For Second-Year Head Coaches, Key to Rebuilding College Hockey Programs is Patience, 'Getting Better Every Day'

Maura Crowell — Dartmouth women's hockey's second-year head coach — knows what goes into making a winning team. In her nine seasons leading the University of Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs, Crowell’s teams racked up five NCAA tournament appearances and two trips to the Frozen Four. 

After inheriting a program which had failed to finish the regular season in the top-three of the WCHA standings for four straight years, Crowell returned Duluth to the NCAA tournament in just her second season and left the program on the heels of four consecutive tournament bids.

“When I got [to Duluth] in 2015, they were in a bit of a bad spot,” Crowell said. “So I put in a lot of time, got them back to where they're supposed to be, and now that’s what I'm doing here [at Dartmouth].”   

In 2024, with an aging parent and a young daughter, the Mansfield, M.A., native decided it was time to head back East. At the same time, Dartmouth was looking for a new head coach.  That May, the Big Green's head coach had resigned after posting a 23-61-4 over three years in Hanover, N.H. The search for a replacement took a week. 

“I'm a good builder of programs,” Crowell said. “I think our athletic director [Mike Harrity] is pretty unique and pretty special…. he wants to win, he cares about hockey and wants to get the right person here, and so we really connected well.”

In a place she was excited to be (Crowell described Hanover, N.H. as “like a Hallmark card”), and with a program that was excited to have her, the former USCHO Coach of the Year got to work using what she had learned rebuilding Duluth.

“Number one, it takes time. It's not something that you can just push a button and do, no matter what your coaching credentials are,” Crowell said. “And even more time at a place like Dartmouth, [an] Ivy League school where I can't just grab a bunch of kids from the transfer portal or late in the game, because the academic standards are what they are.”

In fact, Crowell's first class of recruits won't arrive on campus until next fall. 

And like improving a roster, building a new culture isn't easy.

“Everything to me is [about] getting better every day in some way, shape or form, and that's what we talk about at practice. Because the way we practice is the way we want to play,” Crowell said. “So trying to get a group to buy into that mentality? That takes time.”   

Union women's hockey head coach Tony Maci, also in the midst of his second year at the helm, echoed Crowell's emphasis on the necessity of deliberateness. 

“You always want to get to things quicker, but you also have to be understanding of where you're at, and then be able to reground yourself every week and say, ‘Okay, we did well this week, or maybe we didn't do well,’ Maci said. “We've just got to stick with it and keep trying to push the needle forward every week.”

When Maci accepted the job with the Garnet Chargers — an easy decision thanks to Schenectady's proximity to his wife's work and a relationship with the men's hockey coach Josh Hauge forged during a shared stint at Clarkson — he joined a program with little historical success. Since its first season in 1999, Union has never ended a season with a winning record and has managed to finish above .500 in conference play just once (2002-2003). In the season before Maci took over, the Garnet Charges went 8-25-2 overall and 3-17-2 in ECAC Hockey play. 

The first-time head coach learned a lot in his first season, but one word stood out.

“One of the big things was patience for sure,” Maci said. “Really just settling in and sticking to what our game plan is and our process of what we're trying to do here as coaches.”

In Union's 11th game under Maci the Garnet Chargers pulled off a historic upset, snapping a 38 game winless streak against Cornell, a team which would eventually play in the Frozen Four. The win gave the team “a belief that they could compete against anybody” according to Maci, a conviction which pushed the 2024-2025 squad to a program-record 13 wins.  

Maci's success, he says, is due in large part to the quality of players he inherited. Not only did the 27 student-athletes rostered break the program wins record, they also broke the program record for ECAC All-Academic honorees. 

“They were a good group, and they bought into what we were trying to do and change,” Maci said. “They're going to be a big part of why, we believe, [Union] is headed in a different direction.”

Likewise, Crowell has nothing but positive things to say about the roster she inherited.

“I think I've been really fortunate with the group, both last year and this year, they've been so eager to learn, so coachable,” Crowell said. “They want to win. They want to put this program on the map. They want to do things that they haven't been able to do in their careers here.”

But while Union captured one of its best seasons last year, Dartmouth went 5-21-3 and finished second to last in ECAC Hockey. The Big Green started the season with 14 losses, picking up its first win on Dec. 30. Despite the tough start, Crowell remained mostly unbothered by the on-ice results.

“I always say ‘I was the happiest winless coach,’ probably in the country, for the stretch that we hadn't won any games because of the daily work and the progress that we were making, and the way we were playing the game,” she said.

Eventually, Dartmouth found its footing. At the start of 2025, The Big Green captured a seven game undefeated streak, including a tie against Cornell. 

“We want to be the toughest team to play against, night in and night out,” Crowell said. “It took some time, but the standards and the culture was established, and then we started reaping the benefits of that.”

Still, in the ultra-competitive ECAC, going from a rebuilding team to a conference contender is a long journey. After finishing the 2024-2025 season ninth with 24 points, the Garnet Chargers currently sit in last place with only two wins and 8.5 points. Dartmouth has fared slightly better — with 13.5 points, the Green are on track to finish 10th.

“Year two, I think this is very much a year where we can beat teams like Colgate, and Clarkson in their own barn where it's so hard to win,” Crowell said. “No one is sleeping on Dartmouth anymore.”

The good news for both Maci and Crowell is all 12 ECAC teams make the conference tournament. Last season, Union knocked-off Brown in the first round of the playoffs and came 1:09 away from a quarterfinals win over Cornell.

In a conference whose 2025-2026 season has been defined by upsets and greater parity, Dartmouth and Union will be taken seriously in the postseason. And now — with over a season-and-a-half behind them at their new schools — Crowell’s focus on steady improvement and Maci’s call for patience have a chance to start paying off.