'It's just how hard you want to work': Inside Michigan's next-level recruiting
I’ve talked to Mel Pearson about recruiting a handful of times over the last two seasons, but never wrote it into a full story. As Michigan’s recruiting classes gain more attention, here’s a glimpse into what I’ve seen and heard inside the program. Most of the quotes here come from interviews conducted in September 2019, which stunned me when I looked it up. Time is a flat circle.
In normal times, Michigan’s practices are open to the media every day and reporters wait on couches in the hockey offices for interviews after each practice.
It’s beneficial for a whole host of reasons — for one, casual interactions that help build relationships are effortless — but it also provides an inside look at the recruiting process. Mel Pearson and his staff can’t speak on any recruit until the player has signed a letter of intent, but you can learn a lot by witnessing what’s going on.
Recruiting in college hockey is unique. There isn’t time to scout players in the offseason like there is in, for example, basketball with the summer AAU season. The potential recruits are playing at the same time as Michigan is. Additionally, the recruiting cycle runs two or even three years in advance of when players will be on campus, so it’s heavily based on projection of a player’s abilities years in advance of his arrival in college.
Most weeks during the season, Pearson can be found leading practice by himself while both assistant coaches, Kris Mayotte and Bill Muckalt, are out recruiting. When Michigan is on the road, it isn’t uncommon for one assistant to go on a recruiting trip while the other goes with the team. It’s how Pearson himself did things when he coached at Michigan under Red Berenson, and it’s a key facet of his recruiting philosophy: It’s all about hard work.
“Some coaches are lazy,” Pearson said last September. “I come from back in the day when you could — there were no restrictions on how much you could recruit. You could go watch a game, you’d go watch some some player 24 times, 50 times during the year if you wanted to. It’s just how hard you want to work.”
Michigan practices at the Ann Arbor Ice Cube the week before it goes to schools with Olympic ice sheets, like Minnesota and Wisconsin, and on more multiple occasions, Pearson got up in the middle of an interview at the Cube to chat with a recruit who was visiting.
Every time, he offered a semi-apologetic smile and a quick, “Recruiting comes first!”
Even when Michigan is at Yost, it isn’t uncommon for reporters to be waiting for Pearson while he talks to a recruit or gives a quick tour around the facility. He always makes it clear that recruiting comes first, which is part of why he’s been vocal about his desire for college hockey to add a third paid assistant coach. It would give him more time on the ice with his team without sacrificing anything in the recruiting game.
“I’d like to see the coaches change, go from two assistant coaches to three full-time assistant coaches on staff,” Pearson said. “We have 28 players and in hockey, a lot of times they’re recruiting. Two assistants were gone most of last week and they're both taking off again this Wednesday. So I’m here stuck with — not stuck. That's a bad word. I’m here all alone, really, with myself and the team, and it’s very difficult. … But we have to. That’s our recruiting season.”
It’s no secret that Michigan’s recruiting slipped toward the end of Red Berenson’s tenure. Players were uncertain about committing to a coach who was clearly moving toward retirement, and because the college hockey recruiting cycle works a couple years ahead of when players come to campus, it’s taken Pearson and his staff a couple years to get the recruiting back where they want it to be.
Pearson’s first real class — the freshmen in the fall of 2018 — didn’t have an NHL draft pick. Strauss Mann turned out to be an exceptional goaltender, and under-the-radar players like Nick Blankenburg and Jimmy Lambert made big impacts right away, but there wasn’t a clear-cut star in the group when they arrived.
Cam York and Johnny Beecher headlined the next class, this past fall, and Michigan ended up with more first-round draft choices on its roster than any team other than Wisconsin.
But now, going into his fourth season behind the bench, Pearson’s recruiting classes are reaching stratospheric heights.
Brendan Brisson will go in the middle of the first round this year, and Thomas Bordeleau could potentially go in the mid-to-late 20s. That would already give Michigan four first-round picks — the most in college hockey — and we’re not done counting yet.
Owen Power, Kent Johnson and Matty Beniers are all potential top-10 draft picks in 2021. Add in the class for the fall of 2021 and you get Luke Hughes, Dylan Duke and Mackie Samoskevich, all of whom made Scott Wheeler’s list of the top 32 prospects for 2021.
It’s unlikely that Power and Johnson would return to college hockey after being top-5 draft picks, but for argument’s sake, let’s assume they come back. York is likely to be gone after this year, but Beecher is more likely to be a three-year player.
So, in 2021, that could leave Michigan with as many as nine first round picks on the roster.
That is, to put it simply, absolutely insane. And it all comes from Pearson’s dogged commitment to working harder and covering more ground than any other staff in the country. He works within the rules, but in Pearson’s perfect world, there wouldn’t be rules on how much work they could do.
“I think you should be allowed to work,” Pearson said. “If you want to out-work somebody, go for it.”
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Fresh Ice! As the college hockey season (hopefully) gets going, I’ll be publishing content on a weekly basis about both Michigan and college hockey as a whole. If there’s something you’d like to see covered here, please reach out! My Twitter DMs are open or I’m available via email.
Haven’t subscribed yet?