With only three seniors and eight upperclassmen, the amount of first-hand knowledge of Miami’s recent history in the RedHawks’ dressing room isn’t terribly extensive.
But it doesn’t have to be. Not for a team that’s laser-focused on where it is and where it’s going.
Not for a Miami team that, entering the final two weeks of the regular season, sits 17-11-2 and only three points adrift from a home-ice spot in the first round of the NCHC playoffs. That often doesn’t scream “coach of the year material,” but considering Miami finished 3-28-3 last season and won a combined 15 games from the 2022-25 seasons, it certainly should.
Anthony Noreen made his name in the United States Hockey League with Youngstown and Tri-City before arriving in Oxford, Ohio, ahead of Miami’s 2024-25 season. He’d made a habit of turning around USHL teams that had previously struggled, and lo and behold, the second-year RedHawks coach doing the same thing again.
So what’s different about this Miami team as opposed to his group from a year ago? A lot, yet at the same time, not too much. Despite 21 newcomers on the RedHawks’ roster this season, in terms of the culture Noreen and his staff work to foster, it’s business as usual.
“Everything we did in building this was around high-character guys, and getting the right people into the right seats,” Noreen said. “It’s been awesome to see this group come together, but it’s also been awesome just to get to know them as people, as well. From Day 1, the goal was to figure out who could be part of the solution going forward, and to figure out who the right guys were to get seats in the locker room. That was about evaluating the current guys we had, making some really hard decisions and using all the resources we had.
“We have 21 new guys, and so we had to get creative. We had to get different guys, whether it’s freshmen, transfers and Canadian junior guys with the CHL becoming available, but we also weren’t going to cut any corners on character and compete level.
“When I think of a high-character person, it’s someone who has something about them that makes the other guys better,” he continued. “That’s not a cookie-cutter thing. It could be the way you work, the way you communicate, your attention to detail, the way you take care of your body. We wanted guys who were great teammates, and that takes all different shapes and sizes, but there are also a lot of non-negotiables that go along with that — guys being selfless, putting the team first, representing the team and the organization the right way off the ice. Those things are extremely important to us.”
And for as much as this is an underclassman-led team — seven of Miami’s nine top point-producers are sophomores or freshmen — there’s also a lot to be said for the current RedHawks who have been around the longest. A prime example is senior forward Blake Mesenburg. The Orono, Minn., native was an assistant captain last season, and has remained a core member of this year’s group despite only making 18 appearances so far.
“That was all performance-based,” Mesenburg said. “At the time, I wasn’t seen as a guy among the top 12 forwards, but the way (Miami’s coaches) approached it was awesome. They knew how hard it was for me being a senior and being one of the only guys who had been through the (stuff) kind of over the last four years, and they encouraged me that they weren’t giving up on me, and that this wasn’t for good for the rest of the season, and showing that they appreciate you for how you’ve handled yourself through this all, and encouraging words like that on a weekly basis, got me through it.
“It was a tough experience for me for a little while, but it makes this whole stretch where things are going well and being able to be a part of the lineup down the stretch pretty special to me. Obviously those times (when he wasn’t in Miami’s lineup) sucked, but it makes it a lot easier when you get to watch the team perform well and start to gain that respect and confidence. Not being in the lineup definitely made this part a little more rewarding. “
Noreen said earlier this week that there’s a reason he and his staff held on to the veterans they’ve retained, including Mesenburg.
“It’s their character, their compete level and the pride they have in this place,” Noreen said. “We wanted them to be a part of this going forward. They did everything we’d asked, and they’ve done an unbelievable job of welcoming the new guys and getting them accustomed to everything Miami, and it’s been cool to see a guy like Blake Mesenburg who has been here for years and has seen this thing come full-circle. It’s pretty special, and he’s been an important part of this chapter of Miami hockey.
“It’s been unbelievably impressive how much he has grabbed onto and taken pride in what we’ve tried to implement. There’s no doubt that he loves this university, and he’s extremely active on-campus and is part of our athletic council. He’s going to have so much success in life no matter what he does, but for him to welcome us and grab onto it has been huge, even though it hasn’t always been easy for him, especially for this year, but he has never veered. He has stayed on-board, worked through it and he’s been as big of a help with our newcomers as anybody here.
“How he handled being out of the lineup says everything you need to know about who he is as a person. He could not have handled it better, and years from now, we’ll look back and maybe someone isn’t necessarily in the position they want to be in, but we’ll reference back to Blake with the way he handled his senior season, with some of the ups and downs that came with that, and what do you know, we’re down the stretch playing the most important games of the year, and Blake’s playing a huge role for us.”
Now is an enviable time to be a student at Miami. The RedHawks’ men’s basketball team is 26-0, the Miami women are 11-1 in Mid-American Conference play and the football team reached last year’s MAC championship game. Add to all that Miami hockey’s resurgence, sending out echoes of an era when the RedHawks made 10 NCAA tournament appearances under Blasi from 2004 to 2015, plus Frozen Four berths in 2009 and 2010, and the vibes are only going to be immaculate.
“Miami’s an incredible school, and Oxford is an awesome, true college town,” Mesenburg said. “As well as being a hockey player for this university, it’s pretty special. It’s like being on a good SEC or Big Ten football team, the kind of support our community gives us. It’s the same with our other sports, and we support each other. This Friday, they moved our game up a little bit to 5:30, and men’s basketball plays at 8:30 so that students can go to both games and we’re not butting heads with each other.
“It’s amazing what (men’s basketball is) also able to do right now, and keep their record going. The stadium where they play has been pretty packed, and that’s pretty cool to see. Miami athletics in general is like that right now. Women’s basketball is rolling, and football had a great year. It’s all pretty cool.”
Very, if, like Noreen, you grew up thinking Miami was a hockey school. Two coaches later from when Blasi left in 2019, the RedHawks are very much moving the needle again.
“I’m sitting in my office right now looking at the run of NCAA tournaments and all the unbelievable things that Rico was able to do when he was here,” he said. “That’s as good a run as anybody has had in college hockey. It’s unbelievably impressive, and that’s part of what attracted me when this job came open.
“This place has been there before, done it before and I don’t think it’s any one person’s fault (for what happened since then), but you like to believe you can get it there again, and then you see our campus and our arena, you meet the people around here and you spend some time here and you see that, if it was my son or my daughter, absolutely I can get behind them going here, but it’s the people that make the place. It’s the administration, it’s the coaches, the student body, the supporters, and there are plenty of schools across the country where it’s a hockey school but also a basketball school, a football school, a field hockey school. That’s the goal of our athletic department — to make this a student-athlete school.”
Buy-in from student-athletes is huge in that regard, and what all has happened lately has made being a Miami hockey player even more rewarding. On Tuesday, Mesenburg was asked how he wants to be remembered in Oxford. It took him some time to answer a question he said he hadn’t been asked before.
“A guy that was part of the turnaround,” he said. “A guy that was a leader during the turnaround. We’ve talked as a team this year about setting the foundation for what this program is going to turn into in the next five, 10 years.”