Arizona State hired Dave Hakstol to take over its men’s hockey program Thursday, replacing Greg Powers as the school keeps sorting through the fallout from Matthew Mayich’s collapse during an Aug. 20 workout. The move gives the Sun Devils a new coach while the investigation into what happened that morning remains open.
Hakstol arrives from the Colorado Avalanche after Arizona State had already moved Powers out of the job, a change that followed his administrative leave and eventual departure from the program. For the school, the hire is not just a reset on the bench. It is the most visible sign that the hockey program is trying to move forward even as the central questions around Mayich’s condition are still unresolved.
That urgency is tied to Mayich himself. Rob Carey said the player has been in the hospital since the workout and is unlikely to recover, saying he suffered exertional heat stroke that cut off oxygen flow to his brain. The collapse has become the defining event of Arizona State’s season before the season has really started, because the school is still trying to explain what happened to a 21-year-old athlete during an early morning outdoor session.
The scrutiny has also turned inward. Arizona State’s internal review found that the coaching staff did not submit a training plan for the workout to be reviewed beforehand, and that the Green Beret who led it did not have a contract with the school. Seven players later sent an anonymous letter on Sept. 28 calling for the coaches to be removed pending an independent investigation, a sign that concern inside the locker room had already deepened into alarm.
That leaves Hakstol inheriting a program under overlapping reviews. A former state supreme court justice is leading the school-commissioned review, and the Arizona State Police Department is investigating as well. Arizona State also told that Alex Hicks and Mike Corbett are on administrative leave and no longer with the team, while Amanda Doyle was reassigned to a different team last week. Jimmy Mullin, who joined the staff in May, will stay on, and Hakstol has hired Matt Greene as an assistant.
Hakstol’s résumé is substantial. He spent 11 seasons as head coach at the University of North Dakota and later led the Philadelphia Flyers and Seattle Kraken to the NHL playoffs. He will join the Sun Devils for games Friday and Saturday at UMass Lowell, but the bigger test is already set: whether the program can steady itself before the investigations deliver a final accounting of how this happened.
