Photo by Adam Glanzman/Northeastern University
As first reported on Twitter this morning by Mark Divver, Northeastern assistant coach Mike McLaughlin will not return to the program next season. McLaughlin, who celebrates his 34th birthday next month, will be taking a job outside of hockey.
Coach McLaughlin has an integral part of the NU community for over a decade, arriving in 2008 as a forward under Greg Cronin and contributing 11 points as a freshman to a team that was ranked as high as #2 in the nation. He went on to become a four year letterwinner and four-time Hockey East All-Academic honoree at Northeastern, and was named the team’s captain as a senior under first-year Head Coach Jim Madigan. As captain, McLaughlin began the shift in culture that remains the backbone of Northeastern hockey to this day, guiding players such as future captain Josh Manson who continued to pass the torch forward.
After his playing career was over, Mike McLaughlin played a large role in all of the success Northeastern has had over the past decade. McLaughlin was named the team’s Director of Hockey Operations in 2014 and led the team’s video analysis efforts. His efforts helped the Huskies reach new heights as a program, as Northeastern won the 2016 and 2019 Hockey East Championships and 2018 and 2019 Beanpots with McLaughlin on staff. His work also helped Adam Gaudette win the program’s first ever Hobey Baker Award in 2018. In summer 2019 Northeastern made the decision to make room for McLaughlin behind the bench, promoting him to assistant coach where he was responsible for the team’s outstanding defense and penalty kill over the last three seasons. Now behind the bench, McLaughlin helped Northeastern win their third straight Beanpot in 2020, the first three-peat in program history, as well as their first ever Hockey East Regular Season championship in 2022.
We wish Mike the best in all of his future roles and will surely miss having him as a part of the program. Hopefully he will remain a guiding force from the outside and we will continue to see him around Matthews on game days.
With McLaughlin stepping down, Divver reports that Jason Guerriero is the leading candidate to replace him. Guerriero is another former NU forward and, like head coach Jerry Keefe, will come back to NU after serving as assistant then associate head coach at Brown. Guerriero, a 2005 graduate, was a First Team All-American as a Husky, a former NU captain who can be found up and down the school’s historical record books, and has been rumored for NU coaching openings dating back nearly a decade. His 147 career points are 13th best all time, settling him in the same range as Huskies legends Dylan Sikura, Zach Aston-Reese, and Kevin Roy. He has strong experience both in college hockey coaching and with Northeastern, and if he is in fact the eventual hire, it’s looks the part of a hire that is poised to continue NU down their championship track.
Thank you again to Mike McLaughlin for your contributions to NU Hockey as a mainstay in the program the entire time we have known Northeastern as both students and alumni. And as always, Go Huskies!