{"id":149165,"date":"2024-10-17T06:00:43","date_gmt":"2024-10-17T11:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/?p=149165"},"modified":"2024-10-17T08:06:21","modified_gmt":"2024-10-17T13:06:21","slug":"this-week-in-the-ccha-first-year-coach-williams-sees-moving-from-major-junior-back-to-college-as-a-challenge-he-thought-he-needed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/2024\/10\/17\/this-week-in-the-ccha-first-year-coach-williams-sees-moving-from-major-junior-back-to-college-as-a-challenge-he-thought-he-needed\/","title":{"rendered":"This Week in the CCHA: First-year coach Williams sees moving from Major Junior back to college as a ‘challenge’ he thought he needed"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
First-year head coach Dennis Williams won his first two NCAA games behind the bench for Bowling Green and looks forward to navigating the ever-changing world of college hockey (Photo: Bowling Green athletics)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For Dennis Williams, coming \u201chome\u201d to Bowling Green after nearly 15 years was easy. It\u2019s the rest of it that\u2019s going to be more difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know if I would have left to come back to college hockey if it wasn’t Bowling Green,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

The 45-year-old has deep roots at Bowling Green, a place where he both played and coached for a long time. He left in 2010 for a different experience in junior hockey \u2013 first in the NAHL, then the USHL before landing in the Major Junior WHL. He became head coach of the Everett Silvertips in 2017, winning 204 games behind the bench and earning the opportunity to coach the Canadian World Juniors team to a gold medal in 2024.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a very common pathway for Major Junior coaches to return immediately to college hockey. But for Williams, named the ninth head coach at Bowling Green in February, returning was special.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was happy where I was at. I was very thankful, because it’s a great league, it’s a great team, it’s a great organization, but having the opportunity to come back to a place where I played, I was a grad student, I was a grad assistant coach, assistant coach and interim head coach, where my oldest daughter was born\u2026. it was just something that was a change and a challenge that, personally, I think I needed,\u201d he said. \u201cI was very fortunate and thankful that my wife, Hollie, and my girls, Emerson and Elise, were on board with it, because these type of decisions can’t be just made solely for, you know, myself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving is challenging \u2013 especially with two teenagers in school\u2013but there\u2019s more work to be done on the ice. Williams is returning to a college hockey landscape that is vastly different than the one he left in 2010, when he was BG\u2019s interim head coach for one season following the sudden departure of Scott Paluch.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven’t been in college for 15 years. The landscape has changed drastically. Everything’s changed,\u201d Williams said, saying he is leaning a lot on his coaching staff \u2013 Curtis Carr, Stavros Paskaris, Dylan Schoen and Buddy Powers \u2013 to help him get up to speed. \u201cI need them more than they need me probably. I\u2019m lucky to keep those guys around with me. They’ve been very instrumental in the transition and the transition of recruiting and helping with transfers and keeping everybody at bay, as well as instrumental in helping me adjust to the college game, and understanding what are the cans and cannots we can do, I can continue to focus on my coaching and trying to develop our players.\u201d<\/p>\n

One big change Williams mentioned is the transfer portal, but oddly, it\u2019s not one Williams had to deal with much this season. Often when there\u2019s a coaching change this is a big exodus of outward player movement. But that didn\u2019t happen for the Falcons this year. Nearly every player with eligibility returned to Bowling Green this fall, giving BG one of the more experienced teams in the CCHA.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a credit to these guys,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThey\u2019re a tight-knit group. They want to stay together, they want to play with each other and for each other, and having everybody back and three transfers and three freshmen is just elevating the competition and guys are really enjoying battling for spots.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Falcons have two players (Ethan Scardina and Seth Fyten) who came back to school for a fifth year, as well as five players who are entering their fourth year at BG (including team scoring leader Ryan O\u2019Hara, Ben Wozney, Christian Stoever, Pete Eigner and Salvatore Evola). They also return all-CCHA rookie goaltender Cole Moore to the fold.<\/p>\n

Williams has now gotten the chance to see this group play four times \u2013 twice against Mercyhurst to start the year then in exhibitions against Robert Morris and Simon Fraser last weekend. In the games that counted, the Falcons swept Mercyhurst on the road, winning 2-1 in overtime and 5-4 the next night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was our first crack at watching the guys where games meant something, and those were important nonconference games to win,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThat first game, we held onto a lead in the third, six-on-five, six-on-four for a bit, it was a real gutsy effort for our group. Then the next night, we\u2019re down 3-1, we\u2019re playing pretty good hockey, but nothing to show for it, and then we\u2019re able to score three goals, take it to overtime and score in overtime.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those games showed Williams a lot about his team, but he said he learned just as much from their exhibition games. BG beat RMU 7-2 and Simon Fraser 4-1.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like the term exhibition, because everyone thinks it all means nothing. But every time you play it means something,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the end of the day, I’d much rather play these games and learn from it, than be sitting here at 1-3 and 0-4. We’re realistic enough to know that we have to play much better. Even though we’ve been able to win those four games, there’s more in the tank and our execution has to be better, our consistency has to be better. And in college hockey, we need discipline, especially playing against a team like Western Michigan, you can’t give them freebies.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Western Michigan game \u2013 a single game in Kalamazoo on Thursday before BG travels to RIT on Saturday \u2013 will be a big test for the Falcons. But Williams said even though he has done some scouting on WMU, he\u2019s still more focused on making sure his team is playing their own style than anything else.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, right now, still being early in the year, I’d like to see us get a little bit better at how we want to play and play to our identity, and then maybe throughout the game, if we have to make some adjustments, we will talk … as a staff to make sure that we know exactly how Western plays,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd then we just give our players X amount of information so that they’re not overthinking but allowing them to be able to play our game still. It’s gonna be a good test.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First-year head coach Dennis Williams won his first two NCAA games behind the bench for Bowling Green and looks forward to navigating the ever-changing world of college hockey (Photo: Bowling Green athletics)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":149166,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[812],"coauthors":[854],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThis Week in the CCHA: First-year coach Williams sees moving from Major Junior back to college as a 'challenge' he thought he needed - College Hockey | USCHO.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"First-year head coach Dennis Williams won his first two NCAA games behind the bench for Bowling Green and looks forward to navigating the ever-changing world of college hockey (Photo: Bowling Green athletics)\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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