The fraternity of college hockey coaches is small.
And the sub-fraternity of men’s college hockey coaches with 500 career victories is even smaller (17, to be exact).
Even smaller yet? The number of active coaches with at least 500 career wins.
Coming into the season just four active coaches were in the 500 club — Notre Dame’s Jeff Jackson, Quinnipiac’s Rand Pecknold, Cornell’s Mike Schafer and Air Force’s Frank Serratore.
Last weekend, the 500 club expanded by one member. Ferris State’s 3-2 comeback victory over Lake Superior State in Traverse City, Michigan, on Saturday helped induct the Bulldogs’ Bob Daniels into that exclusive club.
Daniels, 65 and in his 33rd year behind the bench in Big Rapids, is the epitome of the gentleman hockey coach. He wasn’t too interested in talking about himself or his milestone.
“It’s not that big of a deal,” Daniels said. “I think in the offseason, I’ll have a little more time to look back to cherish it a little bit and reflect on that sort of thing.”
Dnaiels did, however, talk about all the people that helped him build his program over the years. He started by name-checking fellow 500 (and more) club member coaches: Ron Mason, Red Berenson, and Jerry York, all of whom were coaching in the CCHA during his first season at Ferris State in 1992.
“Those were all really good coaches to learn from, not just coaching, but really in how to conduct yourself and how to run a program,” said Daniels, who also played for Mason at Michigan State.
He also mentioned the fact that his coaching staff (assistants Drew Famulak, Mark Kaufmann and Dave Cencer) have all been together and associated with the FSU program for nearly two decades.
“Then you’ve got to take a minute to think about all the great players I’ve had the privilege to coach, and you just think about how blessed you are. And you know, it goes beyond that, too. You have to think about all the great athletic directors,” Daniels said. “I’ve been very fortunate to be at a place for 33 years, and we’ve always had great athletic directors here, and very supportive administration. So, it’s nice to kind of sit back and think about all the people that you know have touched the programs over the years.”
Lake Superior State head coach Damon Whitten — another former MSU player-turned CCHA head coach — had lots of praise for Daniels.
“I had the good fortune to play for Ron Mason, who’s a legend for college hockey. Rick Comley, I worked with a couple different occasions. And you know, Coach Daniels is up there, with coach Mason and coach Comley in terms of what he means to college hockey. He’s been an institution in the NCAA and certainly a Ferris State,” Whiten said. “I think one of the things I’m always amazed at is his coaching tree, you know, from Derek Lalonde with the Red Wings, to Seth Appert, to all kinds of NCAA guys. So I think that says a lot about who coach Daniels is that he’s developed a passion for the game from so many different guys, and they stayed in the game, whether they coaching youth hockey and their kids or, up to the National Hockey League and all across college hockey. To me, that’s pretty awesome to see.”
Under Daniels, the Bulldogs won three regular season titles — two in the CCHA and one in the WCHA — one conference tournament championship, four NCAA tournament appearances and were national runners-up in 2012.
But all of that in the past. Like any good college hockey coach, Daniels is more concerned about how his team is doing now. The Bulldogs are 3-9-2 and were on a six-game losing skid before the victory over the Lakers last weekend.
“You wouldn’t know it by our record, but we’ve been really limiting teams in terms of shots on goal,” Daniels said. “Our last three games, in the third period, we outshot the opposition like 46-8 combined. We’ve been close, and we’re actually playing pretty good hockey, I think.”
The Bulldogs came into the season somewhat unsure of who they were going to be offensively. They lost their top two scorers (senior Antonio Venuto and all-CCHA rookie team member Luigia Benincasa) to the transfer portal, and also lost Stepan Pokorny and Jason Brancheau to graduation.
In their stead, a trio of transfers (Max Itagaki from West Point, Cole Burtch from Western Michigan and Caiden Gault from Michigan State) have stepped up to try and generate some offense for Ferris. The three are currently FSU’s scoring leaders; Gault leads the team with five goals.
“They’re all playing on our top nine and they’ve done pretty well,” Daniels said.
Another player who Daniels hopes can make an impact is junior forward Tyler Schleppe, who scored three goals on the weekend against Lake State, including the game winner on Saturday. Schleppe had 15 points as a freshman but a shoulder injury his sophomore year caused him a setback and he only scored three goals and 10 points a season ago.
“He’s a finisher, and that’s going to be a welcome addition back to the team,” Daniels said. “He’s on the right track now. He’s trending in a really positive way so I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a really good second half for us.”
Another headache for Daniels coming into the season was losing all of his goaltenders. Logan Stein and Noah Giesbrecht transferred to Michigan and RPI, respectively. Coming in to compete for the job were Noah West–a transfer from Michigan–and freshmen Martin Lundberg and Connor McDonough. So far, West has gotten the majority of the starts.
“Noah has played well,” said Daniels. “He’s a veteran goaltender with five years experience, and I think he’s kind of been a beneficiary of our team playing better team defense, than what we’ve had the past couple years. We still will give up an odd man rush, but we’re really starting to keep our shots on goal down. We’re more defensively conscious than I think we had been the past couple of years. And so that’s why I’m pretty optimistic about this team.
“We find ourselves in every game, if we can just find a way to score more goals, well, I think we’ll be in good shape.”
Last season the Bulldogs gave up slightly more goals per game than this season (3.47 compared to 3.43) but this year’s number has been slightly inflated by a bad 8-0 loss to St. Lawrence that saw Ferris give up three goals on a five minute major penalty in the third period–obviously numbers that still count against you but perhaps a little atypical from normal team defense. In general, Ferris’ 19 goals allowed on the penalty kill is by far the most in the country (the next closest is Stonehill with 15). Their power play hasn’t been much better (just two goals scored in 40 attempts).
“We’re on the wrong side of special teams. We’re not scoring on the power play and we’re giving up too much on the penalty kill, but I think our five-on-five has been pretty good,” Daniels said.
Daniels isn’t looking too far ahead this season, but despite the Bulldogs’ record he said he likes how the team is trending. They host Augustana this weekend, then take a week off for Thanksgiving before closing the first half of the season out with a series at Northern Michigan.
“There’s not a game we were going to go into where we don’t feel like we have a good chance to win. I think we’ve shown that we’re highly competitive, and it’s a matter of learning, like anything,” Daniels said. “When you’re trying to break habits, like a losing habit. It’s not easy. But I’m very optimistic, not only in the remaining four before break, but throughout the rest of the year. I just like this team quite a bit, and they work exceedingly hard. It’s a close-knit group. We showed some resilience in coming back in a lot of games we have, and I think they’ve got the mental makeup to continue to work hard and improve.”
