BU 2021-22: Albie's Great Adventure

[ericredaxe]

Spot on. The AD does not come off well from this process. Gave a deadline of the coaches conference initially then reportedly did not conduct formal interviews until he was at the convention. Jay reportedly did not meet with President Brown until last week. What were they doing for four weeks? Chasing down the Quinn pipe dream? Waiting around for Hastings to decide? Neither of those two things should've delayed the process.

I don't believe it was a lack of takers, though. More lack of decisiveness.

Either way, this:
https://twitter.com/MikeGrinnell_/st...lCPn3p2Pg&s=19

Or they just 99% knew it was Jay all along?

[J.D.]

Or they just 99% knew it was Jay all along?

This is where I am conflicted. I have believed all along that BU brought in Pandolfo to replace Albie. So I sorta just expected them to name him HC and get on with it. But they were then linked to Hastings and Mike McMahon reported Eric Lang interviewed for the job. So I don't know if they were all in on Pandolfo or not. Certainly not if they kicked the tires on Mike Hastings.

[brassbonanza]

Or they just 99% knew it was Jay all along?

If that were the case, why did BU:

• Wait approximately four weeks to give him a formal interview with President Brown (told to me from several unrelated people)
• Have at least an informal interview with Mike Hastings (reported by many)
• Have at least an informal interview with Nate Leaman (reported by Mike McMahon)
• Have at least informal discussions with Quinn (reported by many)
• Have at least an informal interview with Eric Lang (reported by McMahon)
• Say they targeted to hire someone before the coach's convention then not make the hire and then wait to conduct interviews until during the convention

In other words, if they knew it was Jay all along - what the heck were they doing for the last month? Any one of Hastings, Leaman, or Quinn expressing interest would immediately vault that candidate over Jay.

The most concerning thing is the reported timeline of events. They announced Albie would not return on March 30 - all available reporting indicates little significant movement on Jay or anyone occurred until at least 3 weeks later during the coach's convention. Then the suggestion of having to wait for Albie's contract to expire instead of buying him out. Rumors of chasing down Quinn and Hastings in what may have been little more than distractions.

From the outside (admittedly, a very incomplete view) this suggests a disorganized process without a good plan and frought with indecision. Of course, there's likely more to the story that we don't know and I'm open to being wrong here - but it's difficult to believe that this was a smoothly run operation and suggests some organizational mishaps among BU administrative leadership.

This is where I am conflicted. I have believed all along that BU brought in Pandolfo to replace Albie.

And this is where we get to the root of the problem - the decision to bring on Jay as associate last year. Like you, I never fully bought the whole story given last year about how Albie reached out to him because he'd be a big help or whatever. I suspected Jay was brought in as the expected replacement for Albie. If that were the case, then it was a mistake from the beginning and BU should've made the move to make Jay HC last summer.

[J.D.]

They'll ultimately say that they did a national search and that after doing interviews Pandolfo was clearly the guy. But IF they showed interest in Hastings that signals to me they knew they had Pandolfo in their back pocket.

Would be nice if anyone knew who actually interviewed. Only person I saw mentioned as getting an interview was Lang.

[brassbonanza]

They'll ultimately say that they did a national search and that after doing interviews Pandolfo was clearly the guy. But IF they showed interest in Hastings that signals to me they knew they had Pandolfo in their back pocket.

Would be nice if anyone knew who actually interviewed. Only person I saw mentioned as getting an interview was Lang.

McMahon's newsletter from last Friday indicated BU had some kind of discussions with Leaman as well. Not clear how formal. Also not clear to what extent Hastings was a thing. He and DQ are very close, so it's possible DQ connected him to Drew but beyond that I have no idea.

Much earlier in the process a name I heard through the grapevine was Cavanaugh. Clearly, that went nowhere.

[J.D.]

Wait, Hastings and Leaman actually interviewed? I haven't seen that anywhere. If that's accurate I would think whatever BU is willing to pay wasn't enough to lure them. Unless you guys have a large number of alums who are pushing for it to a be a BU guy. Could end up being in play at BC with Greg Brown vs. Nate Leaman.

[J.D.]

Ah ok I canceled my free subscription so I missed all that

[brassbonanza]

From McMahon's April 29 newsletter:
"I’m not sure if it was a formal interview, but sources said that BU had a conversation with Leaman about their opening."

He also goes on to note that Leaman's total salary from PC was nearly $900K. So it'd take a LOT of money to get him away.

[J.D.]

From McMahon's April 29 newsletter:
"I’m not sure if it was a formal interview, but sources said that BU had a conversation with Leaman about their opening."

He also goes on to note that Leaman's total salary from PC was nearly $900K. So it'd take a LOT of money to get him away.

Interesting. I wouldn't expect BC to pay Leaman that much but he's a finalist so they must be ok with what it would take.

[ColinWilsonFan]

Spot on. The AD does not come off well from this process. Gave a deadline of the coaches conference initially then reportedly did not conduct formal interviews until he was at the convention. Jay reportedly did not meet with President Brown until last week. What were they doing for four weeks? Chasing down the Quinn pipe dream? Waiting around for Hastings to decide? Neither of those two things should've delayed the process.

I don't believe it was a lack of takers, though. More lack of decisiveness.

Either way, this:
https://twitter.com/MikeGrinnell_/st...lCPn3p2Pg&s=19

could be pandolfo putting staff together - contracts etc doesn’t have to be anything exotic

[ericredaxe]

If that were the case, why did BU:

• Wait approximately four weeks to give him a formal interview with President Brown (told to me from several unrelated people)
• Have at least an informal interview with Mike Hastings (reported by many)
• Have at least an informal interview with Nate Leaman (reported by Mike McMahon)
• Have at least informal discussions with Quinn (reported by many)
• Have at least an informal interview with Eric Lang (reported by McMahon)
• Say they targeted to hire someone before the coach's convention then not make the hire and then wait to conduct interviews until during the convention

In other words, if they knew it was Jay all along - what the heck were they doing for the last month? Any one of Hastings, Leaman, or Quinn expressing interest would immediately vault that candidate over Jay.

Making sure they were right and waiting out the mysterious "Human Resources issue"?

And this is where we get to the root of the problem - the decision to bring on Jay as associate last year. Like you, I never fully bought the whole story given last year about how Albie reached out to him because he'd be a big help or whatever. I suspected Jay was brought in as the expected replacement for Albie. If that were the case, then it was a mistake from the beginning and BU should've made the move to make Jay HC last summer.

This I agree with - I think most of us have always had a lingering partial feeling that the decision to bring Jay on the staff was not entirely Albie's decision, but who knows? If it was all BU management making that move it would have been cleaner to just do it last year...

[ericredaxe]

I've heard similar. One particular story from the 1st half of the season was that multiple players "opted-out" of being available for a 2-game series. Had nothing to do with hockey, injuries, academics, nor personal/family matters.

I heard apparently Albie's handling of that situation fell somewhere in between "indifferent" to "nonchalant".

This was also around the time when numerous players / parents approached Jay directly as I had previously written about.

OK - who wants to look back and research which players were mysteriously missing for a 2 game series?

[brassbonanza]

OK - who wants to look back and research which players were mysteriously missing for a 2 game series?

I remember some friends who went to Marquette said they noticed fewer of the scratched players in the stands than usual for the NMU series. I wasn't there so I don't know who. I also didn't think anything of it at the time since they don't always sit together, but that might be a candidate.

[Terrier86]

If it was Jay's job, why go through the process/shirade of interviewing anyone else?

If it was a true national search and done with precision and diligence you'd still get through it faster than this.

The longer this goes on the more it looks like the first and second choices said no or resulted in a disagreement over money and now we have moved on to other candidates.

If an AD is doing their job correctly, we would have been back-channeling to several coach's agents since the decision to not renew Albie.

It's either incompetence, a lack of candidates, or a lack of willingness to pay market rate for the job.

[ericredaxe]

If it was Jay's job, why go through the process/shirade of interviewing anyone else?

If it was a true national search and done with precision and diligence you'd still get through it faster than this.

The longer this goes on the more it looks like the first and second choices said no or resulted in a disagreement over money and now we have moved on to other candidates.

If an AD is doing their job correctly, we would have been back-channeling to several coach's agents since the decision to not renew Albie.

It's either incompetence, a lack of candidates, or a lack of willingness to pay market rate for the job.

As previously mentioned - they can have a plan that they are passing the torch to Jay, but still go through a process of interviews etc to make sure it is the right decision.