Dave Hakstol on taking over ASU hockey program

Well, it's a new era for Arizona State Hockey under the program's new leader, former NHL head coach Dave Haxtell. And he was hired months after player Matthew Mayich collapsed during a team workout in August. Robbie Baker sat down with Haxtell in an exclusive interview. Robbie, what did he have to say? Yeah, it's been a whirlwind for Coach Haxtell, right? He joked with me this afternoon, all he's really seen of the Valley so far has been his hotel room, the arena, and the restaurants around Mullett Arena thus far. Coach Haxtell was most recently an assistant coach with the Colorado Avalanche. In about a 48-hour span last week, he went from behind the bench of an NHL game, flew to Boston, met his new Sun Devils squad, and then coached them to a two-game sweep over UMass Lowell. It's obviously a highly unusual timeline to make such a big coaching move after the puck drops on the regular season, but Coach Haxtell has been a trailblazer before. He was the first-ever coach of the Kraken a few years back when the NHL expanded to Seattle. This was a little bit different because, you know, I came in and I think within 12 hours, you know, we were on the bench coaching, you know, coaching a game. So it was almost hard to know players' names, faces, etc. But yet, you know, still similar concepts. You know, there's a lot of new guys in the dressing room this year that weren't here last year. I'm obviously brand new along with Greener, you know, over the past few days. So, you know, you know, I can draw back on some of those experiences in terms of building foundations, building relationships. Now, the Sun Devils have a bye this week. So this has been really the first stretch of practices for Coach Haxtell to not only get the guys to understand his desired style of play, but also a good chance for him to just learn his team and some of the players names. Right. We'll have more of my interview with Coach Haxtell coming up at five o'clock.