The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com 
Wednesday, October 5, 2022 — 11 
Sports

A PhD in hockey: The education of Brandon Naurato

CHARLIE PAPPALARDO
Daily Sports Writer

If you get Brandon Naurato talk-
ing for long enough about his life in 
hockey, he’ll consistently remark, 
half-jokingly and half dead serious, 
“I really did get a PhD. in hockey.”
And while Naurato — Michi-
gan’s new interim head coach — 
may not have had to spend seven 
years in a graduate school or defend 
a 300 page thesis, the sentiment of 
his statement rings true for many. 
With decades of playing, coach-
ing and even commercializing his 
knowledge of the sport, Naurato 
must have genuinely obtained the 
highest form of education, one that 
now allows him to teach.
But while Naurato enters his 
new role with a plethora of junior, 
collegiate and NHL experience, it’d 
be frankly wrong to call his coach-
ing path stereotypical. Because in 
many ways, Naurato is an NCAA 
anomaly. 
At 37, Naurato is younger than 
all but three D1 hockey coaches. 
With only one year of experience 
as an assistant coach and only 
seven years removed from his 

first professional coaching gig, he 
takes the helm far greener than 
most who spend years or decades 
as an assistant before finally get-
ting their chance. And more gener-
ally, his laid back disposition, cool 
demeanor and quirky mannerisms 
more closely resemble those of a 
surfer dude than those of a coach at 
a historic hockey powerhouse. 
While Naurato seems to be well 
aware of this, he really doesn’t 
appear to be deterred by it. He 
knows that he’s a young coach with 
limited experience coming into a 
turbulent situation. And he knows 
that incredibly high expectations 
have been placed on his shoulders. 
But he’s embracing all of these dis-
tinctions. 
“I know who I am,” Naurato 
said. “I’m not trying to be some-
one new because I have a new title. 
I know exactly who I am, and I’m 
just trying to show everyone who 
doesn’t yet.”
Who Naurato is within this new 
role is a much larger question. Yes, 
he’s a Michigan native, a UM grad-
uate and someone who has spent 
his life around ice rinks; but that’s 
purely biographical. To under-
stand who Naurato is as a coach 

is not learning where he has been 
or who he’s been there with, but 
rather what he learned from being 
there.
***
Following three years of post-
collegiate minor league play, Nau-
rato called it quits on his playing 
career, but quickly transitioned to 
enterprising in the hockey world. 
With his own consulting company, 
along with Total Package Hockey 
in Detroit, Naurato got his foot in 
the door of player development for 
the first time. But it was also dur-
ing this period where Naurato’s 
understanding of game dynam-
ics was born, and he crafted his 
own development model from this 
understanding. 
“It started when I was back 
at Total Package Hockey,” Nau-
rato told College Hockey News. 
“I started watching all individual 
players and like what skills they 
were using to create space or take 
it away. Then … I woke up every day 
at 5a.m.. like eight years ago, and 
I started manually tracking how 
goals were scored … And once you 
do that, and you watch 7,000 goals 
a year for several years in a row, you 
start seeing trends and you come 

up with your own thought process, 
and you try things.”
It seems that this experience 
was the genesis for a lot of who 
Naurato would become behind 
the bench. While former head 
coach 
Mel 
Pearson 
preferred 
operating off of whiteboards and 
hockey knowledge, Naurato is data 
obsessed. 
“If you called him up right now 
and asked him how many goals in 
the NHL are scored off the rush, 
he’d know exactly what percent-
age,” former Michigan defense-
man Nick Blankenberg told MLive 
last year. 
Naurato’s understanding of the 
game is borne from data and film. 
That’s why he’s always excited 
to announce just how many new 
members of the analytics team he’s 
hired — 13 — and what innovations 
they’ll be using to analyze games. 
“We’re building multiple plat-
forms,” Naurato told The Daily. “Is 
it gonna turn into wins or help us? 
I think so, but we’ve got a plan with 
what we want to do, and then that’s 
how we fact check if we’re doing 
things the right way and where we 
can be better and what to work on.”
Part of Naurato’s confidence 

in this calculated and data driven 
understanding of the game comes 
from the fact that this sort of 
analysis is exactly what brought 
him his first NHL opportunity. 
He made a name for himself with 
a player development style crafted 
out of his analytics, and the Red 
Wings took note, adding him as a 
player development coach in 2018. 
It was in Detroit where Naurato’s 
understanding of the game grew 
further.
“He kind of took an approach 
where he embedded himself with 
our staff, so he wasn’t just a skills 
coach,” former Detroit Red Wings 
coach Jeff Blashill told The Daily. 
“So he was in all of our daily meet-
ings. In those meetings you end up 
talking lots about philosophy, you 
end up talking lots about struc-
ture, how you implement, how you 
get better.”
And it clearly impacted Nau-
rato.
“Just being in that war room 
every day without feeling the 
pressure of the wins and losses,” 
Naurato said. “Seeing what works, 
what doesn’t, what adjustments 
are made, … it just goes back into 
your core beliefs.”

JEREMY WEINE/Daily

But it wasn’t just knowledge of 
X’s and O’s that Naurato took from 
Detroit, he saw first hand how a 
coaching staff puts it all together. 
From skill training, to condition-
ing, to even off ice player manage-
ment. It was in those war rooms in 
Detroit where the image of how to 
be a coach came into clearer focus. 
“You know, I think a lot of what 
he had done up until that point was 
kind of from a micro approach,” 
Blashill said. “And I think prob-
ably his time in Detroit helped him 
with the macro, the bigger team 
picture.” 
***
When Naurato talks about his 
career, he discusses each destina-
tion like it was leading to the next. 
His collegiate career was what 
made it possible to be a develop-
ment coach. His time with Total 
Package gave him the technical 
and 
analytical 
understanding 
to work for the Red Wings. And 
his time in Blashill’s “war room” 
shaped the philosophy that he car-
ries today behind the Wolverines’ 
bench.
“Every coach’s route is differ-
ent,” Blashill said. “And he took a 
different route, but probably most 
importantly, he learned along the 
way. And I’m sure he’s ready to 
apply those lessons this year.”
This is the highest point of 
Naurato’s relatively young career. 
But whether it’s a short-lived high 
water mark, or the start of some-
thing much bigger, is still up in the 
air. And Naurato’s well aware of 
this fact. 
“I’ve got this interim tag, and I 
don’t think about it much,” Nau-
rato said. “But I’m thinking about 
proving it this year.”
If he’s going to prove himself, 
he’ll have to rely on the educa-
tion he’s received up to this point. 
But there’s a difference between 
education and implementation. If 
Naurato learned more about how 
to be a head coach at every level, 
now is the time to actually put 
everything into practice. 
Everything Naurato says he’s 
learned from his education in 
hockey is going to have to imme-
diately be put into use. Not just the 
analytics, or coaching philosophy, 
or people management — but all of 
it at once.
He’s spent decades in the game, 
and he’s taken on each subsequent 
level by modeling, researching and 
analyzing like a student working 
towards their degree. 
And from that perspective, with 
the chance to demonstrate every-
thing he’s learned, this year is his 
thesis.
Michigan coach Brandon Naurato’s hockey education is what makes him a unique young coach.

Connor Earegood: Brandon Naurato marks a new era

Brandon 
Naurato 
has 
his eyes locked 
on the future.
As 
he 
hunched over a 
computer last 
Tuesday field-
ing preseason 
questions from 
a Zoom panel 
of 
reporters, 
the Michigan interim hockey 
coach listed his changes to 
the program — some already 
made, others a work in prog-
ress.

Many of those plans excited 
him. His voice picked up pace 
when he described his new 
CPR — creativity, predictabil-
ity, responsibility — offensive 
system. He gushed about the 
skill of his players, freshmen 
and upperclassmen alike. He 
even addressed the elephant 
in the room, the team’s cul-
ture, when asked about how 
players are changing its land-
scape.
But when pressed about this 
summer’s WilmerHale report 
— which detailed toxic cul-
ture within the team and led 

to the firing of former coach 
Mel 
Pearson 
— 
Naurato’s 
patience grew thinner. After 
clarifying a question about 
applying takeaways from the 
report’s findings, his answer 
took an unexpected path.
“Everything’s been great 
here,” 
Naurato 
said. 
“I’m 
focusing on the future.”
That might seem like an 
inappropriate 
answer 
con-
sidering the details of that 
report. I’ll admit, even I was 
taken aback by its blunt-
ness; but, upon reflection, 
it’s entirely fair. Naurato can 

only control his own tenure 
as head coach — interim or 
not — and those close to the 
program suggest it’s a night 
and day difference from the 
past. Under his watch, it’s a 
welcome fresh start.
Brandon Naurato isn’t Mel 
Pearson. And I believe his 
tenure shouldn’t be defined 
by his predecessor’s sins. 
Through 68 pages of the 
WilmerHale report, Naura-
to’s name never comes up. He 
wasn’t grilled by investiga-
tors, and none of the allega-
tions bear his name. Naurato 
joined Michigan as an assis-
tant coach under Pearson in 
August 2021, after most of the 
investigated misconduct had 
already occurred. 
While it’s unknown what 
happened inside the program 
last season, Naurato’s reputa-
tion is clean right now, and 
there’s no reason to besmirch 
it because of the egregious 
conduct of his former boss.
Yet Naurato does have to 
solve those pressing issues 
within the program. And thus 
far, he has made a concerted 
effort to do so. He isn’t oblivi-
ous to the challenges facing 
the Wolverines this season; 
he has faced them head on the 
past two months. 
After all, he was the one 
who put together the pro-
gram’s pieces in an abridged 
offseason, installing his sys-
tems and hiring his coaching 
staff — notably adding staff-
ers whose past work included 
hockey culture. All that is to 
say, the requisite nuts and 
bolts to compete on the ice 
are in working order.
But the real battle goes 
beyond that. It comes in 

repairing 
the 
culture 
of 
Michigan hockey, building 
a safe space for players and 
staff to do their jobs well. As 
the leader of the program, 
it’s on Naurato to instill that 
change.
“Everyone’s coming to you 
every day, from all areas of 
people involved in the pro-
gram, for you to make a deci-
sion,” Naurato said. “We have 
so many great people here 
in Michigan and so many 
great resources. I’m trying to 
empower these people to be 
able to do what they love to 
do and do their job and sup-
port them.”
So far, Naurato has accom-
plished that task. Under his 
catchphrase 
“Good 
Dudes 
Only,” Naurato is encourag-
ing his players to not only 
act right themselves, but to 
hold each other accountable 
for their behavior. Nowhere 
did the report list problems 
caused by players in the lock-
er room, yet the scope of Nau-
rato’s culture reset includes 
them. That scope matters 
considering how much the 
culture needed to change; 
from the top down, Naurato 
wants to ensure his program 
is in good shape.
As it embarks on a new era, 
that accountability matters 
more than ever, and Pearson’s 
issues shouldn’t hover over 
Naurato in the meantime. 
That blame hangs on the 
administrators and athletic 
department officials who let 
it slide for too long.
Not Naurato. 
But while Naurato might 
not have caused the Wolver-
ines’ problems, he still needs 
to fix them. He must not only 

repair the social mechanisms 
behind the scenes, but also 
the outward image of the 
program. Already, he’s saying 
the right things to do both.
“There’s 
always 
good 
teaching points, but zero neg-
atives,” Naurato said after 
Saturday’s 
exhibition 
win 
over Windsor. “We’re trying 
to build a safe environment 
where these guys can fail for-
ward.”
So while it might be easy 
to view Naurato’s program 
with hesitancy, to question 
every move he makes with 
Michigan’s 
Pearson-dam-
aged image in mind — don’t. 
Nothing Naurato has done 
deserves that level of scru-
tiny yet, and he can only be 
judged by his own actions.
Under a first-year coach 
with a dozen first-year play-
ers, Michigan will witness 
plenty of failure. There will 
be missed defensive reads 
and blowout losses, locker 
room arguments and coach-
ing 
disagreements. 
There 
will be times when the grow-
ing pains of a program anew 
flare up.
But everything so far indi-
cates that they won’t be the 
kinds of mistakes that harm 
people, and that’s the dif-
ference. This season isn’t a 
rebuilding year per se, but 
it’s certainly about more than 
just winning games. It’s about 
nursing the culture and rela-
tionships of Michigan hockey 
back to health.
And with Naurato running 
the show, I believe that recov-
ery can finally take place.

ICE HOCKEY

ICE HOCKEY

CONNOR 

EAREGOOD

