“Be the Best at the Process Nobody Knows”: In Conversation with Brandon Naurato

The interim-no-more coach reflects on his first year as a head coach, the season-ending defeat to Quinnipiac, the paramount importance of culture, and a hockey utopia in the making

Brandon Naurato sits at his desk on the second floor of Yost Ice Arena.  It is a sunny Thursday afternoon in Ann Arbor, not quite a month since his team’s season ended in a National Semifinal loss to Quinnipiac.

“I wouldn't change how we prepped, the messaging to the players, the video we showed, what we did in our practice or drill design,” Naurato says of his team’s defeat in Tampa. “My whole thought process was to allow [the players] to be themselves, not over-coach because we're at a different time of the year, but to stick with the standard routine and obviously prepare for them like we do for every other team but make it more about us. Looking back we had chances, and we gave up chances. I feel like it could have went either way. It was a lot like what we had seen a lot of Friday nights and we pulled it out or we didn't.”

To fans disappointed that the Wolverines couldn’t capture a tenth national title, this talk of process might be frustrating, but to Naurato, it is the logical way to debrief a single elimination game in which the stakes are much greater than the margin between the two combatants.

The head coach flashes back to the late stages of the second period: “It's 2-2, and we’re on the power play and Rutger [McGroarty] gets a backdoor shot, and Perets makes that kick save on the goal line.  Well, now it [could be] 3-2 going into the third against a team that wants to shut it down, and they gotta get the next goal.  Could they?  Sure.  Could we shut them down and score more?  Maybe.  You don’t know where it’s gonna go, but it’s those moments that really dictate the game or the momentum shifts.”

It’s just as easy for him to picture a scenario in which the Big Ten championship game swung in the opposite direction on similar moments and momentum shifts: “We’re down 3-2 in Minnesota…and then the next shift, they have an empty netter and he throws it over the net.  Well if it’s 4-2, is it over?  It’s not over, but it’s a different game.”

Even if the result stings, Naurato doesn’t see a reason to overhaul what put Michigan in a position to go toe-to-toe with the eventual national champions.  He cites Jacob Quillan’s second goal of the first period—a breakaway that put the Bobcats ahead 2-1—as an example of why he sees no need for radical reinvention, saying “three guys are this far away from killing the play and it just worked out. Would I change anything? I'm not gonna change anything because we scored or didn’t; I’m just gonna make them better on those reads.”

After the game, Naurato spoke to the media about his belief that, despite falling to Quinnipiac, the Wolverines had “won the season.”  Some four weeks later, he admits there was something “facetious” in that sentiment but doubles down on the idea that there are more important things for the future of the program than its outcome in Tampa.

“Say we had a group of kids that hate each other, but they’re just studs and we won the national championship,” offers Naurato. “Does it really matter?  Or everything that we went through with Holtzy and Ian Hume and a million other things, is that more powerful?  For the future of our program, I believe it is because now Nolan Noyle and those seniors have taught the juniors, the sophomores, the freshmen how they should be here.  And they’ll keep passing that torch, and I think that matters versus just doing anything to win at all costs.”

He alludes to a recent viral clip of Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo pushing back against the notion that a first round loss to the Miami Heat was a failure, calling it “awesome.”  “Gretzky didn’t win a Cup in LA, but look at the impact he had on Southern California and West Coast hockey in general.  For the growth of the game, those are wins.  Our culture is a win.  The group of kids that we have here, the buzz that we have here, those are wins.”

In the end, when Naurato looks back at the conclusion to his first season at the helm of Michigan hockey not with stinging disappointment but with admiration for the way the Bobcats made coach Rand Pecknold’s vision manifest.  “What Rand’s done a good job at is they play this structure, their identity. Like I love the o-zone, he loves the 1-1-3 neutral zone, and they're great at it, and they're predictable and they know exactly what's happening whether you dump it or carry it or whatever,” Naurato contends. “They executed on their game plan. We were okay on ours.” 

The temptation in reflecting on a championship is to seek lessons from the victor by copying their model for success.  In Quinnipiac’s case, that would mean building a team around turnovers and counterattacks, executed by veteran players with years of experience in the system.  To Naurato, the particulars of the Bobcats’ recipe are less significant than the fact that they had a plan to which they committed.

When asked what he takes away from that loss to Quinnipiac, Naurato answers “Just be the best at the process that nobody knows.  What do [people outside the program] see?  They see the style of play and do they win or not.  They’ve got players; they win or don’t?  There’s a million ways to do it.  Quinnipiac does it with older guys, so do other teams…It’s not young, old, whatever.  You just got to make it yours and be all in.”

“If I focus way more on defense, we'd score a goal less a game, and we’d give up a goal less a game, and we’re in the same spot,” he continues. “So I'm gonna develop hockey players and let them do what they want, which is score. I'm gonna teach them better reads on how to check, but it's development; I'm not changing structure to play better defense.”

As to the challenges of his first season as a head coach, Naurato explained “it's all new, and there's gonna be some things that work and don't work but you're just constantly trying to self-reflect and evaluate to make good choices moving forward.”  Within that context, adaptation became an immediate priority.  Between October and January, Michigan reconfigured each of its systems away from the puck (d-zone faceoffs, d-zone coverage, neutral zone forecheck, and o-zone forecheck).

As Naurato explains it, those changes weren’t about incompetence on behalf of his young team but rather a process of discovery—seeking out the right means of taking advantage of the talent at his disposal. “It’s not that they can’t do it, so I have to change it, but it’s this guy’s really good at this,” he observes.  “Say somebody’s really good at being F1 on the forecheck.  Well if we have a passive system, I’ve taken a great skill away from him.  Say he’s good at hunting, and I’ve got him skating backwards and we’re in a trap.  Well, he’s not great at that, so I put him in a bad spot.”

To Naurato, Michigan’s status as a college hockey blue blood isn’t an assurance of perpetual success.  Instead, maintaining the program’s elite status requires constant evolution.  “Red built the foundation, but with the times changing,” he says before trailing off.  “Blockbuster was an unreal business.  How’s Blockbuster doing?  They didn’t adjust…I think people get comfortable.  You have to adapt.  You have to change.  The portal, the COVID fifth year, NIL, I’m in rooms with Michigan coaches or college hockey coaches, and they’re distraught about this, but for me, this is the only norm I know.”

From an administrative standpoint, the first year at the helm of the program meant learning on the fly.  Heading into year two, Naurato feels more comfortable navigating some of the off-ice responsibilities that hadn’t come up as an assistant or development coach.  

“I didn't know what the admissions grid is, even as an assistant,” he explains, offering an example. “And now I get emails from academic people like ‘Hey, you gotta plug so and so into the admissions grid.’ Well now I just say, ‘Don't email that to me.  Email it to [Rob Rassey],’ and I've got access to the admissions grid if I want to check it.  But I had to find out what the admissions grid is, I had to find out how the admissions grid works. If we get a recruit that's an incoming freshman or a grad transfer, what's the onboarding process—enroll in school, pick a degree, pick your number, what skate specs, what stick specs do you want, what's your mom's name, what's her email?  So that when anyone has questions, we've streamlined everything, where now the equipment manager, [academic advisor] Ashley Korn, myself, the other coaches can access one database as an example, to get all that information.”

The idea is not efficiency for its own sake nor that a standardized system for onboarding a new player is of paramount importance.  Instead, this kind of behind-the-scenes organization allows for the work that does matter.  “It’s just all time,” argues Naurato. “ What’s every parent fighting for? You’re fighting for time to spend with your kids.  But you also have to pay bills.”  

Players only spend a few hours a day at the team facility, and Naurato wants to maximize that time.  He lauds the way the app his staff has developed has slashed the time it takes to cut up video clips.  The purpose isn’t to watch even more video but rather to have time to grab breakfast with a few players one morning and to meet with a few others before or after practice that afternoon.  The idea that players would only interact with their coach on the ice at practice is anathema.

In looking forward to life as a full-time, interim-no-more head coach, Brandon Naurato appears less concerned with the direct pursuit of Michigan’s tenth national championship and more with creating a hockey utopia.  

As he lays all this out from his desk at Yost, something begins to crystallize.  Chasing an elusive championship, emphasizing culture over that title, renewed commitment to both player development and a particular style of play—these objectives and concerns become inseparable from one another within Naurato’s vision.

Pursuing a national championship and prioritizing culture over winning might seem contradictory objectives, but to Naurato the two are intertwined.  Moyle and his fellow seniors “passing the torch” to the classes below them matters more than the outcome of an April trip to Tampa for two reasons.  A sound culture perpetuates an environment conducive to winning in the long term, and more importantly, success neither matters nor lasts if it doesn’t come from a group of individuals to be proud of.  

When champions are crowned by virtue of a single elimination tournament, there will always be an element of chance in determining them, but a great culture proves among the best ways to give yourself an annual chance at claiming the top step on the podium from one year to the next.  At the risk of sounding cynical, there is a practical competitive advantage to prioritizing culture.

Creating an environment in which players, coaches, and staffers alike are happy to work and spend time with one another will allow all involved to operate at their fullest capacity and incentivize them to stick around, even as their options increase.

Naurato points out that current and former players become ambassadors for the program in their conversations with prospective recruits, saying “they’ve played with and against all the kids all over the world growing up, and they’re telling them we’re having a blast and we’re getting better.  What else do you want as a college athlete?  Having the time of my life on and off the ice, and I’m getting better as a human being and as a hockey player.  It’s great.”

In a world where the portal makes it easier for players to find a new home if their initial college choice doesn’t work out as they foresaw, Naurato wants his players to look forward to spending four years at his program: “I’d like to have the NHL guys that move on but also the guys that stay for four years because Michigan’s got the best alumni network—and I’m biased—in the world.  Why would we break that?  Just to win hockey games.  We’re not a minor pro team; we’re a college team.  So I think that stuff matters.”  

Those NHL prospects will want to spend more time in Ann Arbor if they are enjoying themselves and believe they are developing toward their professional ambitions.  “Copp, Compher, Tyler Motte, they played three years, and they never played an American League game,” Naurato points out.  “Rob Rassey can talk about Kerfoot and Vesey and Fox.  They played three, four years, and they never played an American League game.  What’s the rush?  What’s the rush now you’re one year away from a degree, and I guarantee you finish it versus two, and now it’s probably four summers or springs instead of grinding it out in one or two.”

However, more significant than the idea that culture can put a team in the right position to succeed is the simple fact that team success doesn’t matter if it doesn’t come from an admirable culture.  Naurato juxtaposed Moyle and company’s “torch passing” with a “win at all costs” mindset; unfortunately, you don’t have to look hard around the hockey world to find examples of the latter mindset and its human cost—lives and careers upended by behavior that turns championship seasons into sources of shame.

To Naurato, there has to be more than just on-ice results to the equation for anything the group achieves together to matter.  “I don’t want for our guys’ identity to be a hockey player,” he says.  “That can be their job.  Because when times are tough, you can’t just be thinking about hockey.  You play the guitar on the side, you do financial investment on the side, what keeps your mind going?”

Then, just as pursuing national championships and developing a special culture represent one objective masquerading as two, so too are Naurato’s commitments to development and to his possession-based brand of hockey.

“When kids leave here, that’s how they’re gonna play in the o-zone,” he predicts.  “That’s by design because that’s what will work in the NHL because of the concepts.  Nobody teaches offense.  I know I sound arrogant with that, but defense is predictable, offense isn’t.  So you’ve got to give them reads inside of that chaos to be predictable to each other.”  In other words, the head coach wants his Michigan team to embrace a style of play that will set them up to succeed after the collegiate phase of their careers concludes.

“From what I’ve heard, what do [opponents] want to do?” asks Naurato.  “Make Michigan turn it over so when all when all their guys are [pushing forward], we can go back this way.  That’s what [opponents] want.  What if we don’t turn it over?  They create no offense.  

“So still always for me—personally it’s just what I believe in—it’s all with the puck.  It’s all with the puck and then when it does change hands, whether it’s a turnover or whatever, how do we defend as quickly as possible to then go that way again?”

Playing for possession is not a philosophical ideal or purity test but rather a way of maintaining agency and another means of putting players in the best position to succeed. “I always joke with the guys ‘never put a saddle on a mustang,’” explains Naurato.  “With these high-end players, I’m going to let you go, but as I let you go, I’m just going to teach you how to walk the line or reel you in, so that you know when to go and when to play a certain way based on time of the game, score, all that stuff.”  Once again, tactics and player development are inextricable.

Once again, that process depends on a healthy working environment, one that will promote maximal growth for all involved via internal competition. “We want four lines.  We want six D.  We want to keep everyone involved,” Naurato says.  “I want crazy competition for bottom four D and our bottom six forwards.  It’s not a bad game and you’re out or whatever; it’s like ‘Man, I’m gonna be so good and provide so much value that I’m never coming out, because I don’t want to be out of the lineup.  I want to play.’  So how much better are your practices?  Well if your practices are better, you’re developing that much more.”

What could that look like next year?  Naurato uses soon-to-be sophomore forwards Frank Nazar and Gavin Brindley to provide a glimpse: “Frankie Nazar had a pre-existing injury before he comes in.  He finds out he’s got to get surgery and he’s out four to six months.  That’s pain.  He hates not playing.  He wants to be around the rink and wants to do this.  So him managing his mental emotions was a way of him growing to be ready to play at the end of the year.  You wanna talk about how hard that guy’s gonna go this summer?  He believes he’s the best player on the team, whether Adam comes back or not.  Gavin Brindley doesn’t believe that.  So the competition is not to play or not play, the competition for Frankie and Brindley is to be on the ice at the end of the game up or down a goal.  That’s competition.  That’s awesome.  That’s gonna prepare them for the NHL, not the guy that’s served everything and his points are overinflated, and he just goes.”

Unlike this past season, Naurato will operate moving forward from outside the shadow of an interim label and the instability it brings.  Throughout the season, he insisted that his future job prospects were not at the top of his mind, but, having now secured his future at his alma mater, Naurato admits that it was impossible not to think about the year to come before securing the full-time gig.

“Really what you’re trying to figure out is am I gonna have to move my family halfway across the country because I didn’t get it done this year, or am I gonna be here for another ten, fifteen, twenty years because I did do it this year,” he explains.  “And in my head, there was no way I wasn’t gonna get it, but at the same time, you don’t know what’s gonna happen.”

Now, when asked what he’s most excited for about the 2023-24 season, Naurato names the “group of kids” and “another year into our style of play, and how you can keep stacking more and more into our style of play because guys have been introduced to it.”

“Even talking to guys today, they're like, ‘we know how we play now,’” Naurato says. “They know I love the ozone and they're like ‘we're watching the playoffs, and that's all we see now. Like that's what works there. We get it.’”

Despite another exodus to the pros at last season’s end, albeit a smaller one than that of the year prior, Naurato has little doubt that things around Yost are only trending upward.  As he awaits puck drop next October, Brandon Naurato will have ample time to perfect “the process nobody knows.”

It’s come to our attention that we have a number of coaches who read the newsletter. If that applies to you, you might be interested in The Coaches Site’s conference at the end of June in Ann Arbor. Brandon Naurato will be among the headline speakers, as will Detroit Red Wings coach Derek Lalonde. The conference will be June 22nd through 24th, and you can register using this link. For 10% off your registration fee, use promo code GULOGULO. Be on the lookout for more on this subject and some odds and ends from this interview in tomorrow’s Midweek Roundup.

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