It's a pretty good gig to be a college hockey coach

A look at the financial structure and benefits for NCAA coaches compared to those in the AHL and CHL.

It’s NHL trade deadline day.

From my perspective, we’ll likely have something up at this site later today. I’ll also have a column over at EP Rinkside on the overall deadline.

We’ll be recording a deadline edition of Spits & Suds at the deadline buzzer, and this evening I’m recording a deadline roundtable of the PDOCast with my pal Dimitri Filipovic.

It’s gonna be fun, I’ve got a pot of coffee made and I’ve just made my first redeye of the day.

In the meantime, I went down a bit of a hockey wormhole this week when Michigan State announced it had signed an extension with hockey coach Adam Nightingale.

It’s a five-year rollover contract that includes includes $600,000 in base salary and $100,000 in supplemental compensation. That supplemental compensation goes up $25K each year, and Nightingale is also entitled to a $100K retention bonus every two years beginning Sept. 30, 2024.

Here is what it looks like when you break it down by year.

It’s a similar deal to the one that Michigan coach Brandon Naurato has.

Although Naurato’s deal has a lower base, going from $400,000 in Year 1 to $433,100 in the final year.

Naurato also has performance bonuses, that include:

Naurato’s contract also contains several performance-based incentives. He earns one month’s salary extra for each Wolverines Big Ten regular season title, conference tournament championship or NCAA tournament berth. For each Frozen Four berth, he earns an additional two months’ salary, and a national title pockets him three months worth of base salary. 

Naurato also has a retention bonus, which pays him $50,000 each year he keeps the job. So if he serves the whole five-year deal, he’ll make an additional $250,000. Similar to the $300,000 Nightingale will make if he serves his entire five-year contract.

This sent me down the path to learn more about coaching salaries, and try to contextualize just how good it is to be a college hockey coach.

A college hockey source told me both of these deals are pretty typical for the top programs, and they specifically mentioned David Carle has a similar base salary and compensation structure at Denver.

In the NHL, we know head coach salaries of roughly a third of the league.

That ranges from the $4.95 million per season that Peter Laviolette makes with the New York Rangers, to the $1.5 million Luke Richardson makes with the Chicago Blackhawks.

You can look at the full list of known coach salaries here.

Financially speaking, this is why it can take some heavy convincing to get a college hockey coach to leave for the NHL.

For example, at some point, we all know the NHL will come calling for Carle. He’s already won a World Junior Championship and a national title, and he’s younger than I am (I’m 34, FWIW).

But for now, he has a high-paying job, great security and University benefits. Those benefits can also potentially include free education for a coach’s children, which isn’t cheap.

Getting Carle to move to the NHL from Denver, like with Jim Montgomery before him, will require an NHL team to offer the right opportunity and financial compensation.

College hockey coaches also make, on average, more than AHL and CHL counterparts.

According to a couple sources, the typical AHL coach makes $200,000 to $225,000 per season. A typical CHL coach, even the most veteran ones, are making close $250,000 Canadian per season — which is closer to $185,000 in USD.

While I don’t have his exact contract details, one source noted that it’s highly likely that Nightingale is making almost triple this season to what Grand Rapids Griffins coach Dan Watson is making.

And Nightingale only has to coach around 40 games per season, roughly half that of an AHL coach. The travel is easier — games are only on Friday and Saturday — and while recruiting can be a bear, the accommodations don’t include bus trips from Grand Rapids to Milwaukee to complete a 3-in-3 weekend.

This is why you hardly ever see NCAA coaches move to the AHL or the CHL. It doesn’t make much sense to move to the pro ranks, unless it’s coming at the highest level in the NHL.