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| Seth Appert spent 2016-17 on the Hot Seat(Times Union) |
ECAC Hockey fans may have noticed that a Seth Appert-coached
team rolled through Dartmouth and Harvard in late October, as USA Hockey’s U-18
National team split a pair, opening with a 3-0 win at Dartmouth before bowing
to Harvard 7-2 the next night. When Appert was fired by RPI last March, coaching
at Thompson Arena and the Bright-Landry Center must have seemed light years
away. But before the 2017-18 Ivy schedule was even officially underway, there was
Appert back on familiar ground, coaching his teenage wunderkinds against the
men of the ECAC. The last six months have been a long, strange trip for Appert,
and we caught up with him by phone before he jetted off to Finland with the Red,
White and Blue.
RinkRap: You’ve been
through some pretty intense highs and lows this past off-season. Can you share
your mindset as this all went down?
APPERT: You have
to go back to mid-March when I had one of the worst professional days of my
life, being fired from RPI. People say coaches are hired to be fired, but when
it’s you, and it’s your family and your kids that are going to have to be
uprooted, it’s hard. I’m really proud of what we built at RPI, and getting that
program back towards national prominence, but we had a bad year last year, and
those things happen. That’s a hard day.
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| A Dark Day in March, and then the phone rang-(Daily Gazette) |
The next day you’re kind of talked out. Everybody’s calling
and checking in on you and all those other things. It’s probably eight in the
morning, and my phone’s ringing and it’s John Wroblewski, the other head coach
of the (NTDP) national team. I was getting my daughters on the bus, and I let it
go to voice mail. I was assuming he was calling to see how I was doing, right?
But he was calling to ask me to join their coaching staff for the Under-18
World Championships.
I’ll be forever grateful for the opportunity that John and
Director Scott Monaghan provided me at that moment. The moment when you’re in a
real bad spot, for those guys to call me the next day and offer me the
opportunity of a lifetime, to join a U.S. National team for a world
championship event, was very, very special. I’m very grateful for that.
I spent six weeks with them, a couple weeks of practice and
then a month overseas, and then went right back overseas with Jeff Blashill
with their staff for the men’s championship. During that process I interviewed
for the job here (in Plymouth with the NTDP) after Danton Cole became head
coach at Michigan State.
RinkRap: Were those
World Championships an audition of sorts, were they observing you?
APPERT: It wasn’t
intended for that, at that point Danton was still on the job and the Michigan
State job wasn’t even open yet. Robo (Wroblewski) and I have some of the same
philosophies and styles of play and coaching, and he wanted me to join the
staff. In the end, it did become a two-month interview process, with USA Hockey
people at the highest levels, interacting with me on a daily basis, watching
how I interact with both the Under-18 team and also the men’s national team. That
eventually led to this opportunity.
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| Appert at his New Home with the NTDP-(Hometown Life) |
RinkRap: You and the
NTDP seem like a pretty good fit.
APPERT: From my
end, I believe it is, I’m having a blast. It’s extremely re-energizing and
exciting. I’ve been coaching college hockey for 12 years and I love college
hockey and believe in it strongly, but this is refreshing. They’re younger,
they’re hungry to learn, they’re extremely talented and driven; there’s a lot
of mentorship in their work ethic and habits and also in their off-ice life. We’re
just trying to march forward every day to get them better individually and
collectively.
RinkRap: It must
have been surreal to leave Thompson Arena with a win, after playing them so many
times with RPI.
APPERT: It’s
different. When you walk out with a win when at RPI, you’re excited about the
two points in the standings and you're thinking about the next game. When you
walk out with these young men, and seeing how hard they have to battle to give
themselves a chance to win against a college team, it wasn’t about the two points,
it’s about all these things we’re trying to do— We’re trying to put our guys in
as much adversity as possible, and then helping them through that and growing
from it so we can become better. I was really happy for our guys.
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| Appert's Teens Claim a Scalp up at Thompson |
From the perspective of being back on a Dartmouth-Harvard road
trip, it didn’t feel very much different from years past. It’s funny, Rand
Pecknold texted me, “Dartmouth-Harvard this weekend, it’s like you never left.”
That’s certainly a trip you’re familiar with coming from the ECAC.
RinkRap: Did you
allow yourself time for introspection as you exited Thompson Arena? Being back
in such familiar surroundings, yet in a totally unexpected setting?
APPERT: That’s
not who I am. I’m not a real nostalgia type of guy, I am a live-in-the moment
type of guy. I’m not a guy that walks around and tries to soak up those kinds
of things, that’s just not who I am, but at the end of the day, it was great. I
have tremendous respect for Bob Gaudette, and really cherished the opportunity to
coach against him for those 11 years I was in the ECAC. Associate coach Dave Lassonde
has been a good friend of mine since I was a young coach in this game the last
27 years. It’s always good to see old friends and visit with them either before
or after the game.
For the record, the
last time a Seth Appert-coached club won at Thompson Arena was November 2,
2013, when RPI defeated Dartmouth 7-1.
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