ST. LOUIS — Minnesota Duluth men’s hockey coach Scott Sandelin has been getting questions about retirement this spring, and the topic came up again last week during the NCAA Men’s Frozen Four.
The questions aren’t about Sandelin’s retirement, however, just the wave of retirements announced by his longtime college colleagues. Five coaches with a combined 130-plus seasons of experience and institutional knowledge of college hockey have stepped aside this spring.
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“Great people, our game is losing some great coaches, but more importantly, great people who have done a lot,” Sandelin said. “You see those guys over the years, we become good friends and certainly respect their careers and what they’ve done for our game.”
Over two decades have passed since Sandelin was hired in 2000 by the Bulldogs as a young, 35-year-old rookie head coach out of the University of North Dakota. Back then, Wisconsin’s Jeff Sauer, Michigan’s State’s Rick Comley and Boston College’s Jerry York were among the deans of the sport.
Sandelin said he was fortunate to learn from veterans such as those, as well as former Bulldogs coach Mike Sertich. Now, Sandelin is the veteran coach that others in the game look up to.
“I don’t always see myself in that light, maybe others do. I appreciate that,” said Sandelin, who was at the Frozen Four serving out the third year of a four-year term on the NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Committee. “If I can have any impact to help make our game better, if I can be a voice for that, absolutely. We all want to see (college hockey) be as good as possible in this changing world here. Sometimes it takes a little time to see how things are going to settle before we do some crazy things.”
Ferris State’s Bob Daniels (36 seasons), Cornell’s Mike Schaefer (30), Lake Superior State and Notre Dame coach Jeff Jackson (26), Army’s Brian Riley (20) and, most recently, RIT’s Wayne Wilson (26) all retired after the 2024-25 season.
Sandelin will start the 2025-26 season — his 26th at UMD — as the fourth-longest tenured active coach in NCAA Division I men’s hockey behind Air Force’s Frank Serratore (35), Quinnipiac’s Rand Pecknold (31) and Mercyhurst’s Rick Gotkin (37).
And Gotkin, 65, has already announced 2025-26 will be his last season, meaning Sandelin is poised to climb the tenure charts again next spring. He already leads all active head coaches in national championships with three, while his 469 wins rank third among active head coaches behind Serratore (521) and Pecknold (591).
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Sandelin’s contract at UMD runs through the 2026-27 season. He’ll be 62 at the end of that season. That’s still young by coaching standards with Serratore — who just signed a contract extension that keeps him at Air Force through the 2026-27 season — being 67. Pecknold is 58.
The Bulldogs coach yearns to return to the NCAA Frozen Four as the coach of a participant, not just as a committee member. He mentioned his hope of getting back to the Frozen Four multiple times throughout the week and again while answering questions during the annual State of the Game press conference put on by the NCAA on Friday at Enterprise Center in St. Louis.
It was the second Frozen Four in a row that Sandelin was among the NCAA committee members answering questions from reporters and stakeholders during the day in between the semifinals and the national championship.
Here were his thoughts on some of the sport’s biggest hot-button issues going into the offseason:
- On major junior players from Canada now being eligible for NCAA hockey starting in 2025-26: “It’s an extension of the (transfer) portal, it’s a bigger player pool, and everyone’s going to use it the way they feel they need to use it.”
- On the impact of NIL (name, image, likeness) money in recruiting: “My assistants hear about it a lot. A lot of it, you don’t know what is being paid. There’s a lot of rumors, a lot of numbers being thrown around. Who knows what’s fact or not. It’s out there and it’s part of what we’re going into. We’re not a school that has as much as another school. The way we address it is, how we’re doing with our recruits and our kids is, ‘This is what we have to offer you. This is what we can potentially give you.’ That’s the best we can do. It does come up a lot in conversations with agents. ‘What do you have?’ It’s changed a lot.”
On whether anything can be done about reigning in the madness of the transfer portal: “I don’t know what we can do,” Sandelin said. “Unfortunately.”
“The horse is out of the barn,” said Hockey East commissioner Steve Metcalf, chiming in after Sandelin.
Sandelin said he’s enjoyed being part of the NCAA championship committee, that he’s learned a lot and met some great, fun people. He feels he’s made an impact on the game with little things at the Frozen Four, offering the insight of a coach who has been part of the event.
The Bulldogs have made six Frozen Fours under Sandelin and went to four consecutive Frozen Fours between 2017 and 2021 — with 2020’s getting canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic. UMD appeared in three-straight finals between 2017-2019, winning back-to-back national championships in 2018 and 2019.
Since joining the committee in 2022-23, Sandelin’s teams have not only missed every Frozen Four, but his Bulldogs have also missed the NCAA tournament. He admitted it hurt to be watching other teams enjoy the experience, and not his.
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“It’s hard to watch, sometimes,” Sandelin said.
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