Few if any of us see our career paths take the exact same routes that we thought they would when we were growing up.
Sometimes, those jobs aren’t even around yet.
Such would’ve been the case for Bryn Chyzyk. A former North Dakota assistant captain who later spent the 2019-20 season as a graduate assistant with the Fighting Hawks, Chyzyk is in his first season back in Grand Forks as UND’s general manager.
Yes, you read that correctly. No, the Fighting Hawks aren’t a pro team all of a sudden.
General managers make for a relatively new concept in college sports. Alabama’s perennial juggernaut of a football program, for example, appointed its first dedicated GM in January 2024, shortly after Crimson Tide coach Kalen DeBoer’s own arrival on campus.
It’s a similar situation in Grand Forks. In March of last year, former Fighting Hawks assistant Dane Jackson became the program’s 17th head coach. A month later, Jackson hired Chyzyk for a GM role that, from the beginning, had the latter’s name all over it.
“When we were building our staff here, before we even looked at individuals, we looked at roles that needed to be filled,” Jackson said. “I felt pretty strongly that, with the changing landscape of the Canadian Hockey League opening up (to the NCAA recruiting market) and all the knowledge you have to have about a vast array of players, we needed a person who was purely dialed in on player evaluation and procurement. That was the first thing, and once you look at that role, you ask, ‘Who is a guy who would be good with that skill set?’
“Bryn worked in our war room when he was getting his law degree, and I knew that what he wanted to do was not really to coach but to be a player evaluator, and he had a ton of experience and good knowledge of the player pool. You add all that in with how sharp of a person he is and how much we enjoy being around him, and that and his work ethic made it all fall into place.”
Chyzyk’s career trajectory made him the perfect pick to become college hockey’s first GM to have coaching and recruiting capabilities. In short, Chyzyk’s job description allows someone who served as GM for the United States Hockey League’s Waterloo Black Hawks from 2021 to last spring go from strength to strength.
His playing career after his time at UND didn’t pan out as he would’ve hoped. After spending four seasons with the Fighting Hawks, he signed an American Hockey League contract with the Rockford IceHogs, but made only two appearances. He instead spent most of the 2016-17 season with the ECHL’s Indy Fuel, then played three games in 2017-18 with his hometown junior team in Virden, Manitoba.
A business management major in his undergrad days at UND, Chyzyk came back to complete his law degree there before becoming Waterloo’s director of scouting for one year, then the Black Hawks’ GM for four.
“It comes out in my work a little bit from time to time, but not a ton,” Chyzyk said of the skills he learned in his post-grad coursework. “The first day of law school, everyone was going around saying how they want to use their law degree, and I said I wanted to work in hockey, and I think the whole room turned around and said, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ It was a long few years, but hopefully as I move forward in my career, that continues to hold weight.”
It certainly does for Jackson and the rest of his staff, whenever they talk recruiting.
“’Chyz’ likes to challenge and argue, so that’s the law student coming out,” Jackson said. “He likes to go back and forth and discuss things, and I like that, too.
“When you chew on things, that’s when you come up with the best answers. When we’re talking through players we’re taking or passing on and things like that, he’ll sometimes take the devil’s advocate side, and that’s good because you have to make your case when you’re stating something, and I find that those kinds of debates help you come to a good conclusion.”
No complaints so far. UND currently sits third in the National Collegiate Percentage Index, and stands to hold a No. 1 regional seed in the upcoming NCAA tournament.
Specifically for Chyzyk, this is his time of the year in which to shine. When asked on Tuesday what his average day at work looks like these days, he effectively said there isn’t one. He was just out on the road during UND’s bye week, and he’s often found out and about as part of the Fighting Hawks’ recruiting efforts. When he is at the team’s Ralph Engelstad Arena offices, though, Jackson said Chyzyk is often there by 5 a.m., already preparing to tout prospects.
“Bryn is an interesting guy,” Jackson said. “He has a really nice way of connecting with people that he meets. He comes across as very humble and down-to-earth, and he does a great job of building relationships. He also has a ton of substance to him. He has a self-depricating style but also a lot of smarts. He’s an extremely hard worker, and his car is in the parking lot a lot of hours here early in the morning.
“Days start very early here watching video, and if there is an average day for him, he likes his quiet time so he gets in his office and watches a lot of players early. He’s working the phones a lot and he’s out on the road a lot talking to people and watching games, so the fact there’s no average day for him is because he’s on the road so often. He’s not actually around here a ton.”
But when he is, Chyzyk enjoys the direction in which his working relationship with Jackson has evolved from when the former was a player at UND.
“Head coaches started hiring GMs in college football to manage their rosters, and that’s the same here,” Chyzyk said. “Coach Jackson is the head honcho at North Dakota, and he hired me to look after the roster and manage that completely with a very singular focus.
“I get this question all the time, and I don’t want there to be any gray in terms of the line of communication. If you look at college football, or college basketball for that matter, almost every big program has this structured like we do.
“Right now, I’m in the middle of recruiting season, which has been extremely time-consuming where I’m traveling a lot and trying to identify players for our immediate needs and down the road. It’s a little bit where we’re figuring it out as we go here, on what’s best for the program.”
If things keep going like they have been, Chyzyk still might make the big league after all. For now, he’s putting in the work to help UND navigate the road toward what would be the program’s ninth national title.
“We hope that we have him for a long time here, but I think a lot of guys are pushing and challenging to eventually go to the NHL, and I think that would be his next step, to be a guy who has a chance to go and work in the league as a player personnel guy, and I’m sure his dream is to go on and be a NHL GM someday,” Jackson said.
“As for the job here, he’s probably going to figure out the best way to do things, whether that’s watching more on video and less at the rinks, I’m not exactly sure, and I know the avenue of watching video to get information is important, but being at the rinks live to feel the nuanced parts of the game is important, so I think he’ll continue to grow.
“At the end of the day, the biggest thing when you’re in player evaluation is that the more you know a person and get to watch a player, the better your evaluations are going to be. Bryn has a great amount of knowledge on how much he puts into really getting to know players in and out, from how they play on the ice and also the substance of the person behind the player.”