Trust, Relationships, and Defense: On Matt Deschamps' Impact at Michigan

Matt Deschamps has traveled across continents studying the intricacies of sound hockey away from the puck, but in the end, he believes coaching depends on relationships rather than X's & O's

There’s no shortage of reasons for University of Michigan hockey fans to be grateful for Adam Fantilli, and the presence of first-year assistant coach Matt Deschamps behind the Wolverine bench provides one more.

Last spring, after Michigan’s season ended, Fantilli was skating in Chicago with his old USHL team, when he mentioned to Matt Deschamps, then the Steel’s associate head coach, that he might be a fit for the vacancy on Brandon Naurato’s staff.  Deschamps didn’t have a pre-existing relationship with Naurato or Rob Rassey, but “it was something that really sparked an interest inside me.”  

Even growing up in Poughkeepsie, Deschamps—like any kid with aspirations of playing college hockey—long dreamed of Michigan. He ended up playing his college puck for the University of Maine.  When he was a sophomore, Deschamps’ Black Bears had their season end at Yost in a NCAA Tournament regional semi-final loss to the Red Berenson-coached Wolverines, affording a closer glimpse at the program whose mystique had long commanded his attention.

After Fantilli planted the seed, Deschamps soon connected with Naurato and Rassey, and in July, his hiring was made official.  “Talking to players and hearing how highly they spoke of Coach Naurato and this staff and everything that's here, that really kind of drove me to explore the opportunity,” Deschamps explained.

"Deschamps is one of the best defensive developers in the game of hockey," Naurato said in the press release that announced his hiring. "His attention to detail on the technical and tactical aspects with the puck, and more importantly without the puck is next level.”

To be sure, Deschamps takes profound pride in the nuances of playing without the puck, but the soft-spoken assistant coach—who specializes in defensemen and the penalty kill—believes none of that work is possible without a foundation of relationships with players that extend beyond the bounds of a 200 feet by 85 feet hockey rink.

He wants to learn about his players’ interests beyond hockey, their parents, and their hobbies.  “My goal is to build relationships where in 20 years, they don't hesitate to place a call,” Deschamps says.  “I was at a wedding of a friend of mine who played for a rival university, and I was so surprised that the head coach was there, and he was dancing with his wife on the dance floor all night. And I asked one of the guys from that team, ‘is this just a one off?’ He goes, ‘No, he goes to every one.’”

“So it’s about really creating relationships,” Deschamps continues.  “It's not always easy, it's not. It can be trying, but at the end of the day if you have the foundation of trust and being open, the players will know that at the end of the day that we all care, and that's where that's where you can grow.”

After graduating from Maine, Deschamps spent parts of six seasons exploring the far flung reaches of the East Coast Hockey League: Atlantic City, Fresno, Charlotte, Biloxi, and finally Las Vegas.

When his first son was born, Deschamps determined his playing days were done, opting to enter a different side of the hockey business as a skills coach managing a mini hockey rink in Massachusetts.  Even if he didn’t know Naurato much before the interview process began, the pair shared the bond of breaking into coaching in the context of individual skill and development work.

“Coach Naurato and I have built a relationship where we both have shared experiences as we climbed to this point, and a lot of it was from those types of beginnings,” Deschamps says. “You'd be on the ice with a 10 year old and then two hours later, you're on the ice with a college guy or an NHL guy.”  Of course there are differences in dealing with a pre-teen and a prospective NHLer, but to Deschamps, “everything is scalable.”  

“Sometimes with the little guys you have to be the ringleader of a circus, and with the older guys you have to be very firm and direct and to the point,” he explains.  “At the end of the day, you just, you want to give them the best experience that they can when they're on the ice.”

In 2014, while managing that mini-rink in Massachusetts and continuing to build his business as a skills coach, Deschamps received a phone call from a peculiar looking number.  On the other end of the line was Pierre Pagé. 

Pagé had served as an NHL head coach and general manager, but he was calling Deschamps in his new capacity as coach of Red Bull Salzburg in the International Central European Hockey League (ICEHL).  

The pair spoke for two hours, and Pagé eventually asked whether Deschamps, living in Boston, could be in Salzburg by Monday.  “I think it was Saturday, and I said, ‘You know I live in Boston?,’ and I think I was there that Tuesday morning,” recalls Deschamps.

“I interviewed, and I’d never been to Europe before,” he continues.  “And I think it was like a $90 million brand new soccer and hockey academy, which they had the best anything and everything you could think of.  It was extremely eye-opening just from the sports performance side but then culturally, I had my wife and my two boys—we had two boys at the time—with me, and we just got to explore and live out The Sound of Music.  It was amazing.

“Part of my job, Pierre had me go and study other clubs around Europe, so I’ve gone and been able to get access to a bunch of clubs in Finland and Sweden and Czech and Slovak, and the experience I got on a world stage was incredible because I’d never been outside the U.S. and Canada before.”

What struck Deschamps most about RB Salzburg’s operation was the way the club’s total commitment to sports science and optimizing athletic performance manifested in the third period of a tight hockey game.

“How hard but scientific they were with the training, you always knew when the chips are down, third period, you could tell the kids to push a little bit more, and they always had more, and they could,” he observes. “They could outlast teams and if you're within a few goals you knew we would at least be in it.”

And of course, there was pleasure to be taken from the European lifestyle away from the rink for the young Deschamps family: “We had a golden retriever at the time and it was my wife and like I said, I think my boys were six and three at the time. I mean, we explored everywhere in Italy, we were on a gondola with my dog in Venice. And just the way of life there, it's different. I remember on Sundays, the entire city was shut down. So you would have to have all your prep, everything all managed and done so on Sunday, you can just relax. And the first year I hated it, because I was used to just ‘Oh I’ll just go to the grocery store or Home Depot or go to Walmart.’ And nothing ever was open but then I grew to really, really appreciate it and enjoy that style of having time to be with your family and go hike and do things like that.”

The family returned stateside in 2016, when Deschamps took a job as an assistant with St. Lawrence University in New York’s North Country.  He would spend three seasons with the Saints before jumping to Chicago and the USHL ahead of the ‘19-20 season.

Much like managing the difference between a ten-year-old client and 22-year-old NHL hopeful, Deschamps has found that large portions of the work he did at the USHL level transfer to the collegiate game, but “in every little facet, there's something that you have to change.”

He’s found that a major difference between USHL and NCAA is in time management.  The players he coached with the Steel would arrive at the rink each day at 10, and they wouldn’t leave until five.  “Here [at Michigan], these are student athletes, and they're going to class and they're investing in their studies and so you have to pick your spots more for your meetings and really make the most of the time that you have when you are able to to meet with the players.”

“His detail in the game as a coach is truly special,” said Luca Fantilli, who played for Deschamps in Chicago only to be reunited with him as a sophomore at Michigan. “He's so dialed in on the little details and little things, giving you pointers. And that just helps us overall.  With video, if you want to go talk to him about something he's [got a] open door policy. He's an unbelievable coach to talk to and to be coached from, and I think we're definitely super lucky to have the coaching staff we have…Where to put your stick, what to do when you're trying to box out a guy, what you're trying to do as a defenseman when you're trying to close on a guy, how to angle—it's just a whole bunch of stuff that we weren't really taught last year.”

Much like Naurato will emphasize the importance of predictability in creating offense, Deschamps believes that “being predictable for each other” is essential to having success in the defensive third of the rink.

“It's about being strategic with your stick, what are you giving, and what do you take away? What are you forcing a team or a player into? How do you dictate the play?,” he explains. “I think those things are really interesting, and the reads away from the puck is what makes defending really interesting and allows it to be fast and then you can transition to offense, because if you have skilled defending, you're going to be able to go on offense a lot of the time.”

Deschamps believes that a skilled attacking player has an advantage on defense, because they know what the other team’s skilled attackers are looking for.  Similarly, he believes an overlapping comfort and familiarity between forwards and defensemen is key to sound defending, affording the kind of predictability he preaches.

“Especially below the top circles there’s a lot where those guys are in very similar positions where they kind of need to know how each other defend,” Deschamps contends. “Your center should know how a D is going to close a guy in the corner. They should almost mirror each other in terms of the way that they do it. It shouldn't be like the D closes this way, but a forward does it that way. If they're going to the same section [of the defensive zone], it should be very similar.”

He does allow for some differences between five-on-five defending and penalty killing, and that’s where awarness of where you’re affording your opponent opportunities becomes essential.  

“There is a difference because of the minus player, you have to be more strategic, you have to know what you're giving up and have it be calculated,” he explains.  “Whereas a defensive structure because it's five by five and everybody is connected and dialed in on their job, you shouldn't have to give up much.”

As much as Naurato appreciates the schematic details Deschamps emphasizes with the young Wolverines, the relationships and trust he’s built remain paramount.  Per Naurato, Deschamps’ greatest impact lies in “building relationships more than anything, whether it's through video or just talking after practice, I think the defensemen trust him.  When they're doing well, they trust that he's giving them the right feedback, and when they're struggling, they trust that he can help them.”

Odds & Ends:

WoHo’s Unbeaten March Continues Through Missouri and Illinois, Aquinas College Next in Crosshairs

On the team’s longest road trip of the season, the University of Michigan women’s hockey team traveled to Missouri and Illinois to take on Lindenwood twice and McKendree once last weekend.

On Friday night at Centene Community Ice Centre in suburban St. Louis (the Blues’ practice facility), the Wolverines earned a 3-2 shootout win over Lindenwood (officially a draw in the ACHA standings).  Megan Mathews scored her third goal of the season, and Keegan Gustafson her second.  Meanwhile, Sandrine Ponnath stopped 39 of the 41 Lions shots she faced.

In a Saturday rematch, Michigan claimed a 4-2 regulation result.  Ava Gargiulo gave the Wolverines the lead at the 8:47 mark of the first with a power play goal, but Michigan would fall into a 2-1 hole by the midpoint of the second thanks to consecutive Lindenwood goals.  However, Emily Maliszewski restored the game to level terms, and, in the third, Julia Lindahl scored twice to tip the scales in the Wolverines’ favor.  Freshman Emma Johns got her second collegiate start, making 32 saves on 34 shots in the winning effort.

Finally, on Sunday, Michigan made the short trip across the Mississippi River to O’Fallon, Illinois, where the Wolverines knocked off their hosts McKendree by a 3-0 final score.  Back in net, Ponnath was a perfect 42 for 42, earning Michigan the shutout victory despite being doubled up in shots.  Swanson got the Wolverines on the board with a second period power play strike, before Lucy Hanson provided two insurance markers in the third.

The Wolverines will travel to Southside Ice Arena, just south of Grand Rapids, to take on Aquinas College on Saturday in what will be the team’s final contest of the calendar year.  After the Aquinas game, Jenna Trubiano’s team will be off until a January 14th home date with the University of Rhode Island back at the friendly confines of Yost. In the third ACHA ranking of the season, Michigan remains entrenched at number four.

PK Improves Against Gophers, Net Front Defense Proves Trickier

I won’t dwell on last weekend’s split on the men’s side with Minnesota, because in many respects, it was a repeat of the same story we’ve seen all season: Michigan controls play but squanders a late lead to drop a game it should have won, then rebounds.  

In Friday night’s 4-3 defeat at the hands of the Gophers, Michigan was the far better team at five-on-five AND won the special teams battle.  However, Minnesota’s ability to bang in easy goals from point-blank range prevented the Wolverines from taking a result they really did deserve, instead costing the team three more important points in the Big Ten standings.

The biggest positive from the weekend for Michigan, however, lies in the way the team’s penalty kill handled a formidable Gopher power play.  On Friday in particular, the PK was excellent—with the most notable effort coming

After Tuesday’s practice, Brandon Naurato noted that his team switched from a 1-1-2 to a diamond (1-2-1) but emphasized that there was more to the unit’s improved results than just structure.

“Just because we switch the structure doesn't mean it's gonna be that much better,” he said. “It's just all the fundamental things that you learn when you're an eight year old.  When the pucks on your stick and you're on the PK, you have to clear it.  If you don't clear it, they get another chance. When we defend the rush on them, we want to pressure, whenever pucks are along the wall, we want to pressure as quickly as possible, and then we want to get a clear. Every team is trying to do the same thing; it's just your efficiency on whether you're doing it or not. And I think we did a better job of not letting Minnesota set up, and getting clears, especially in the five minute major [Friday]. So that helps and then usually that builds frustration with their power play, they force things and you just keep building momentum.”

It may not have been enough to get the result Michigan wanted last weekend, but if the Wolverines continue to play the way they did short-handed against the Gophers, more wins will come in short order.

Seven Wolverine Commits—Headlined by Christian Humphreys—Sign National Letters of Intent

As the window opened for prospective recruits to sign their National Letters of Intent, seven Michigan recruits put their verbal commitments into writing: Mikey Burchill of the USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms, Matvei Gridin of the USHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks, Michael Hage and Hunter Hady of the Chicago Steel, and a headlining NTDP trio of Christian Humphreys, Kristian Epperson, and Dakoda Rhéaume-Mullen.

Humphreys—who committed to Michigan State in August ‘22 at just 16 years old—explained his decision to friend of the newsletter Sean Shapiro in the digital pages of Elite Prospects. Humphreys told Shapiro that he realized there was no reason to remain beholden to his initial commitment, made at such a young age, so he decided to re-explore his options this fall.

Among the reasons Humphreys offered for choosing Michigan in the end was the development infrastructure within the program, telling Shapiro “That was huge, if you want to grow as a player, video is one of the biggest aspects and tools you can use. [Naurato] had a program ready where if you typed in my name it would show you all the o-zone, neutral zone, d-zone shifts and rushes. You could look at the game and find ways to focus on one topic or improve something for practice. It’s the type of tool where we don’t have anything like that here [at the NTDP Program].”

A hearty congratulations to all seven on formalizing their commitments! Suffice it to say Michigan’s recruiting under the Naurato regime appears to be in more than capable hands.

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