Moving to a new school is always a challenge for a new head coach. Figuring out the nuances of a new team, new campus, and new community is as stressful enough as it is.
Now add a newborn baby to the mix.
That’s the situation Brett Riley finds himself in. The first-year head coach at Ferris State wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Since we moved out here, we had our first baby, so I have a four month old,” Riley said. “So the priority has just been the team and my family and the baby, but we do want to acclimate more to community life, and the Ferris community, but it’s been a total whirlwind since moving out here. But the school has been awesome. The athletic department as a whole has been incredible. And we’re excited about not just this year’s team, but building for the future, and recruiting aggressively, and building this thing to where Ferris hockey has been.”
Riley is in the middle of his first season in Big Rapids after spending five years at Long Island–a program he helped start in 2020. After going 62-85-7 during his tenure in New York–including the program’s first 20-win season in 2024-25–Riley was chosen as Ferris State’s first new coach in more than three decades in March. Riley, who will be 35 in January, takes over for Bob Daniels, who retired after 33 years behind the Bulldogs bench.
Riley said he wants to continue building on the tradition that Daniels spent his entire career cultivating, and knows it’s a process.
“Obviously, I don’t think the wins and losses are where we would like, but it’s been an awesome transition for me personally,” Riley said. “It’s a great community, great support, and something I’m really happy and proud to be a part of.”
The Bulldogs have started the season somewhat tentatively. Currently, they’re 3-11-0. But an early-season win over then-top ranked defending champion Western Michigan in Kalamazoo turned some heads in the college hockey world, and gave the Bulldogs a signature win.
“I think that game helped us realize that, when we play our best, there’s really not a team in the country that we can’t beat,” senior forward Riley Wallack said. “So that’s just kind of something that we got to figure out, trying to stay consistently at our best, because when we are, like I said, we could be one of the top teams. So I think that’s the positive to kind of take away from the start of this year and kind of gives us an excitement for future games.”
Wallack is one of five players on the Bulldogs’ roster who followed Riley from Long Island to Big Rapids. The British Columbia native said the coach has a knack for knowing how to motivate players in any situation.
“I think coach Riley really pushes us to be our best where, even on days where we’re not feeling so great or not wanting to push too hard, he tries to get the best out of us, which I really respect from him,” Wallack said. “And he’s treated us so well throughout the years, I know like me, and many of the guys who came over from LIU have had him for four years now, and he’s done nothing but good things for us, and we have nothing but good things to say about him. I think it was an easy decision to follow him here. And I’m sure all the other guys would say the same thing.”
Tyler Schleppe didn’t know much about the coach when the news broke that Riley would be taking over for Daniels in Big Rapids. Although a coaching change typically allows players to enter the transfer portal with no questions asked, Schleppe said he and his existing FSU teammates were a little tentative.
“Obviously, when you’re getting a new coach there are a lot of nerves, a lot of uncertainty, especially nowadays, with how big the portal is, I wasn’t really sure. So I kind of just bided my time, waited, talked to my friends that played for Long Island. They pretty much had nothing but good things to say about Brett,” Schleppe said. “And then when he came to visit Big Rapids, he met with all the players, and yeah, everything that he said was extremely appealing. So that kind of convinced me to stay and so far, he’s lived up to everything he said.”
This first year of Bulldogs hockey in the Brett Riley era looks a little unique in that of the 30 players on the roster, 13 are transfers. The rest are returners. Tht means zero true freshmen. That wasn’t intentional, Riley said, because of the timing of when he started the job, but it does give his team an uncommon maturity.
“It’s an avenue and path I’ve been familiar with, and we wanted to bring guys in and give them a new opportunity and a new experience,” Riley said. “And it’s going well. We just met with guys [before the Thanksgiving break], and guys are having really positive experiences. Guys are finding their game. I think some guys are frustrated a little bit that they’re snake bit and they’re not producing to the level they would have wanted, or maybe we would have hoped. But it’s not for lack of effort or care. It’s just the way the puck has been bouncing, which is a challenge.”
Of the transfers, five come from LIU, including Josh Zary, who leads the team in scoring with 10 points. Other players come from places as disparate as Colgate, Western Michigan, Maine, Alaska, Ohio State and AIC, among others. Just about every conference in college hockey is represented.
“I think the leadership group has done a phenomenal job of helping new Bulldogs and returning Bulldogs acclimate as one. And again, we’re focused on the process and our guys. We just want to keep getting better here. It sounds cliche, but it’s the truth, and our guys are not too deterred about the wins or losses,” he said.“ The morale of the room is really good. And there are guys I think it’s going to flip for. It’s a fun group to coach. Whether they come from Long Island, they’re returners here, they come from the NCHC, the Big 10. It’s a good group of kids to coach.”
One new “challenge” for Riley: The experience of being a member of an established conference. LIU is an independent and often had trouble scheduling home games. And sometimes, the grind of playing games for months with no real carrot at the end beyond a vague NCAA tournament shot can be difficult for players and coaches alike.
“We’re not bent out of shape about the way things are going. I think guys know it’s a long season, and one of the new challenges for me is that we have to find a way into the playoffs, and if we can, and play our best hockey then, that’s what really matters,” Riley said. “It’s not like when you’re at an independent, which I was the last few years, where you have to be perfect or your season’s over and in December.”
Riley and LIU saw this firsthand last season, when, despite winning 20 games for the first time in program history, the Sharks were unable to get their Pairwise above No. 25 by the end of the season. Being in a conference means a team has much better control over its own fate. Plus, playing for points is fun.
“It gives you a light at the end of the tunnel. Not that we didn’t at Long Island. We had good ways to motivate and hit benchmarks,” Riley said. “But here, I need to just keep reminding ourselves and our group, and they’ve done a good job of this, is that we just need to keep getting better every week, and be playing our best at the end of the season so we can make the playoffs and make a run, we will like the direction that this goes.”
“The conference play definitely does make a difference,” Wallack said. “Every conference game matters, and I think just having the conference and the playoffs at the end of this year really makes you put a little bit more into everything that you do, put a little bit more in on Monday, all the way throughout, to the games on the weekend, and really try to put your best foot forward.”
The Bulldogs are coming off a bye week over the holidays–the first weekend they’ve had off since the season started. Before that, they split with Lake Superior State, earning two hard-fought points after beating the Lakers in overtime 4-3 in the second game of the series. They have two series remaining before they get another break for Christmas–at Minnesota State and then at home against Michigan Tech. And their first game back after break is against Michigan State in the first round of the Great Lakes Invitational.
“Every game is tough, we talk about it as a group, and sometimes there’s too much pressure placed on winning and losing at times, and you forget about daily improvement,” Riley said. “But we just want to keep getting better and see the bigger picture. We want to find a way to earn a spot into the playoffs and playing good hockey and be confident about what we’re doing.”