Wednesday, April 16, 2008

More from Alaska

There hasn't been a lot to come out of Fairbanks this past week on the resignation of head coach Doc DelCastillo, other than a number of pieces basically saying "This doesn't add up."

Bob Eley of the Daily News-Miner gets first linkage for quoting me. Yes, I'm shameless like that.

Adam Raeder wrote probably the best piece I've seen on the story on his blog, detailing an experience a week before DelCastillo's resignation that led him to believe Doc wasn't ready to walk away.

And Doyle Woody of the Alaska Daily News also questions the resignations. There's been quite a schadenfreude in Anchorage this past week over the state of Alaska's program. But I will say this. At least nobody has been suggesting that Fairbanks get kicked out of the CCHA.

I haven't heard much in terms of DelCastillo's replacement. Dallas Ferguson is the interim coach right now, and according to the school newspaper's blog, some feel that Ferguson should get the job. That might be a pretty big jump for a guy that hasn't been a head coach at any level, and only a college assistant for three years.

The other finalists for the job last time around were Wade Klippenstein, now with the Prince George Cougars in the WHL, St. Cloud assistant coach Eric Rud, and Wisconsin assistant Kevin Patrick. Fairbanks-native and Michigan State assistant Brian Renfrew was also mentioned, but he withdrew his name from consideration. There's a lot of good potential choices in that pool, but how many would be interested in going through the same process as they did last summer?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The hiring process opened to external recruitment on the 11th. You can see the job notice at uakjobs.com under the staff link or search for head coach. It's marked open until filled but they are supposedly planning on selecting for phone interviewees next week and then bring three up the following week. Latest I heard was the position would be filled by May 10th.

I'll be a bit surprised if they don't wait until after the coaches meetings in Naples next weekend before selecting coaches to bring up for face-to-face interviews.

Dallas Ferguson is a great guy, great coach, and is a long time part of the Fairbanks community so he definitely should be a finalist for the position.

Anonymous said...

Dallas is in his 4th year with the Nanooks, I guess they haven't updated their bio site for him, but as far as no head coaching experience goes; DelCastillo didn't have any, and I don't think that Tavis MacMillan did either, and he did alright.
But who knows, I'll be working on that soon to figure out what the next step is.

Anonymous said...

You would think Lance West would get a sniff as he essentially ran Alabama-Huntsville, even when Doug Ross was "coach" there.

Anonymous said...

The specifics on the search committee and interview particulars are in the local paper today.

http://www.newsminer.com/news/2008/apr/17/selection-committee-named-hockey-coaching-search/

Anonymous said...

I heard the Gopher assistant coach resigned, maybe he's interested?