By Andrew Erickson / @CarvellMedia / sports@kvsc.org / Photo By SCSU Athletics

Last week on Thursday, March 19, Men’s Hockey longtime assistant coach Mike Gibbons decided it was time to step away from hockey and retired.

Gibbons is 64 years old and has been apart of the hockey community since he was a kid with the last 41 years of that being spent behind the bench. The last 13 of those years have been spent with the St. Cloud State Huskies.

In 2007 then head coach Bob Motzko brought on Gibbons as an Assistant Coach with the team. He would stay in 2018 when Motzko left and Bret Larson took over as the head coach.

Under Gibbons tenure the Huskies have won four conference championships, made a Frozen Four appearance in 2013, won the Frozen Faceoff in 2016 and claimed 275 wins overall.

His recruiting has been elite since he stepped on campus. His players have earned 11 All-Americans, seven top 10 Hober Baker finalist, 16 have played in the NHL and one Hober Baker winner in Drew LeBlanc.

Outside of SCSU

Those other 28 years around the game have been spent all over the country.

He was a leading defenseman at Bemidji State from 1975-1979 and helped them to a national title in 1979. When his playing career ended, he stepped behind the bench in the collegiate ranks from 1981 to 1994 with stops at this alma mater, Northern Michigan University, Colorado College and Denver.

In 1994 he went to junior hockey with the Langley Thunder in the BCHL before jumping to the pros in the AHL with the Baltimore Bandits for a few years as an assistant coach.

The high school ranks came calling and Gibbons returned to Minnesota to be the first head boys hockey coach at Eastview High School where he would stay until Motzko came calling in 2007.

The search to fill the open position will begin immediately and KVSC expects the hiring to be closely connected to when the country comes out of lockdown from COVID-19, however it could be filled sooner with video interviews.