Hibbing’s Sandelin named new UMD hockey coach
Hibbing native Scott Sandelin was named Friday night as the new head hockey coach at UMD, where he replaces Mike Sertich to become the 12th coach in UMD history and the sixth since the school became a Division I program.
Sandelin, who is completing his sixth year as an assistant and current associate head coach at the University of North Dakota, drove from Grand Forks to Duluth late Thursday night after being informed that he would be offered the job, and he returned to Grand Forks Friday morning after details were worked out. His timing was an issue because the Fighting Sioux are finishing preparations before playing in the NCAA hockey final four in Providence, R.I., next week.
“I believe in allowing the players creativity,” said Sandelin. “I’m not a big believer in that trap stuff, especially at this level, because I don’t think that’s the best way for players to develop. I’m strong on defense, with everyone being accountable, but offensively, I like to let the kids go. I’ve done a lot of the ‘Xs and Os’ but I think it’s important to not over-coach, and to not force the players to over-think.”
“I want to create an atmosphere of the kids wanting to go to the rink, and they’ve got to enjoy it. Winning, of course, can create more enjoyment.”
Winning, of course, has become second-nature to the Fighting Sioux, which helped make Sandelin an attractive choice for UMD. Under Dean Blais, Sandelin worked with the defense and helped with the power play and penalty kill, and was chief recruiter throughout Minnesota, the USHL and Western Canada. The Fighting Sioux won three straight WCHA championships until slipping to second, behind Wisconsin, this season, but the Sioux are the lone WCHA team to survive the regional playoffs and reach the Frozen Four, where they face defending national champion Maine on Thursday.
Sandelin and his wife, Wendy, have a 15-month-old son, Ryan, and while Sandelin has no prior connection to UMD, he is an Iron Ranger who is totally familiar with the region. He was a star player at Hibbing, and became a second-team All-America defenseman at North Dakota and a Hobey Baker finalist before graduating with a marketing degree.
He was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens in the second round of the 1982 draft and served as captain of the 1984 U.S. Junior National team. He played for the 1986 U.S. National team in the World Tournament in Moscow, and spent six years in the pro organizations of Montreal, Philadelphia and the Minnesota North Stars, from 1986-92.
He started coaching with the Fargo-Moorhead Express of the American Hockey Association in 1992-93, and coached the Fargo-Moorhead Sugar Kings in the Minnesota Junior Elite League in 1993-94, after which he returned to his alma mater at North Dakota.
Sandelin beat out UMD alumnus John Harrington, who currently coaches St. John’s, as well as former Bulldog Norm Maciver, current Calgary coach Tim Bothwell and Troy Ward, recently fired assistant coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins.
As the primary recruiter for the Sioux, Sandelin focused on Minnesota, the USHL and Western Canada. The current Sioux team has 11 players from Western Canada on its roster, but Sandelin noted that his current crop of recruits are all U.S. players, including five Minnesotans. “I like the mix, and I think it’s important for our program to have a mix,” Sandelin said. “I’m sure that will be important at UMD, too.”
Sandelin, who is comparatively soft-spoken, described himself as “quietly intense” when he was interviewed by the UMD players. “I learned to be mellow around Blaiser,” Sandelin joked.
Blais said: “Scott is more laid-back, which complements me, because I’m more intense. But Scott can blow, and when he does, it’s a good one.”
“On the ice, Scott worked with defense, power play and penalty kill, and he likes that part of the game. I’m more of an offensive type. But our players all liked him and felt comfortable talking to him about anything.”
“It’s a huge loss for me because not only am I losing a coach, but he’s a good friend. We always hunt and fish together.”
And raise championship trophies.
John Gilbert: NCAA hockey tourney would look good with 16 teams
Great move, to shift the NCAA men’s hockey tournament back a week. That gives the NCAA basketball tournaments time to get over, and college hockey can step into its own media spotlight.
North Dakota (27-8-5) carries the hopes of the West against defending champion Maine (27-7-5) in Thursday’s first semifinal in Providence and on ESPN, while St. Lawrence (25-7-2) goes against Boston College (28-11-1) in the night semi. Winners meet for the title on Saturday.
Hockey’s final four should be a close, wide-open series of games, unlike basketball’s anticlimactic semifinals and final of the Final Four. You’ll notice the difference: Basketball gets to capitalize Final and Four, according to NCAA copyright, but when we mention hockey, we can only say final four as long as we use the lower-case letters. They’ve now started calling the hockey final four the “Frozen Four,” if you so choose, but to me it still seems incredible that the NCAA thinks it can patent such generic terms as Final and Four.
Let’s examine the hockey finalists and how they got there, which leads us directly to what we can hope the NCAA will do next year in expanding and equalizing the fairness of selecting the hockey teams. In hockey, 12 teams are invited to the tournament, with six each at two regional sites. At those regionals, two teams get byes while the remaining four play off, with those winners coming right back the next night — or day — to face a bye team, which is rested and ready. In this year’s case, Maine, North Dakota and St. Lawrence were all teams with byes, while only Boston College came through to knock out one team, Michigan State, then beat a bye team, Wisconsin in this case.
It doesn’t seem fair to go through all the preliminaries and reach the national tournament, then face the steep odds of having to beat another very good team for the right to face a better team, which also is rested. But that’s the way the NCAA does it in men’s hockey. In basketball, where there are so many teams invited that we didn’t even know some were colleges, the NCAA would never consider allowing a team to play one night and come right back to play the next night against a team that had been off for a week.
But there’s hope of change a-comin’. The NCAA has talked about expanding the hockey pool to 16 teams, which would be much more logical and would allow for equal play with no byes for teams that could be divided into four regionals. Because college hockey is mostly grouped into four major leagues, it has made sense to focus on those four — Hockey East, ECAC, CCHA and WCHA. Each year, however, the selection committee struggles with its at-large picks, and with the tradition of the ECAC being considered weaker.
I think the ECAC does very well, considering it starts almost a month later than the other conferences, and therefore absorbs some beatings from teams in those other conferences in the early part of the season. As far as self-fulfilling prophecies go, inviting only two teams from the ECAC greatly lessens the odds of either of them making it to the final four, compared to one of four Hockey East teams advancing. After a couple of years of that, it is traditional to say Hockey East is stronger and the ECAC is weaker.
This year, two new conferences leaped into the picture, and the NCAA committee chose to invite Niagara from College Hockey America, at the expense of a third ECAC team, and it also invited four Hockey East teams, at the expense of a third CCHA team. So we shouldn’t be surprised when two Hockey East teams made it to the final four and no CCHA team. The WCHA got the traditional three berths, and one team advanced. The ECAC got one team to the final four, although St. Lawrence needed four overtimes to subdue Boston University in the quarterfinals.
The best thing about Niagara’s controversial invitation is that Niagara beat New Hampshire in a first-round game, silencing all those who thought no independent had the right to invade the sanctity of the normal four leagues, while also silencing Hockey East zealots and ESPN commentators who actually suggested the likelihood that all four teams at the final four might be Hockey East teams.
At any rate, here’s how all of those wrinkles can be ironed out. Start with four regional sites, and make them somewhat common to each of the four major conferences — Boston as Hockey East’s site, Lake Placid as the ECAC base, Detroit as the CCHA site, and, possibly alternating, St. Paul or Madison/Milwaukee as the WCHA site. The project here is to have a No. 1, 2, 3 and 4 seed at each site, and a team from each of the four conferences (usually) at each site. The No. 1 seed from a particular conference would be the host team at the site assigned to that conference. So in St. Paul, you’d get the No. 1 WCHA seed, with, say, the No. 2 Hockey East, No. 3 CCHA and No. 4 ECAC team. In Detroit, you might have Michigan as the No. 1 CCHA team, then a similar rotation so that all conferences and all ranges of seeds are represented.
With the new conference springing up, it means that the fourth seeds in each conference would be vulnerable to being replaced by anywhere from one to four at-large picks, and those bumps could be accomplished according to the power index concepts now being used. That way, each regional site would see two great games the first night, with a final game the next, and that winner advancing to the national final four.
All of this is not to criticize the NCAA’s operation of the hockey tournament. It used to just bring in four teams for a final four and that was it. Going to eight and then 12 teams made sense. There was a lot of talk about how there are too few schools playing hockey to expand to 16 for the tournament, but that was before it proved it could make money. This year’s regionals at Minneapolis and Lake Placid drew record crowds, with Mariucci Arena doing very well in drawing fans from North Dakota and Wisconsin, mostly, without having the home-team Gophers around. Now that hockey has proven it can be profitable, the NCAA undoubtedly will consider a new format, and the Slippery Sixteen seems destined to be the next step.
New UMD coach needs to make changes to succeed
College hockey has changed over the years, both in concept and impact. Always captivating from a competitive standpoint, the sport that thrived on its simplicity in the early 1970s is now a highly-promoted, fund-raising sports endeavor. That’s particularly true at colleges like UMD, North Dakota, Colorado College, Denver, Michigan Tech, St. Cloud State and Minnesota State-Mankato, where hockey is the primary sport — the only Division I sports attraction.
At UMD, the changeover in the sport will be underscored by a change in coaching, as Mike Sertich was pressured to resign as his 18th season as UMD’s head coach came to an end. For the incoming coach, it may seem comparatively easy to improve on the last two seasons, when the Bulldogs finished eighth this year with a 15-22 record and ninth a year ago, at 7-27-4. However, the last two years leave a misleading impact. Counting those last two years, Sertich’s teams had an overall winning record, at 350-328-44, for a .515 winning percentage. Without the last two years, Sertich’s record was a glowing 328-279-40, for a .538 winning percentage in his first 16 years, a standard that will be difficult to duplicate in the new millennium.
Sertich’s tenure dates back to a purity of the game, when a coach could be considered outstanding if he was tactically sound and ran a clean program. Sertich excelled because he was a master tactician and student of the game who never tired of studying new training and practice techniques and deploying inventive systems and counter-systems that turned hockey games into something more resembling chess matches. When he had the properly attuned talent, the Bulldogs soared.
However, in the modern era of college hockey, coaches’ tactical abilities account only for about one-third of their work. Another third is recruiting that is close to pampering prospects, and the other third is public relations. A coach who is sharp in P.R. and adequate in recruiting could do well even if only mediocre in his tactical strategies on the ice.
After winning WCHA championships in 1982-83 and 1983-84 — his second and third seasons as head coach — Sertich was surprised and hurt by criticism he heard from fans when the team failed to win a third straight championship. A witty, outgoing personality, Sertich’s sensitivity and stubbornness caused him to close himself off from the crowds, and he virtually went underground when he sold his house in eastern Duluth and moved up near Island Lake. If Sertich’s tactical ability was beyond question, he also was an excellent, personable recruiter, but he preferred to not be involved in that. And from a P.R. standpoint, Sertich is by far the most witty, unpredictable interview in the WCHA, but he seemed to prefer avoiding such media interviews.
Assistant coaches Jim Knapp and Glenn Kulyk were also his close friends, and were with him throughout his 18 years. Neither is loud and forceful, with Knapp a quiet and skillful developer of individual defensemen, and Kulyk mostly a recruiter. The specialization worked for a long time, with Knapp primarily recruiting Minnesota prospects and Kulyk recruiting in Western Canada.
In the last decade, Knapp became an instructor at UMD and was available less for recruiting, and Kulyk’s favorite Western Canada recruiting ground developed fewer and fewer blue chip Tier II prospects as Major Junior teams started offering scholarships to convince the top Tier II players to move up. The resulting dropoff in talent caused several programs — notably North Dakota, Colorado College, Denver, Northern Michigan and Michigan Tech, along with UMD — to sink in the standings. Colorado College and North Dakota were the first of those to realize that the USHL was developing prospects equal to or better than Western Canada, and they rebounded more quickly and won six straight WCHA titles between them, until this season.
UMD continued to get some exceptional players, but in fewer numbers. Judged on personality and potential, all of the prospects have been winners; evaluated only on production, however, provides a blueprint for struggling. But Sertich never considered altering his staff or even changing the dynamics of it, and admits now that loyalty to his assistants was more important to him that even a move that might have saved his job.
So the new coach must make some mandatory changes to lift the Bulldogs up to a contender. Some of the necessary changes include:
* Cementing relations with area high school programs. Some schools felt a disinterest bordering on indifference from the UMD coaching staff. Teams that came to the DECC for Saturday afternoon games, whether from the Twin Cities or the Iron Range, were never invited to stay for the UMD games that night, a common practice at places like Minnesota.
* Dependence on Western Canada as the primary source for talent must be balanced and blended with the USHL and top high school prospects as the core talent. UMD must become the easy choice, or at least a finalist, in the minds of top regional prospects, whether they are attracted right out of high school or agree to spend a year or two in the USHL after high school.
* Dynamics of the new coaching staff must include high-visibility impact in the area, at high school games, in the media, with boosters, with alumni and with key businessmen and supporters of the program.
* Public relations must become a major entity. UMD’s success in the 1980s made it self-supporting from a P.R. standpoint. That’s changed now, and promotional endeavors must be implemented to win back the departed fan support, to make it routine for UMD hockey games to be the place to spend Friday and Saturday nights.
* DECC the halls by taking advantage of the enormous opportunity for creative ways to enliven a night at the DECC, such as greater emphasis on the pep band and mascot, which once were prominent highlights of every game. The garbage truck replica Zamboni is great, and the between periods bits are fun, but there must be new tricks beyond canned, loud music.
* Television impact is mandatory. Wasn’t it only a couple of years ago that a minimum of 20 UMD hockey games were televised each season, encouraging fans to come to future games, and giving those fans who don’t buy tickets a chance for constant exposure to the product? In the last two years, there have been a half-dozen or fewer UMD games televised, while fans at home have become comfortable watching cable broadcasts of nearly every University of Minnesota game.
* Blueline Club support must be regenerated. With the uniting of all sports
New UMD coach needs to make changes to succeed
College hockey has changed over the years, both in concept and impact. Always captivating from a competitive standpoint, the sport that thrived on its simplicity in the early 1970s is now a highly-promoted, fund-raising sports endeavor. That’s particularly true at colleges like UMD, North Dakota, Colorado College, Denver, Michigan Tech, St. Cloud State and Minnesota State-Mankato, where hockey is the primary sport — the only Division I sports attraction.
At UMD, the changeover in the sport will be underscored by a change in coaching, as Mike Sertich was pressured to resign as his 18th season as UMD’s head coach came to an end. For the incoming coach, it may seem comparatively easy to improve on the last two seasons, when the Bulldogs finished eighth this year with a 15-22 record and ninth a year ago, at 7-27-4. However, the last two years leave a misleading impact. Counting those last two years, Sertich’s teams had an overall winning record, at 350-328-44, for a .515 winning percentage. Without the last two years, Sertich’s record was a glowing 328-279-40, for a .538 winning percentage in his first 16 years, a standard that will be difficult to duplicate in the new millennium.
Sertich’s tenure dates back to a purity of the game, when a coach could be considered outstanding if he was tactically sound and ran a clean program. Sertich excelled because he was a master tactician and student of the game who never tired of studying new training and practice techniques and deploying inventive systems and counter-systems that turned hockey games into something more resembling chess matches. When he had the properly attuned talent, the Bulldogs soared.
However, in the modern era of college hockey, coaches’ tactical abilities account only for about one-third of their work. Another third is recruiting that is close to pampering prospects, and the other third is public relations. A coach who is sharp in P.R. and adequate in recruiting could do well even if only mediocre in his tactical strategies on the ice.
After winning WCHA championships in 1982-83 and 1983-84 — his second and third seasons as head coach — Sertich was surprised and hurt by criticism he heard from fans when the team failed to win a third straight championship. A witty, outgoing personality, Sertich’s sensitivity and stubbornness caused him to close himself off from the crowds, and he virtually went underground when he sold his house in eastern Duluth and moved up near Island Lake. If Sertich’s tactical ability was beyond question, he also was an excellent, personable recruiter, but he preferred to not be involved in that. And from a P.R. standpoint, Sertich is by far the most witty, unpredictable interview in the WCHA, but he seemed to prefer avoiding such media interviews.
Assistant coaches Jim Knapp and Glenn Kulyk were also his close friends, and were with him throughout his 18 years. Neither is loud and forceful, with Knapp a quiet and skillful developer of individual defensemen, and Kulyk mostly a recruiter. The specialization worked for a long time, with Knapp primarily recruiting Minnesota prospects and Kulyk recruiting in Western Canada.
In the last decade, Knapp became an instructor at UMD and was available less for recruiting, and Kulyk’s favorite Western Canada recruiting ground developed fewer and fewer blue chip Tier II prospects as Major Junior teams started offering scholarships to convince the top Tier II players to move up. The resulting dropoff in talent caused several programs — notably North Dakota, Colorado College, Denver, Northern Michigan and Michigan Tech, along with UMD — to sink in the standings. Colorado College and North Dakota were the first of those to realize that the USHL was developing prospects equal to or better than Western Canada, and they rebounded more quickly and won six straight WCHA titles between them, until this season.
UMD continued to get some exceptional players, but in fewer numbers. Judged on personality and potential, all of the prospects have been winners; evaluated only on production, however, provides a blueprint for struggling. But Sertich never considered altering his staff or even changing the dynamics of it, and admits now that loyalty to his assistants was more important to him that even a move that might have saved his job.
So the new coach must make some mandatory changes to lift the Bulldogs up to a contender. Some of the necessary changes include:
* Cementing relations with area high school programs. Some schools felt a disinterest bordering on indifference from the UMD coaching staff. Teams that came to the DECC for Saturday afternoon games, whether from the Twin Cities or the Iron Range, were never invited to stay for the UMD games that night, a common practice at places like Minnesota.
* Dependence on Western Canada as the primary source for talent must be balanced and blended with the USHL and top high school prospects as the core talent. UMD must become the easy choice, or at least a finalist, in the minds of top regional prospects, whether they are attracted right out of high school or agree to spend a year or two in the USHL after high school.
* Dynamics of the new coaching staff must include high-visibility impact in the area, at high school games, in the media, with boosters, with alumni and with key businessmen and supporters of the program.
* Public relations must become a major entity. UMD’s success in the 1980s made it self-supporting from a P.R. standpoint. That’s changed now, and promotional endeavors must be implemented to win back the departed fan support, to make it routine for UMD hockey games to be the place to spend Friday and Saturday nights.
* DECC the halls by taking advantage of the enormous opportunity for creative ways to enliven a night at the DECC, such as greater emphasis on the pep band and mascot, which once were prominent highlights of every game. The garbage truck replica Zamboni is great, and the between periods bits are fun, but there must be new tricks beyond canned, loud music.
* Television impact is mandatory. Wasn’t it only a couple of years ago that a minimum of 20 UMD hockey games were televised each season, encouraging fans to come to future games, and giving those fans who don’t buy tickets a chance for constant exposure to the product? In the last two years, there have been a half-dozen or fewer UMD games televised, while fans at home have become comfortable watching cable broadcasts of nearly every University of Minnesota game.
* Blueline Club support must be regenerated. With the uniting of all sports support groups under one umbrella, the hope was to let the other sports hook onto the popularity of the Blueline Club. The shift in emphasis, however, has seriously eroded the participation of the hockey followers. Turning your computer to the UMD Web site, for example, you could click onto the Booster Club site and find all sorts of hyperbole about how wonderful the club is, but you had no chance of finding out when or where the next meeting would be.
* Season ticket holders must be recultivated and treated as something special, instead of being taken for granted.
* Last but not least, the new coach must be given the full and genuine support of the administration, staff and student body. When the team does well, it deserves to be applauded by everyone connected with the school. A healthy and well-supported men’s hockey program at UMD benefits all the other sports.
The irony, of course, is if those steps were already in place, there wouldn’t need to be a coaching change. The new regime will need some time, but fans Up North are ready and waiting to be entertained.
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
For those who want to keep up with John Gilbert's view of sports, mainly hockey with a Minnesota slant, click on the following:
Click here for sports