On Mel Pearson, Michigan Hockey Coach Comment Count

Brian

6_5236387

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.]

Comments

Everyone Murders

April 24th, 2017 at 2:00 PM ^

This is genius:

Mel's only a fallback because there's an unprecedented number of college hockey coaches who kind of look like Urban Meyer at Utah.

The further point being that many people have looked like Urban Meyer at Utah, but not many have blossomed (albeit like a Voodoo Lily) like Meyer at OSU.

Fit matters, and Pearson is almost assuredly a great fit on the administrative and alumni side.  Plus a great hockey coach who loves Michigan.  I'm am fully down with this hire.

username

April 24th, 2017 at 2:27 PM ^

I understand the general concept of Corsi, but in the graphic there are multiple instances when the Corsi for the two teams is greater than 100%. I thought Corsi was your team's share of the total scoring opportunities (shots, blocks, misses, etc.)  Could someone that knows more about these stats explain how you end up with combined corsi scores >100? 

David

April 24th, 2017 at 3:11 PM ^

Corsi is essentially puck possesion.  Kinda like soccer possession.



The formula I use is "MTU attempts divided by (MTU attempts + Opponent attempts)"



The 73% should actually be 71%.  Everything else should be correct. 

SF Wolverine

April 24th, 2017 at 3:57 PM ^

one of whom is a goaltender.  And a team with a glaring shortcoming in puck possession, which is what he happens to coach quite well.  Would not be at all surprised if this is a very rapid turnaround.

Wolverine Devotee

April 24th, 2017 at 4:52 PM ^

People who know college hockey know what kind of hire this is and the job Mel did at Tech.

People who don't are the ones who get up in arms over a hire we've been begging for since 2014.

Tech was Rutgers Football if Rutgers had early national titles.

 

Kevin13

April 24th, 2017 at 5:20 PM ^

when you said he's the best coach available. We like to think we can get anyone at Michigan, but all the top coaches you mentioned were not coming here. Mel is very good and should be able to give us 5-7 very good years and hopefully in that time he will have groomed a successor for the program.