Mark Morris, fired as head coach at Clarkson near the beginning of the 2002-03 season, has been named the new coach at Northwood Prep school, a historically strong feeder program for college hockey.
Morris was fired at Clarkson following a November 2002 investigation into an alleged physical confrontation between himself and player Zach Schwan. He spent 15 years with the Golden Knights, the only head coaching job he ever previously had.
After leaving Clarkson, Morris worked briefly with the Vancouver Canucks and his friend, the Canucks’ head coach, Marc Crawford. Since then, he was an assistant coach for Saginaw of the OHL. Morris, who played one season at Northwood before attending Colgate, had also applied for head coaching openings at Union and Vermont, to no avail.
Approximately two dozen current college players came out of the Northwood program.
A native of New York’s North Country, Morris was an assistant for St. Lawrence coach Joe Marsh before taking over the Golden Knights program in 1988.
Clarkson went 16-13-3 in Morris’ first year, then reeled off 10 straight 20-win seasons, including 29-9-2 in 1990-91, when the Golden Knights went to the Frozen Four. In those 10 seasons, Clarkson made nine NCAA tournament appearances, but never made it back to the Frozen Four after 1991, and hasn’t been in the tournament since 1999.
Morris has a 306-153-42 career record entering the season, with five regular-season and two ECAC-tournament championships. He has been named ECAC Coach of the Year twice.
The list of NHL players Morris has coached include Craig Conroy, Todd White, Chris Clark, Todd Marchant and Erik Cole.
