Late Thursday morning multiple Twin Cities and national media sources began to report that they were hearing that the University of Minnesota men’s hockey team will be making a change a head coach. Bob Motzko is reportedly out after eight seasons behind the Gopher bench. No official announcement has come from the University as of yet, but when there is this much smoke, there is a six alarm fire. Motzko is out, and Mark Coyle will need to hire not one but two new hockey coaches in the same offseason
at one of if not the preeminent college hockey schools in the country.
After Tuesday’s announcement that Brad Frost would not return as the Gopher women’s hockey coach, many thought that would mean that Motzko’s job was safe. Apparently we were all wrong. Motzko will finish his Gopher coaching career after eight seasons with a 172-104-24. He brought the program back from the ugly state that the end of the Don Lucia era left it and led the program to back-to-back Frozen Four appearances in 2021-22 and 2022-23, won three Big Ten regular season titles, and took the Gophers to five consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances. Unfortunately in what appears to be his final season with Mnnesota, he brought the program right back down to where it was.
It was a rough season for the Gopher men’s hockey team in 2025-26. The Gophers.347 winning percentage was the 4th worst in program history. With a final weekend of conference championships to play the Gophers rank #39 in NPI out of 63 Division I programs. The Gophers lost their top five scorers from the 2024-25 season returning just 36 % of their scoring from a season ago. Motzko had said repeatedly on his radio show and elsewhere in the media that he was blindsided by the number of players leaving early for the pro ranks, but despite fan criticism Motzko did not look to the CHL like other similar programs to reload his roster trusting in what he had incoming. It did not work. The young players played like young players, and youthful defensive corps got abused, and one of their two goalies did not play up to expectations. It all steamrolled into a mass of fan discontent and it appears that Mark Coyle was paying attention.
According to Eric Vegoe at Gopher Puck Live, Motzko’s contract extension signed in October 2023 paid him $750,000 annually and was set to run through April 30, 2028. The termination fee for the contract is $750,000 between May 1, 2025 and April 30, 2027. Anything after April 30, 2027 would have paid his remaining base salary, which was $300,000.
The Gophers recruiting pipeline is stocked the next few seasons, and as North Dakota has shown this year a coach getting players from the CHL and portal immediately can completely change a roster. The Fighting Hawks went from missing the NCAA Tournament a year ago to having a chance at the #1 overall seed this spring. And if you think there aren’t plenty of people out there who see the Minnesota job as an attractive one—well you would be sorely mistaken.
It will be on Mark Coyle to sort though the large pool of interested parties and find the right one for the job. The names that have been discussed by mans that immediately move to the top of the list include Minnesota native and Maine Head Coach Ben Barr, former Motzko assistant at both St. Cloud State and Minnesota and now Augustana head coach Garret Raboin, and defending NCAA Champion head coach of Western Michigan and Minnesota native Pat Ferschwiler. Unlike the Gopher women’s job where all the obvious candidates all played for the Gophers and wore the M, that’s not true on the men’s side. There are no obvious successors this time around. This process is to be much more like the one that brought Don Lucia to Minnesota in 1998 rather than the one that brought Motzko here in 2018.
As said before, no official announcement has been made, but The Athletic’s Michael Russo reported that Motzko had called a team meeting for this afternoon to discuss his future with the Gopher team. As he also says, the timing of this is complicated by Mark Coyle being in St. Louis for work with the NCAA Basketball Selection Committee.
Jess Myers of the Pioneer Press is reporting his sources are saying an official announcement could come as early as Thursday afternoon.
It will be a spring of change on the ice rinks in Dinkytown, this much is known for sure. We will have more analysis and a larger hot board with potential candidates later this week
