Mike Eaves let go after 14 seasons

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After going 12-45-13 the last two seasons (after back-to-back conference championships the two seasons before) Mike Eaves and his staff have been relieved of their duties with the men's hockey program.

BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — Mike Eaves is one of the most distinguished figures in Wisconsin athletic history, which is why this moment is particularly difficult.
Eaves has been relieved of his duties as UW men's hockey coach after 14 seasons, which included an NCAA championship in 2006, a national runner-up finish in 2010 and, at last count, 26 players who've reached the NHL.
Eaves is also the all-time leading scorer in program history, a three-time captain, a two-time Most Valuable Player, an honor student and member of the UW Athletic Hall of Fame.
Director of Athletics Barry Alvarez made the decision after the six-time national champion Badgers labored through consecutive losing seasons for the first time since 1995-97 and saw fan support at the Kohl Center dwindle.
"I told Mike I appreciated the work he's done here," Alvarez said. "I also told him that we have great tradition and standards here in hockey. He's the gate-keeper of hockey. I'm the gate-keeper of the department. We both have a responsibility.
"After last season, because of the success we've had in the past, we felt that Mike had earned a chance to get the ship righted. But now, after back-to-back seasons like the last two we've had, I feel we need a change."
UW won consecutive league playoff titles — one in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association and one in the Big Ten Conference — and subsequently qualified for the NCAA tournament in 2013 and '14 before the operation rapidly bottomed out.
The Badgers were 4-26-5 last season — the fewest wins and the most losses in a single season in the modern era of the program — and finished 8-19-8 with a loss to Penn State in the opening-round of the Big Ten tournament on Thursday in St. Paul, Minnesota.
"Our fans and everyone expect more," Alvarez said. "With our facilities and what we have to sell, we feel we should be at a championship level."
The fact that Eaves has such a distinctive profile — he was a two-time first-team All-America center, starred on an NCAA championship team in 1977 and received the Big Ten Medal of Honor in 1978 — made the decision to terminate his contract extremely difficult.
"I like Mike and I respect Mike," Alvarez said. "All those things play into it. That's what makes it very hard.
"These are never easy decisions, but I've got a responsibility to the university, to our fans and to everyone else. It's just not acceptable at Wisconsin to have a hockey program in this state where we are right now."
Three of the last five seasons have ended with UW owning a losing record, including 17-18-2 in 2011-12.
Eaves was hired in 2002-03 and quickly rebuilt a floundering program into a force. The Badgers, 13-23-4 in his first season, reached the NCAA tournament in 2004 and '05 before winning it all with a 2-1 decision over Boston College. The stars of that decade-old club, goaltender Brian Elliott and center Joe Pavelski, remain NHL fixtures.
Four years later, UW, led by Hobey Baker Award-winning center Blake Geoffrion, reached the national championship game, where it dropped a 5-0 decision in a rematch with BC. All six defensemen from that squad have reached the NHL.
Alvarez's approach to hockey has been interpreted by some as indifference, but he made building LaBahn Arena a priority and now the $27.9 million facility, completed in 2012, gives the men's and women's programs unsurpassed accommodations.
"We felt that put us in as good a shape as anybody in the country," Alvarez said.
Prior to becoming full-time AD, Alvarez was the Hall of Fame football coach of the Badgers.
"People interpret that I give all my attention to football and that is simply not true. However, football does demand a lot of attention. It's the (financial) engine that drives the entire (athletic) program.
"But I care about hockey. I very much believe that we are a better athletic department when our men's hockey program is thriving."
Alvarez and his staff will begin to take steps to get the program back to that position with a national search for a new head coach that will begin immediately.

http://www.uwbadgers.com/news/2016/3/18/alvarez-change-of-direction-needed-for-mens-hockey.aspx
 
The firing of Mike Eaves won't come cheap. There's no buyout in his contract. Wisconsin owes him full salary through June 30, 2019
 
I heard from Brian Posick that Alvarez informed Eaves on Tuesday that he wasn't being retained.
 
Maybe it won't come cheap, but it would have cost them more to keep him. Program was going downhill and attendance was lacking. They couldn't afford to let this go on longer.
 
For what it's worth, John Buccigross thinks Don Granato is the best hire, especially to get better at recruiting, and that my personal pick Mark Osiecki is in the running too.

I did hear that Mark Johnson is in the mix, but I feel like he wouldn't do that. The men's job isn't a step up from the women's team anymore.
 
For what it's worth, John Buccigross thinks Don Granato is the best hire, especially to get better at recruiting, and that my personal pick Mark Osiecki is in the running too.

I did hear that Mark Johnson is in the mix, but I feel like he wouldn't do that. The men's job isn't a step up from the women's team anymore.

I think Johnson likes what he's doing already. He's an odd duck, always marched to his own drummer. He's not motivated by the same things that motivate a lot of other people.

My Top Two would be Granato and Osiecki, and I'm not sure which one I'd rather have. I think Granato is the safer choice, but I think Osiecki could quickly become one of the better head coaches in D1 hockey.

I've got a strong feeling, though, that it might come down a choice between Granato and Mel Pearson. Some people think Pearson wouldn't take the job, but I believe he would. He's getting up there, and won't have too many more shots at a premier coaching job - unless he's counting on taking over for Berenson when he finally fossilizes. Pearson wouldn't be a bad choice either, though - I like the style of hockey he favors, and if he can recruit the skilled players to go with that style, Badger hockey might get pretty damned exciting to watch again.

And best of luck to you, Mike, wherever you wind up next. You had a damned good run, gave us some really good years and some really good memories. Nothing lasts forever, but you've got no reason to hang your head. You accomplished a lot.
 
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Eaves is a good guy, and I do like him a lot. There was just something that was missing the last couple of years and nobody was able to figure out what it was.

Here's a great piece on Mike Eaves the guy.

Mike Eaves was relieved of his duties as head hockey coach at Wisconsin today. Any time a coach is fired, it's sad--losing a job is never easy, and doing so in very public fashion is doubly hard--but is usually the right decision.
Today's decision, while hard, was necessary. Eaves overall tenure at Wisconsin was a positive one, but the misery of the past two years was simply inescapable. Last night--what we now know was his final night behind the Wisconsin bench--was the perfect juxtaposition for me. In his post-game press conference, a haggard looking Eaves gave a very professional press conference, talking about how difficult it was for his seniors to play their last game, and how quickly the time goes. One could read into the subtext there of Eaves talking about himself as much as the players. I'm not so sure though. I left that press conference feeling like Mike Eaves is a good coach, a good person, and someone that cared very deeply about his players. But I also couldn't shake the feeling that the Wisconsin hockey team I watched last night was not what a Wisconsin hockey team should look like.

Personally, I'm sad to see Eaves go. Whatever else you want to say about him, he was one of the great characters in college hockey. Rarely are post-game press conferences worth the extra 30 minutes of my time, but amid a sea of generic coach quotes, Eaves had a way of phrasing things that often made me stop, think, and laugh.
His teams didn't run into a hot goalie; they "couldn't solve the riddle of young Mr. Lee in goal". Every other coach, when describing something, talks about 'hockey,' Eaves talked about 'athletics,' because, as he often said, it didn't matter if they were playing hockey or tiddlywinks. Eaves pronunciation of 'tiddlywinks' is among what I'll miss the most about him. His teams put plenty of "hay in the barn". He's the only coach I've ever heard use the word 'wacky'.
Last week, on an unrelated search, I ran across this Eaves gem on a pair of disallowed Wisconsin goals:
"I’m not going to go down that path," he said. "Obviously they were critical times in the game. Unless I was willing to give you a $1,000 check right now — unfortunately I called my wife and she said I can’t — I’m not going to say anything about those things."
Last season's large freshman class may have been the one that ultimately doomed Eaves' tenure in Madison, but it gave him some great material.
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And inevitably, when things went things poorly with that box of puppies...

Eaves somehow just hit the sweet spot of super serious demeanor, combined with enough goofiness to be hilarious. A video clip of him staring could be a laugh riot:

It would be funny to see any college hockey head coach try to learn the Nae Nae, just out of the sheer awkwardness of it. But Eaves was by far the funniest because of the sheer enthusiasm he attacked it with:

Coach Alysiah teaching @BadgerMHockey Coach Mike Eaves the Nae Nae!
A video posted by Wisconsin Women's Basketball (@badgerwbb) on Oct 14, 2014 at 2:46pm PDT
What I'll miss most, and what makes today so hard, is that Eaves felt like a real, three-dimensional person. Most will remember the glowering figured behind the bench, exhorting his team to grind out low-scoring wins with trap-based hockey. But there was a lot more to him than that, and the rare glimpses of that made him endlessly fascinating.
That's why my absolute favorite Mike Eaves quote might be in this video: "I think I'm just a big kid, honestly."

I can't argue that the decision to fire Eaves was the right one. It was. But that doesn't make the day any less sad.

http://www.sbncollegehockey.com/big-ten/2016/3/18/11224376/mike-eaves-wisconsin-fired

Check the link if some of the embedded tweets and videos aren't coming through.
 
The B1G Network has reported that Notre Dame will join the conference for men's hockey starting with the 2017-18 season. Good news for the conference, as it makes the league far more competitive.

Notre Dame and Michigan actually square off this weekend in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
 
Interesting.

Notre Dame is such a goofy deal. ACC for b-ball, sorta ACC for football and now B1G for hockey. I'd have told them to take a hike and figure out what the hell conference they want to be part of. In the meantime I don't understand why everyone bends over backwards for them.

The ACC has hockey. Notre Dame should join them since they already made their bed with that conference in other sports. Of course it wouldn't help them much since ACC hockey is pretty crappy.
 
ND was a long time member of the now defunct CCHA, which was also where Michigan and Ohio State played, along with Miami, Alaska Fairbanks W. Michigan, Lake Superior St. ect...

They played last season in Hockey East, which is the big NE schools: BC, BU, Providence (last year's champs), Maine, UMass, UMass-Lowell, Merrimack, NH, NE, Vermont. Lots a good hockey in that conference.

The other five conferences are the B1G, Atlantic Hockey (a bunch of small, private schools + Army and Air Force), ECAC (the Ivy Leaguers), the much depleted WCHA, and the NCHC (the good teams from the former WCHA that didn't go to the B1G plus Miami (who is also regularly good))

So the ACC isn't an accredited DI men's hockey conference.

But I'd have still told ND to bring more to the table.
 
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