(Photo courtesy of USCHO.com and UMass Athletics)
It was surely an arduous process, however Adam Nightingale now has an assistant coach in place to help him hopefully lift the Michigan State Spartans hockey program back to the promised land. It has now been announced that Jared DeMichiel, a former RIT goaltender who played in the 2010 Frozen Four in Detroit, and current UMass Assistant Coach has been hired by Nightingale to come over to East Lansing.
DeMichiel will bring 10 years of experience as a NCAA assistant (D3 Nazareth College, St. Lawrence, and UMass), including being the Associate Head Coach at UMass the past 3 seasons, a span that included a National Championship. Below is what I find to be some important details on DeMichiel from the UMass bio.
Jared DeMichiel joined the Massachusetts hockey staff as assistant coach in April 2016 after spending two seasons with head coach Greg Carvel at St. Lawrence University. He was promoted to associate head coach in May 2019. DeMichiel is involved in all aspects of recruiting, while overseeing the development of the Minutemen’s goaltenders, penalty kill unit, and forwards player development/individual video analysis.
DeMichiel helped recruit UMass' 2017-18 freshman class that earned national recognition as one of the top recruiting classes in Division I hockey. The class lived up to its billing, leading the nation in virtually every offensive category for freshman scoring in 2017-18 and ultimately included a Hobey Baker winner, a second Hobey Baker finalist, three All-Americans and the 2018-19 Hockey East Player of the Year. Eleven Minutemen have been drafted since DeMichiel arrived at UMass: Cale Makar (4th overall, Colorado) and Mario Ferraro (49th overall, San Jose) in 2017, John Leonard (182nd overall, San Jose) in 2018, Zac Jones (68th overall, New York Rangers), Marc Del Gaizo (109th overall, Nashville) and Lindberg (197th overall, Minnesota) in 2019, Matthew Kessel (150th overall, St. Louis) and Lucas Mercuri (159th overall, Carolina) in 2020 and Scott Morrow (40th overall, Carolina), Josh Lopina (98th overall, Anaheim), Ryan Ufko (115th overall, Nashville) and Taylor Makar (220th overall, Colorado).
Yeah I would say recruiting Cale Makar, to a at the time sleeping and rebuilding program is pretty, pretty, pretty good. DeMichiel is young (37), has excellent recruiting chops, and has seen a program rebuild before. He is seen as a rising star (likely to be a head coach in the nearish future) and hungry to show he can spread his wings outside of working for Greg Carvel (who he worked with at St. Lawrence and made the move to UMass with in 2016). This is an exceptional hire, and just like snagging Dylan St. Cyr and Miroslav Mucha previously, shows some early returns on the Nightingale hire. DeMichiel was paid around $120k previously at UMass, and I expect his move to MSU will come with a pretty decent pay bump as well. I expect this hire to help as we head to a huge summer in recruiting, with the August 1 date being the first chance at seeing traction gained by the new staff in the 2006 recruiting class.
Just for the record, Makar was recruited by previous coach John Micheletto