Minnesota State coach Mike Hastings has been selected as the recipient of the 2021 Spencer Penrose Award as Division I Men’s Ice Hockey CCM/AHCA Coach of the Year. The honor is the second for Hastings, who also won the award in 2015.
Entering the Frozen Four, Hastings has a career record of 236-89-24. His winning percentage of .711 is the best among all active NCAA Division I men’s head coaches.
Hastings is the fourth men’s hockey coach at Minnesota State following a three-year stint as associate head coach at Omaha. He also served as an assistant coach with the men’s hockey program at Minnesota for one season.
Prior to his college coaching career, Hastings had a 14-year run as head coach of Omaha of the USHL, leaving as the league’s all-time winningest coach having compiled a 529-210-56 record with the Lancers. He was named USHL Coach of the Year three times and as the team’s general manager earned league GM of the Year honors five times.
Hastings was an assistant coach for the U.S. national junior team at the 2003 and 2005 International Ice Hockey Federation World Junior Championships and served twice as head coach for the U.S. junior select team that competed in the Viking Cup, earning gold medal honors in 2000.
A 1993 graduate of St. Cloud State, Hastings played two years for the Huskies (1986-87 and 1987-88) before a back injury ended his career.
The runner-up for this year’s Spencer Penrose Award was Greg Carvel of the University of Massachusetts.
