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Walker and Dunlop brings you insights for life,
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Unique perspectives from impactful leaders.
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This is the walker webcast with willie walker. Welcome to another Walker Webcast. As all Walker webcast listeners know, the majority of our topics are on the macro economy, on business, leadership, commercial real estate, and every once in a while, I dive off into areas of both personal interest as well as interest in leadership and how people lead military operations, how people lead states, cities and hockey teams. And it is my great pleasure to have the University of Denver hockey coach, David Carl join me today for the Walker webcast. I have watched Coach Carl really take the University of Denver from being one of the very Best Division 1 men's hockey programs in the nation to really operating on a different level from anybody else. And as you will hear in Coach Carl's bio, he has done more in his early career at the University of Denver than most coaches would hope to do in an entire career and is really being looked at as a truly unique coach in the college ranks. And we'll talk about hockey versus football, basketball and a bunch of other things and all the rule changes that are going on today. Coach CARL but first of all, it's a real pleasure to have you join me today and thank you for taking the time.
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B
Yeah, thanks for having me on. Looking forward to chatting with you today and appreciate diving into your one of your interests in college hockey.
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I do have a pretty good interest, I think I may have mentioned to you a number of years ago when I first met you, that Coach Greg Carville was one of my really good buddies back in undergrad at St. Lawrence. And he had St. Lawrence at the top of the ECAC and then was poached away to UMass where he went on to win a national championship. And Carvey and I have been great friends for, for a very long period of time. And my Walker webcast with with Carv, which is probably now about four or five years when the last time he won the national championship, is one of those conversations that I continuously have clients and listeners come back and say, man, that conversation with Coach Carville about college hockey was really so fascinating. So when I saw the opportunity to bring you on, I said I got to get Coach Carl on because what you've done, as I said previously at the University of Denver, is really quite spectacular.
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B
Well, thank you. Sounds like I have big shoes to fill with Karby being up here, so hopefully we can do that.
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Great. So let me just real quick give listeners coach a little bit of background. Your, Your record at DU is 20885 and 20, which gives you a winning percentage of 0.696. And as I, as I think about that, one of the other pieces is your NCAA tournament record is 14:3, which is unbelievable. Which, with three titles and six Frozen Four berths in your eight seasons as head coach of the University of Denver, you got your 200th win earlier this season, and that win percentage of almost.700 puts you right up there as one of the winningest coaches in NCAA college hockey history. I, I can't help coach, but do a little bit of a comparison between you and John Wooden and Nick Saban as it relates to two luminaries in men's basketball and football. Wooden's lifetime win record was.808, so 0.808, and Saban was 0.804. So we've got about 100 basis points of win percentage that we got to get coach, to get you up into that pantheon. But talk for a moment about the program that you've implemented at Denver. The, the way that you, when you meet with a recruit to bring them into Denver, you're obviously, there's 64 D1 hockey programs. You compete. I'm in Boston today. You know, Boston is a hockey town. They got the bean pot every winter that has BU and BC and Harvard and Northeastern all going at it in the, in the, in the Garden with a really great atmosphere. And yet you're successful at, if you will, recruiting against Boston and Hockey east and the Big Ten. How is it that you've been so successful at bringing such great talent to the University of Denver?
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B
That's a loaded question. And there's certainly a number of reasons why I believe that we're successful, our program's successful. But I think the, I guess something you might hear me say a lot today or that we can dive into is, I think, ultimately our program. A lot of people say it, but I don't know. I think it, it's within us a little bit more ingrained than others. But we really do believe that nobody's bigger than the program. It's been around for 76 years. We've only had nine head coaches since the year 2000. We've won the most championships all time, but since year 2000, we've won the most championships with six. We've had three head coaches in that time period. All three head coaches won a championship. And so I just, to me, like, the, the names on the back of the jersey change, maybe the people behind the bench change, athletic directors change, student body changes. But, you know, there's something really special and unique about Denver that's kind of ingrained within certainly how George was decky operated as he was a coach for the 0405 title teams. Jim Montgomery eventually took over, won a championship in 2017, and then obviously we've been fortunate enough to win three, the last five. And I think really a stitching through it all is just how nobody really cares about their own personal egos and who gets the credits. And I think, again, a lot of that, you know, in what we kind of display around our space would be, who I think is the John Wooden of college hockey is Murray Armstrong, and he's really the. The grandfather and the founder, the godfather of. Of Denver hockey won five championships starting back in 1958 through 1969. And, you know, I think, at least for me and, and I know my predecessors, we just feel like we're, you know, trying to do our part and keep the train on the tracks, if you will, in many respects. And so there's a lot of, like, specific reasons why we're successful that certainly we can get into. But I think that's really the. The overarching thing. And I think that philosophy and I guess culture kind of permeates throughout our locker room and certainly into recruiting. And, you know, we're constantly looking for players and people, probably more importantly, that want to, you know, that aren't coming to Denver because of what we've done, but they're coming to Denver to add to what we've done. And, you know, they. They want to win. You know, that's. That's primary for us. We believe in life, you can. You can certainly win and develop all at the same time. So, you know, we've got a lot of NHL draft picks and really good players that have gone on to make NHL careers and debuts, but they are addicted and hungry to add to what Denver hockey is all about. So it's a great place to work and it's a really special place to be. And I couldn't be more blessed to. To be in the role I'm in.
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A
You talked about the 0405 team. Your brother was on those national championship teams and went on to win the Hobie Baker Award. What your parents feed you at dinner in Anchorage, Alaska, as you guys were growing up to make you and your brother such incredible athletes.
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Yeah, it was a lot of Kentucky Fried Chicken, to be honest. So my parents, they own and operate KFC stores back in Alaska. And my. The family business that our great uncle started and owned back in the 80s and, and 70s and, and my dad bought the business from his uncle, my great uncle, in the early 90s. And, you know, my brother's born in 84. I was born 89. Then our younger brother Alex was born in 94. So all grew up working in the commissary, working in the stores. Every team event, party, it was trays of chicken getting brought in in the Colonel Seger recipe. So that was a big part of it for sure. And, you know, very, again, very fortunate to. To grow up in the way that we did.
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What was the, the. The hockey angle, though? Did your dad play hockey? Because, I mean, Anchorage, Alaska isn't exactly considered a hotbed of youth hockey players.
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So what.
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What got you and your brother on that track to be able to be D1 hockey players?
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Yeah, so our parents, you know, they could maybe tell you they know how to skate, but they don't know how to skate. Parents never played the sport. You know, we had. My dad's one of four boys. He's in the middle. And so some of his brothers had kids before him that were older and, and they got into hockey. And so we had older cousins that played a little bit, and that's how, you know, Matthew got involved. And again, you're in Alaska, it's probably the one sport that you have access to the most. Our. Our football season not very long. Our baseball season starts a little bit later, and, you know, soccer just not a huge thing up there. So, you know, the other thing I would say is, you know, we did have a lot of role models within our community. Scott Gomez was playing in the NHL. Ty Conklin, Brian Swanson, someone that, that we grew up, he played at CC that I know my brother really enjoyed. We had UAA hockey playing out of the Sullivan arena, so they were in the old wcha. So we got to see Denver and Minnesota, North Dakota in Wisconsin come into the Sullivan arena, and our parents had season tickets to those games. So, you know, we grew up just running around the Sully and know, getting to watch Vanek and, you know, with the Gophers and obviously the great North Dakota teams of the 90s. So it was really a. Honestly, a great place to grow up and, and fall in love with hockey. And, you know, my brother Matthew ended up leaving and going to play at the U.S. national Team Development Program when he was 15. I left at 15 to go play at Shadic St. Mary's in Minnesota. And then our little brother Alex, he left around the same age and went to a prep school at Kimball Union out East. So we all left home at the age of 15, 16 to pursue it. Alex ended up at Merrimack on a Division 1 scholarship, and Matthew and I both ended up going to Denver.
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Do you think you'd be the coach you are if your playing career hadn't ended when it did? As it relates to kind of a. The perspective of watching the game in college rather than playing the game in college,
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I would tell you I, you know, I would hopefully have went on to play for a number of years. And yeah, coaching might be something that got on my radar, but truthfully, I mean, when, when I got into it, I mean, obviously forced into it due to the heart condition, and it really wasn't until my junior year of college at Denver, so my third year into coaching, that it became a real consideration of something that I could or would or. Or should do full time. And, and, you know, life's very fortuitous sometimes. I mean, it's so much about timing. And I was. I had the right guy, you know, in the right job in Green Bay, and Derek Lalonde, who recruited me to Denver, know he had an assistant coach opening when my senior year ended. I had interviewed for a couple other jobs in the ushl, didn't get them, and Derek had an opening and hired me to come work with him. And, you know, the same can be said with Denver. Job opened up way sooner than I would ever thought and was really fortunate. Jim Montgomery hired me and tried to get some head coaching jobs during the five years of working with Moni. Didn't get any of them. Monty leaves, go to Dallas and Denver hires me at the age of 28. So, you know, there's, there's so many things in your life that have to go your way that are out of your control as well as, you know, as well as being ready to capitalize on those opportunities and moments. And I think that's, that's what makes sports so kind of. So many life skills come from sports. You know, you look at goalie this year, Johnny Hicks, I mean, he, he didn't get to start a game until the end of January. And, you know, it was. He had to buy his time, wait for his opportunity, and then once your opportunity opens, it's your job to be ready to strike. So there, there's, There was a lot that it was out of his control prior to getting that first start, and then once it got into his control, you know, he didn't let go of the horns. And so I think there's a lot to, To Learn there in life skills and you know, whether it's business, sport, life in general, you know, you have to be ready to cash in on your opportunities.
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Does your, you look like you're in good shape. Does your heart condition prevent you from doing strenuous exercise or do you, do you get plenty of exercise off the ice when you're skating around with the players coaching them?
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Yeah, so my, in my condition does not really limit me to, you know, physical activity in any respect. So yeah, activity, you know, good diet, you know, allows me to hopefully stay healthy and kick around for a few more years. But you know, I, I'm, I'm also, I don't have a super severe, I would say condi like version of the condition. And so for me it's, that's, that's really nice as well. I'm very again lucky and blessed that it's not something more severe. There, there's a lot more different permutations of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy that, that I know of and know people with. And for me again, fortunately it's a, it's a pretty asymptomatic case or has been for the last 18 years and, and hopefully continues to stay that way.
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A
I had a bike accident a couple weeks ago and hit my head pretty badly and had a pretty bad concussion. And as I've been trying to recover from it and I'm feeling a lot better now than I have been for the last two weeks, I kept looking at my whoop scores and my whoop recovery scores and what was so interesting about it was even though I was getting the same amount of exercise as normal, eating the same as I normally would, normally not drinking as I normally do, my recovery scores stayed in the red and it was just kind of telling me that my body was trying to get back online even though everything else was sort of held static and it was just the recovery from the concussion and it was so interesting to be able to sort of see the numbers behind the physiology from the whoop strap as I was during that recovery period. Do you do anything as it relates to monitoring your players performance from either a whoop or aura or anything else standpoint to be able to see how they're doing either from a strain or recovery standpoint. Point.
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Yeah. We have a. Matt Shaw is the head of our sport performance department. He oversees all their lifting, training, recovery, you know, all of our science based kind of tracking tools and things that we use. And the main tracker that we use is called Catapult. It's, they wear Kind of a, kind of a halter type thing that, that holds a little, small, little thing and tracker on their back. And that's really what we use to try and measure their force output during practice. And so Matt and I will. I get a. We've been using it for, gosh, probably 12 years or so now. So we have a really good sense of what we're looking to do week to week. But, you know, measures high force skating strides, measures total volume, can measure asymmetries or dis symmetries between your left and your right side. You know, if your right leg's working more than your left leg. Just all these kind of cool little quirks and things that, that Matt can dive into each individual player data and look for things that might be red flags for them. You know, for me, team wide is what I look at. Just our kind of our team scores and team loads. And, you know, ultimately they lot of times people say, you know, practice seems harder, should be harder than games. And it's kind of weird because practice isn't as long and games are much longer. But really what it gets down to is you have your total player load on a day. You know, that might be, you know, you don't. You won't know the numbers, but, you know, 120 on a Monday, then we might go up to 160 on a Tuesday and then 140 on a Wednesday, you know, 110 on a Thursday. And then the games are going to Spike to like 250 to 275. But what it also tracks is the player load per minute. And so, you know, during practice, the player load per minute is much higher. It's. It's very high. And then a player load per minute on a game is much lower. So the games seem easier physically a lot of times than practice because the duration of practice is shorter. But the, if you were to do a practice, as long as you were to do a game, the player load would be well above 300. So there's all these different, you know, as he talks about it, you want to have a, a variety within your training. If, if we were to just hit, say, the number 140 for four straight days and then spike to 250 on a game day, there's a lot more risk of injury. It's no different, you know, if you were to get in the weight room and, and do the same workout four straight days and then on Friday do something completely different. You know, a CrossFit workout when all you've been doing is squats and sit ups and, you know, bench press for four straight days, very, you know, elementary, you know, static kind of lifts. And then you were to go into a CrossFit workout on Friday, full bore. Your chance of injury is very, very high. But if you're varying, you know, kind of what you're doing in those lifts Monday through Thursday, you kind of keep your body guessing. It keeps it more, I guess, elastic and able to adjust and take on different stress loads. So that's a lot of how we, you know, work in sports science. We used to. Many of our players individually will have whoops or, you know, different tracking things. You know, Matt has at times. We don't do it every year, which kind of wait, every couple of years we'll go on and off of things just because I think sometimes it's good to have variety with your team and people. And so we'll do heart rate variability, you know, studies and exercises so that, you know, that that's a real good indicator of, you know, your sleep, your recovery, your readiness, you know, within your heart rate variability. And what that is just, you know, the beats, you know, the time between beats and what's the distance between them. Is it, you know, symmetrical? Is it varied, you know, is it in, you know, two tenths of a second? Difference can be a lot, you know, as that kind of shifts throughout a minute. And anyway, so we certainly do do a lot of that. Matt does a lot of force plat a weekly basis. He can see guys and try and pick up data points to. Again, early intervention, I think is critical, you know, for our players on their weight, on their, you know, force plate testing. If those numbers start to drop, you know, we can quickly intervene and just say, have a conversation. How are you feeling? Something going on? Do you need more support? You know, we want our athletes to be as healthy as possible, certainly so that they're available to. To be at their best.
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A
So one of the. First of all, does that topic come up much when you're doing recruiting meetings with players and families? That whole kind of side of it, in the sense of is. Is the real kind of like, how's my kid going to be, you know, make it onto the NHL and why is he going to fit in DU or whatever the case? Or do they talk a lot more about those sort of what I would deem to be kind of derivative or. Or somewhat outside of the sort of mainline. Are they. Are they focused on that stuff?
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B
They are. I mean, I think kids are more in tune today than they ever have been on their bodies and training and you know, what they put in their bodies and what the output is. So yeah, we have a lot of our kids that come in, you know, we want them to spend 30 to 45 minutes of MAT down in his space, walk the space. He can show them the tools, he can show them. You know. Every day after practice the staff gets a catapult report. We can see what each drill, the, the total volume of each drill, the player load per minute per drill. You know, we can see it by defenseman, by forward. We can also see how long, you know, each drill was. And sometimes we have an idea as coaches of, you know, gosh, this drill that seemed really short or you know, and then you look at the sheet and you're like well that was like nine minutes. That's really long or that seemed really fast. Like there's some drills that we do that are, are very quick and there's some drills it's only truly 90 seconds to two and a half minutes. Some of the drills that we do that are continuous to get the rep count, to get the high force skating. So Matt can go through kind of all that. On the sports science side, you know, we really say that Matt is, you know, style of play, how we play skills, ice, yes, all that's very important. But know becoming really good friends with Matt Shaw is going to be your number one indicator, number one key to getting your body ready to play at the pro level and hopefully make it into the NHL.
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A
So when I think about first of all Magnus, it's an incredible hockey arena. When it was built it was truly one of the great arenas in the country. A lot of other your competitor schools have, have built beautiful arenas and North Dakota's, I've never been there but my understanding is that North Dakota's arena is really quite something. But you're competing against the likes of Michigan and Ohio State and BC&BU and other universities that have a not only lots of resources, really nice stadiums, the travel between their home rink and the visitors home rink, if you will or their other league members is a fraction of the distance between Denver and places like Sioux City and other rinks that you all need to travel to. How other than obviously you've got the University of Denver calling card of the great track record. But you've a focused very much coach on recruiting sort of straight out of the juniors and not leaning on if you will or focusing on the transfer portal. Love to understand sort of why that rather than going to the transfer portal that has been the producer of a lot of talent that has moved from one school to the next. And then. And then secondly, just sort of, you know, when you. When I think about you recruiting against Michigan, who you beat in the national semifinal and had a great team and boy, that was an incredible game that you all won. You think about Michigan having won the basketball championship the week before and all the resources that a university like Michigan has. And here's du that has really a lot of great D1 sports, but on basketball, not really a big competitor and no football team. And I sort of sit there and say, man, how does coach Carl do it to recruit such great talent to Denver when the competitive set is so competitive at other schools? So if you would let me bifurcate that of a players straight out of juniors into there rather than relying on the portal. And then second of all, just kind of the competitive landscape as it relates to recruiting. You had 10 freshmen on the team this year. I think I was correct on that. You had the sixth youngest roster in all of NCAA hockey this year, right?
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B
Yeah. And this is actually the oldest of our three teams that won in the last five years. So it's unbelievable. The teams in 22 and 24 were the second youngest teams in the country. We had 11 freshmen on one and nine on another. So I mean, I think, you know, like so much things in life, you. You lean upon your lived experience to kind of formulate opinions, ideas and plans. And with the transfer portal, you know, I think when it was originally introduced in, you know, for us it started. It felt like it became a thing in, you know, 1920, 2021 seasons, kind of in that time period. And I would tell you, our first go at it was the 2021 season and we had three transfers, all nice kids. But the fact of the matter is it just. It did not go that well for us. It was. It's a really. I think. I just think it's a hard place. Maybe it's unique to us, I don't know. Or maybe we're just not good at assimilating them or culturally it just doesn't work as well. But, you know, I would say that transfers. A lot of times you're having to. They want very tangible promises might be a good word as to what they're going to get. They've been through the process before on the first go around. Maybe even they've been through it twice because maybe there's a decommitment and a recommitment to another school and, you know, now they're a little Bit older, a little bit wiser. They can see through the BS and they're, they're looking for, you know, straight talk on, you know, what's my role going to be? What's, what do you have for me? And now it's getting even more complicated as you involve money into the situation. You know, five, six years ago, that wasn't a thing. It was just, hey, what's my role on the team going to be? And so very early on we, we had a player that we brought in, he was forward of the year in another league. And you know, we thought we were getting, you know, this real plug and play player. And so we, we slotted him on our top line on day one. And you know, he didn't produce for like eight games and we just kept trying it and you know, but he's on the power play. He's on our first line. He's getting opportunity after opportunity. He's not making, you know, cashing in or doing anything with it. You know, he's, he's new to the culture, new the program. You know, he's very, he's starting to get outwardly frustrated at his lack of personal success. And, and the other guys see it and they've been a part of the program for one, two, three years and they're like, well, why does I think in their minds, like, why is this guy getting, you know, all this opportunity, all this rope? And so we're eight games in and we got returners kind of, you know, looking at us like, what are we doing here? And then so you start to move him down because you're like, well, the results aren't there, so we're going to move other people and try those spots. And then with him it's like, well, you know, do you not believe in me now? And, you know, you told me that this is the opportunity I would have. And so it just, it was really challenging, truthfully, to manage a situation, in my opinion, with kind of our core values and what we believe in and trying to develop people and teams and players and, you know, so the next time we did it was our 21, 22 team. And I was. The first time we did, we did three. We're like threes a lot. So 21, 22, we only brought one one in. And we were very upfront and direct with him as to what went wrong the first time. And he was very open minded, understanding. Like, we are starting you lower in our lineup. Our goal and expectation for you is to move up our lineup. But you have to, you have to earn it from us, but you also, more importantly, you have to earn it from your teammates. And so he was awesome. His name's Cam Wright. He came from Bowling green, did a fifth year with us, scored 20 goals for us, scored a huge goal in the. In the regional and in the Michigan game. I believe in 22, he had a tip goal as well. And, you know, he was the first guy to do our bike test. He was around in the summertime. He just really took what we had to say in it. It just made it a lot easier. And he. He gained his teammates trust and respect right away. So it worked very well. And, and then since him, you know, we. We added to after our 24 team, Eric P. Camp we had on the world junior team when I was. When I was coaching that group. So I had a little bit of a sense of him initially and Sam Osamon and transferred from UConn, but he was committed to Denver the first go around, got into academic issues, getting into school. And so we knew the player, both Eric and Sam, who were on this past year's championship. So again, we. It's not that we don't do it. We're just very selective. I think it's also, you know, very nice to be able to say to families, you know, look at our roster building as it relates to other teams around the country. Not only do we want to bring freshmen in, we brought in 11 and then nine and then 10. And we won with those teams. So we're not afraid to bring in freshmen. We believe you can win with them. And so I think when you're sitting across the table or on the phone or zoom call with a family, you know, you have a lot more credibility to sit here and say, yeah, we, we want your son to come. We want to develop them. You have to trust us. So we're not going to bring someone out of the portal who's three years older and. And recruit over top of your son and then break that and fracture that. That trust in that relationship. So that, to me is probably really what it's all about. There's a proof of concept for us that it's challenging. There's a proof of concept that you can do it in moments, and it works. And then there's certainly a proof of concept with having a lot of freshmen on your team. And so we're very confident and bullish on the players that we can bring in as freshmen out of junior hockey, that we can develop them, they can come to Denver and they can be Wildly successful immediately and then, and then certainly progress in their career. So I think that's a big part of what's given us success. I would also say that it's good when you're, it's kind of maybe gets into the next thing. But, you know, we're a very small institution, you know, as it relates to the big public schools and state flagships. And so if you can differentiate yourself within a marketplace and try and stand out, you know, generally that's going to serve you well. And so trying to do what everybody else is doing, you know, generally doesn't work, even if it's being different is really good, you know, in our opinion. And so we try and be different with that. And, you know, I think it works well for us when we're having those conversations with families. How do we do it against the other schools? You know, kind of like you asked. I mean, the reality is the portfolio of college hockey is very, very diverse. I've spoken on this a few times, but you do have the power two or power four schools in the, the seven Big Ten schools. You have Boston College, who's a part of the acc, and then you have Arizona State as well. So that's nine schools out of 64 kind of belong, you know, in that tier where they have big time football and basketball and all the resources of power four. And then you've got a lot, you know, probably, and I wouldn't even say the bottom. I just like not that bigger. So it's a lot bigger is not better. You know, then you have schools like us that are Division 1 non football. You have schools like North Dakota, Division 1 with FCS football. Minnesota Duluth is Division 1 hockey with Division 2 football. Colorado College is Division 1 hockey with Division 1 men, women's soccer, everything else. D3 Omaha is very similar to us. You have the Ivies, which is about seven to, you know, 10 schools. You've got, you just have a real wide swath. You have max schools in Miami, Western Michigan, you know, so you have this real swath of schools that the offerings are very unique and different. And there's, there's a ton of players. We just got 60 teams worth of players in the CHL that are now eligible. In addition to everything we were recruiting previous to that in the USHL and, and Europe and Canadian Tier 2 leagues. And so truthfully, there's, there's a lot of funneling. You know, the, the base that we're recruiting from is really large. And then we're funneling it to this and so even if bigger was better, okay, there's nine schools that are in that mix. There's not, there's way more than nine teams worth of players to be able to recruit and to be able to build solid teams. And of those nine, I mean, seven of them are in the same conference. So Notre Dame had an awful year in the Big Ten. They finished seventh. You know, do they look attractive to, to families? I mean, yes, a great education. There's a lot of good things about Notre Dame, but if you want to win, you're probably not going to Notre Dame right now. And so those seven schools playing a conference where they beat up on each other and the best they can go as a group of seven is 500. And so it creates these pockets and inefficiencies within the marketplace where teams in the nchc, again, we have nine teams. We're going to have, you know, we had four teams in subway tournament, the CCHA almost, I think they had one team in, but they almost had three or four teams in. You have Hockey east. You know, BC didn't make the tournament this year. BU didn't make the tournament this year. So there's, there's a lot of, I would just say, I would say a lot of variance within it. And how we are then broken up into six conferences, you know, I think creates a natural competitiveness and also inefficiencies within the marketplace. On top of, you know, we have a great institution to come to academically. It's a great city. It's obviously full of tradition. Hockey wise, we really care about hockey. I would say another way to think about it is people know about the University of Denver because of Denver Pioneer hockey. You know, people know about Ohio State hockey because they're part of Ohio State. You know, the, the flagship is the school. You know, at our school, the, the, the athletic programs and certainly the hockey program is the front door and the entry point into our university. Whereas at a lot of these big places, you know, you're, you know about them for many, many other reasons before you. Oh, they have a hockey program. I didn't know that. That's cool. And so there's a lot of kids and families that want to come to a hockey school where hockey is the primary focus and they can get a great education and they can have a great social experience and they can move on and they can win. So really long answer for you. But I mean, that's, that's a big part of it, just knowing the totality of the ecosystem. You know, I think no different than I'm sure any of your other guests or anything. You have to know your marketplace in order to find where you can be successful within your niche. And I think that's again what's made us successful is where we recruit, how we recruit. It's really hasn't changed a lot in the last 60 years. It's Western North America sprinkled in with a little bit of scandic countries and we live in those markets and we found really good people that are really good players and they want to be a part of something bigger than themselves.
- [37:20]
A
You clearly don't lose many games to other programs and the, the track record works, you know, speaks for itself as it relates to the, the program that you lose recruits to. Are you, are you willing to diverge? I, I always sit around and people sit there and say, you know, Walker and Dunlop, they compete with CBRE and JLL and all these other big services firms in the commercial real estate space. And the way to really understand who we compete with is who we lose deal flow to. That's, that's really the competitive set. Right? It's not, it's not so much that they do this or do that. It's like we just went out and tried to finance an asset for them and we lost to whomever or whatever. And that's in my view the real competitive threat. You know, that's who we really compete with on a day to day basis. When you, when you're going up for student athletes, you, you, you win more than you lose. But is there one program that you're sort of like darn it, we every once in a while they're the ones who keep showing up.
- [38:17]
B
Yeah. Yes and no. You know, I would, I mean we commit, we, we, we compete in the same, I would say end of the pool as a lot of the teams that we've talked about. And you know what our specific record is recruiting wise against those schools. You know, I don't, I can't sit here and say like we lose every battle to school X or we win every battle against school X. I think know a lot of times it, it really does. You know, whether it's Michigan or bu, bc, Notre Dame, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Minnesota, North Dakota, Duth, you know, it really comes down to we're so, all those schools are so different. And I've spoken to this and maybe we'll get into it but like everyone wants to talk about the money in college athletics and again my, my view in sense of it is if you want to come to if you want to go to a big state school and go to football games and it's between Denver and Michigan State, you're going to pick Michigan State. And it really doesn't, in my opinion, it's not going to matter if we offer $75,000 and they offer $25,000. You know, like it's, it's not a big enough in. When you're thinking about the future of contracts and your earning potential in your career, you're not going to pick a place that you don't fit at over a five figure number. And truthfully, even a low six figure number, I don't think a lot of kids and families are going to do that. And so again, as I kind of sit here and you know all those schools I mentioned, it's really just trying to dive into what is the experience they are looking for. You know, what do you want out of your college experience? Is, is the big school important? Is, you know, is getting to the NHL the only and number one thing is do you want to be a part of something bigger than shelf? Do you want to win in college? Do you want to be in a NHL city? Do you not want to be in an NHL city? Do you want a business degree? You know, do you want to be taught by a TA or by your professor? Like what is it that you, what do you value? And so that's really what we try to get into with kids and families. And you can learn pretty early on if, if you're in the mix or not. You know, again, you talk about deal, flow and people you work with. And, and it, again, it's, it's more than the numbers. It's, it is a people business. Whatever we are doing in any given industry in life. And as much as AI and different things want to come into play, you know, life is still going to be a people business. And so that I think is just really, really critical and important as we try and meet families and meet kids and talk to their agents and their teams and figure out, you know, who's going to fit in at Denver. And we try and be as blatantly honest as we can be. And with that we get just as excited when kids don't pick us as when they do pick us. Because if, if we lay out who we are and they want to go somewhere else, then good for them, you know, there's a lot of good fits that'll fit for them. If they're not a fit for us, then they shouldn't come to Denver. And, and I Think you filter a lot of that on the front end very diligently and, and then it keeps a lot of your guys out of the portal, allows you to keep that continuity and that, that roster construction, you know, in a more stable place and, you know, hopefully allows you to compete year in and year out, you know, for championships.
- [42:02]
A
How early can you make offers to. And I know hockey is a little bit different in the sense that in, you know, football and basketball there is no juniors. And so in hockey, many kids go from a high school program to playing juniors before coming to college hockey and almost all on, on your roster. But how early can you give someone an offer to come to du? Can you recruit a freshman in high school and give them an offer to come or do you have to wait until they're a senior in high school?
- [42:34]
B
Yeah, good question. In every sport's different. And the ncaa, I mean, it's one of the, it's one of the good things they have done in the last little while here is they've given a lot more autonomy to each individual sport and coaching bodies to kind of build out their own recruiting calendars. And we're down in Bonito Springs, Florida at our coach convention this week and it is a hot topic. Age based eligibility is coming into play, which will have arguably the biggest impact on college hockey because we have delayed enrollment and so eligible.
- [43:05]
A
Just so people who are listening understand that the NCAA put out that you've got five years of eligibility starting at 19 years old, so you can only play to your 24. Am I correct on that? Quick read of the rule.
- [43:17]
B
So you can, so it's the day you graduate or when you turn 19, whichever comes first.
- [43:23]
A
Got it.
- [43:24]
B
And so if you're on a normal track like most hockey players are graduating at the age of 18, your five year clock will start after you graduate. That's going to throw quite a wrench into our ecosystem to which, you know, nothing's totally been finalized, but it appears it is. And certainly we're, we're very much against it as a body because, you know, hockey does not have a high school model that basketball and football and other sports do where you can play locally within the area that you grew up at a really high and competitive level due to geographics and just sheer numbers of volume of players. And so what ultimately happens is like myself and my brothers, we leave home at the age of 15, 16 years old. We didn't even go play junior hockey, went to play high school hockey and then from there we would go to junior hockey so we left even earlier than most kids. And so, you know, really what's going to happen is we're going to have to recruit younger players. Kids are going to have to leave home earlier because they're not going to have access to high level hockey in the state of Colorado or Texas at the age of, you know, 17 years old when they're junior senior in high school, they're going to have to leave earlier and then they're going to have to come into college earlier and they'll, you know, the system will sort itself out. But you know, I think Charlie Baker is really missing on this as it relates to the impacts on youth sports and college hockey and kids having to leave their homes a lot earlier. Outside of Minnesota, in really the Northeast, it's really challenging to play high level hockey all the way, you know, in your hometown up until the age of 18. So that's going to be a major change coming to our sport. That'll be a real challenge that we're all trying to wrap our heads around right now. And so, yeah, ultimately it's 18. It's when you graduate or when you turn 19, whichever comes first, is when your five year clock will start and you've got five years, no waivers, no exceptions, you know, to be able to compete. And so, yeah, you're going to look at a, there'll be a group of kids who are, you know, that are in the ecosystem right now, you know, that are 19 years old and they wanted to play their 19 year old year of junior and they want to come to college as 20 year olds. But by the time the rules change, they're only gonna have three years of eligibility left because they graduated at the age of 18. So it's, I understand how it's, it's again, we get lost sometimes in the NCAA world with what's most important for football. And it's unfortunate that this will probably be the biggest change we've had to face, truthfully. Bigger change than Rev Share Nil and, and the transfer portal, in my opinion
- [46:21]
A
and on Nil, Coach, my understanding is that you've basically taken that money and if you will, paid it evenly across your team and not sat there and said, okay, you're my star center and you're going to make this and you're my third string, you know, third line center and you're going to make that and not sort of delineated between them yet. Some other programs, I believe I, I believe there's a player at Penn State who has a, you know, high six Figure and il deal. How are you approaching that? And do you have an advantage, given the success of your program that allows you to not sort of break out of the sort of, you know, paying everyone the same and. And having, if you will, gradations between their benefits to Nils?
- [47:05]
B
Yeah, I mean, again, kind of a deeper conversation in some respects. So like, truthfully, it's a little bit of. At least with us, it's a misnomer that we are in control of nil money. Name, image and likeness is, you know, the players profiting off their own name, image and likeness. And really that all has to be done via an outside collective, which has to be an LLC. It can't have 501c3 non profit status. If someone were to. If we don't have an nil collective at Denver, we don't have an outside entity that pays our players, which we could have done it two, three years ago. We chose not to do it. And I can get into why on that as we go here. But ultimately, if we did have one, you play for our team, you come in, the nil collective is going to give you $5,000, you're going to sign a contract with them. But then you have to. Anything above $600 that you get from the collective or any sort of name, image and likeness deal, whether it's with a Toyota dealership or your equipment deal, you have to sign a contract. That contract has to be submitted to a third party, which is overseen by Deloitte with the ncaa. They're going to analyze that contract. They're going to say, yep, $5,000. He did, you know, an appearance and a couple posts. Good to go. We approve of it. That number is $50,000. And you only do, you know, one small little thing. They have the ability and the autonomy to strike down that deal and say it's not equal pay for the service given. Right. Not equal. Equal pay is the wrong word, but it's not. Yeah, it doesn't meet the standard. Right. The other challenging part, especially as relates to hockey, is internationally. If you were from Canada or from Finland, say you would have to get that money paid, that $5,000 would have to go into your home country's bank account. Can't be a US based bank account. So if you're from Helsinki, it has to go to a Finnish bank account. And the services that you do for the collective have to be done in your home country.
- [49:12]
A
Huh.
- [49:13]
B
So that gets really challenging. Right?
- [49:15]
A
Yeah.
- [49:16]
B
And so there's a lot of hoops to jump through and certainly Schools and collectives are doing it. And the flip side to the nil world is the revenue share option. And what that is is any school that opted in is they're allowed to revenue share up to $20.5 million with student athletes across their department, however they see fit. At a place like Penn state. Where's that $20.5 million gonna go, right? It's gonna go to football, it's gonna go to basketball, you know, and the advantage of rev share dollars is you can take money in from donors. You're a 501C3. We all are as institutions. You can take money as monies in from donors. That is for revenue sharing. You, I can pay you $5,000 in revenue share dollars, you can sign a contract on that or whatever, but there's no oversight to that. It's just, we're just sharing revenue with you. And there's none of the hoops that you have to deal with with the outside collective and you have the 501C3 status and the school is in control of it. So as a school like Denver, we don't have big time football, we are never going to revenue share $20.5 million. But if we can revenue share as a department $2 million or one and a half million dollars, you know, that, that starts to become a significant number. And so what we've done, we this past year and none of our championship teams have had a penny of revenue share dollars or outside collective money. Some of our guys, they have equipment deals where they get, you know, 2,500 bucks, 5,000 bucks. Yes, they do. But it wasn't a conversation with mom and dad saying, yeah, we're gonna get, we're gonna get Warrior to give you $5,000. We got all set up for you. You're just gonna have a meeting after our meeting with the Warrior guy, and then we're gonna give you this five grand. None of that has happened. So what, what's ultimately happening at a place like Denver is there's been the way the scholarships works. You have tuition, you have room and board, you have books, you have fees, and then you have what's called Alston money, which is academ bonuses to the tune of $6,000 a year if you get above a 3.0 throughout the year. And then cost of attendance, which is about $4,000. So that $10,000 for each player, that's been what you're referencing as the equal payment to everybody. What's going to change next year is that revenue or that cost of Attendance. And that also money is now going to. Those aren't going to exist anymore. They're just going to go into revenue sharing. And now we will have, you know, we have 25 players on our team. Say all 25 of them got the 10 grand. We'll have $250,000 pot. Two divvy up is revenue sharing however we see fit. Obviously our goal is to grow that number. When you're competing against likes, Penn State, Michigan State, you know, they're spending north of, I believe, seven figures on their rosters. And so that's really what we've been trying to build out the last couple of years is our rep share numbers and our support plan around it. Because we think that's a really sustainable way. It's a very clean way. It's a very upfront way to say to the families, there's no hoops to jump through, there's no bs. This can be a rep share number. This your room, board number. This your package, your room, you know, your tuition. This is what you're getting at Denver. I will tell you it going forward, it will not be split equally as our revenue share numbers grow the pot we will differentiate based upon on ice value, based on and. But I can tell you we're not going to be in a situation where, you know, someone is making egregiously more than somebody else. So we'll be very thoughtful and deliberate with how we do it, especially in year one, because you've seen money, you know, tear things apart in other sports, but certainly you're also seeing it in hockey a little bit as it relates to locker rooms.
- [53:14]
A
And you mentioned that it's a 501C3 coach. I'm assuming that the payout to the players is taxable income. Not to get too into the detail.
- [53:24]
B
That's a good question.
- [53:26]
A
I'm just thinking about everything else that they get is non taxable, the scholarship is non taxable, the whatever room board is non taxable to them. And now all of a sudden there's something there that I would assume is taxable. But I don't know the answer to that question.
- [53:37]
B
I don't know the answer to that either.
- [53:38]
A
Okay, interesting. A couple more before we end up. We got about five minutes here. I've just got a couple of final things. So you're at the coaches meeting. From my quick search, about 40% of the coaches in Florida with you right now went to the university that they coach at. Is there an advantage to you and Coach Donato having gone to DU and Gone to Harvard as it relates to kind of knowledge of the program and getting players to come, or is that just sort of not really in the. It might be at the margin, but it's really not a big, it's not a big advantage as far as having gone there and recruiting to the school.
- [54:19]
B
Yeah, I mean, I think it's like everything in life. It's what you make of it. And so certainly, you know, I'm going to lean into being an alumni of our school and our program and really try and make that an important factor, you know, within how we present ourselves and what we talk about, the families and. But that's, you know, it's really not to say that non alumni can't lead their programs to championships. Jim Montgomery is the main alumni championship at Denver. George was decky Carvey from St. Lawrence and did it. Yeah, exactly. So I think you, you lean into whatever you can to be able to have success. And so do I think, if you do it properly, like any of these rules, like again, our job is not to. We have to play by the rules given. And then our job is to allow the rules to enhance what we do, not necessarily change what we do. And so that's kind of been our approach with all of these changes and certainly the big one that is likely to be coming in the next month or so with H base eligibility.
- [55:22]
A
And if someone watched you coach, who's listening to this and hasn't watched DU hockey games or watched you in the national championship behind the bench, you're an extremely calm and mild manner coach, by my analysis of watching you coach, I've also seen lots of very active coaches, coaches who are kind of screaming throughout the game and telling players where to go. And there's clearly some difference between hockey and basketball where you see those coaches running up, down on the sidelines and they can actually speak to the players throughout the play. Whereas in hockey you can't be sitting there screaming onto the sheet of ice all the time. But is there something, coach, to your demeanor that is intentional rather than just your natural coaching style?
- [56:10]
B
People, you know, people make those com like yourself. I mean, you're, you're watching me and our team on the biggest stages at the end of the year. And what I would say is that, you know, and our players are probably telling them a lot more active and vocal in the first half of the year, you know, as we're learning, growing, teaching, you know, and to me, by the time you're at that moment, you, you've done your work and it's on the players to, you know, go out and execute. They know what to do. We've prepped, we've shown and had lots of meetings. That's where a lot of the communication certainly happens. And, you know, and in those moments, you're just trying to manage it, stay calm for them, because I think, you know, it's such a. Everything's heightened. And so I think there's times where you can do more harm than good, you know, with your emotions and in moments like that. And again, certainly there's. You got to pick your spots as to when that is. But I've. I think we've gotten a lot more out of kind of a calm confidence with our group than. Than kind of the. The robustness that maybe you see from. From other people. So, again, it's, it's. It's leaning into your own strengths, your own abilities and owning that, you know, because some guys are different and have success in their own way. And as my coach at Shadow, he's telling me there's a thousand ways to skin a cat, and you got to kind of figure out what works best for you.
- [57:45]
A
And was there ever. Has there ever been a speech between periods where you either wanted to, you know, I'm assuming there have been plenty of times where you want to go in and kind of like, you know, screaming out the. At the troops because they're just not playing that well, and you said, no, I'm not going to do that today. Or you, you know, kind of gave the inverse, if you will, of the speech that one would expect at the given time. Have you ever. Have you ever come in and sort of said, the way I did it last time was here, and this time I got to kind of do a different signal to the team to try and shift things up, or do you kind of just go back to the way that you say, this is the moment. This is the way I coached it last time I had a. I had to do it the same way this time.
- [58:30]
B
Yeah. Again, I think you're trying to read your team and what they need out of you. I would say our groups probably. I don't know if they're surprised, but I'm pretty pragmatic. And so we'll. We'll lose games. And, you know, I don't go in and lose my marbles. And certainly sometimes I do. You know, that that has happened on occasion, and I think it's good that they see that at times, but they don't need to see it all the time. I think it starts to lose its value or, you know, they tune things out like, oh, here he goes again. You know, it's like, great. And I just. I think it loses, you know, its impact. So, again, as. As we kind of coach and build throughout the year, it's all. It's all with the end in mind. You know, you don't start something without, you know, really, I. And I hear people say, you know, just one day at a time, this and that, and, like, don't think about the outcome. And. And I. I'm a bit of the opposite. I think you need to be obsessed with the result and the outcome, and it drives what you do on a daily basis. But we start every year stating what our goal is, and it's to be the team that's playing its best in March and April, so we have a chance to lift a really big trophy. And we don't really give a shit about any of the other trophies or any individual awards or anything that people vote on. We care about the one singular thing that nobody gets to vote on. And anyway, so that. That really drives our messaging through moments of adversity and trying to grow and learn. It's not about, you know, making it about me and losing my mind on something. It's. It's about what do we all need to collectively do together to look in the mirror as to how we can get more out of this and get more out of ourselves, which will get more out of the group.
- [60:26]
A
It's very clear that that message has been well received by all the teams that you have coached. I'm super appreciative you taking the time to talk to me about the way you coach and the success you've had with the DU team. Thank you for taking the time from Florida. I'll be back in Denver tomorrow. You'll be back later this week, but I look forward to seeing you back in our hometown and really, really appreciate you taking the time, Coach.
- [60:51]
B
Awesome. Thanks, Willie. Thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it. And safe travels home.
- [60:56]
A
Say hi to Carvey for me, if you would.
- [60:58]
B
I will, for sure.
- [60:59]
A
That's great,
- [61:07]
B
Sa.