for the first time in 34 years—as an at large—would be one of or the top guy on the market.

Pearson's age is a downside. Michigan just experienced a long slide into darkness because of a not-uncommon phenomenon where legends go very, very gradually and then suddenly. But Pearson's status as an obviously very good coach right now should make for some productive years as he inherits Michigan's still-top-five recruiting and pairs him with whatever crazy Corsi mojo he's got. Pearson is the best clearly-available coach right now, and this is a team with ten NHL draft picks and a first-rounder inbound. Right now is good enough.

*["ES Corsi" == your percentage of all shot attempts at even strength. Not SOS adjusted, admittedly. There is also a "Fenwick" which is your percentage of all unblocked shot attempts; Tech was  #2, #3 and #2 in that stat. Here is a helpful intro to these kind of stats:

Unadjusted college Corsi is a very rough measure but as a teamwide stat over three seasons it strongly implies that Pearson's teams are excellent at puck possession. This is something my eyes have confirmed over the last few years of Michigan-Tech matchups, FWIW.]

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From John Buccigross himself so likely to be accurate:

Everyone reading this likely has at least a vague idea of who Mel Pearson is, but the Cliffs Notes: long, long time Red Berenson assistant who left to be the head coach at Michigan Tech, his alma mater, several years ago. Michigan immediately dropped off and Tech got a lot better. A lot. In 2015 the Huskies got their first bid to the NCAA tournament since 1981(!), and Tech was a two-seed. They went again this year by winning their conference tourney.

It's a bit hard to tell exactly how much Tech's newfound success comes from Mel and how much is the radical reshaping of Western college hockey occasioned by the creation of Big Ten hockey. The WCHA went from the most powerful league in the country to a mid-major, and Tech's rise is partially due to that.

On the other hand, Tech was top five in ES Corsi the last three years. Mel Pearson can coach, and he knows his way around Ann Arbor. It might work out. From a year ago:

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I was going to put a vertical line on the chart when Mel left for Tech and then I realized it was already more or less there. It's the blue uptick and red downtick in 2012. Pearson got Tech in the tourney for the first time since 1981 last year. This year the Huskies won their first conference title since 1976. (I realize this WCHA is not the old WCHA but when you're Tech hockey any hardware is a miracle.) They've currently scrapped their way onto the bubble again. Pearson immediately made Tech much better and now that it's his program they're at a level they haven been at since Pearson was playing in Houghton.

Yes, he's a bit older than is ideal at 57. On the other hand, Red was 57 in 1997. He won a national title the year before and the year after. Michigan has the raw tools to win a national title every year; there need be no building phase. Even if Pearson does retire at around 65, you get almost a decade out of him. That decade is immediately productive. He is obviously a top-level coach who was a linchpin of Michigan's success under Red.

I'd have preferred one of the younger slam dunk guys but the first person to compare this hire to Brady Hoke gets ejected into space.