Former Northern Michigan hockey player Dave Shyiak has been named his alma mater’s fourth head hockey coach.
Shyiak takes over for Grant Potulny, who stepped down earlier this month.
“I’m thrilled that Dave Shyiak will be returning to campus to lead our hockey program,” Northern Michigan AD Rick Comley said in a statement. “Dave was a part of our national championship team and helped keep our program at an extremely high level as an assistant coach for many years.
“Dave is the right person, at the right time, in the right place to lead Northern Michigan back to a national level of success.”
A 1991 graduate of NMU, Shyiak played four seasons with the Wildcats (1987-91), where he helped captain the 1991 national championship team and was a member of both the 1989 and 1991 WCHA playoff championship teams. Shyiak returned to Northern to begin his coaching career as an assistant (1995-2002) under Comley before being promoted to associate head coach for three seasons (2002-05).
After his time at Northern, Shyiak took over as the head coach at Alaska Anchorage for eight years, then went on to experience success at Western Michigan and St. Cloud State.
He has 25-plus years of coaching experience at the collegiate level, where he has been behind the bench for over 1,000 NCAA games, along with an appearance in the NCAA national championship game and five NCAA tournament appearances.
“This is an incredible opportunity to return to my home away from home,” Shyiak said. “Northern Michigan and Marquette are really special to me and my family. We have remained close to a lot of our friends and fellow alums in the Upper Peninsula. To start as a student-athlete in 1987 and come full circle to lead the hockey program as head coach is something for which I will forever be grateful. I want to thank President Tessman and Rick Comley for believing in me. I feel honored and privileged, and I will do everything I can to make this university and community proud.”
Shyiak has spent the past four seasons as the associate head coach at St. Cloud State. With the Huskies, he helped lead the program to three consecutive NCAA tournament appearances, including an NCAA runner-up finish in 2020-21.
Shyiak joined SCSU’s staff after serving as an associate head coach at Western Michigan from 2014 to 2020. Prior to his tenure at WMU, Shyiak worked as an amateur hockey scout for the Toronto Maple Leafs organization from 2013 to
2014.
His first collegiate head coach position was at Alaska Anchorage from 2005 to 2013. He ranks as the Seawolves all-time wins leader as a coach during the WCHA era with 80 wins and helped UAA advance to the WCHA Final Five.
An evaluator for the USA Hockey selection camps in Michigan from 2015 to 2020, Shyiak served as a coach at the USA Hockey national selection camp in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2020. He has also served as a guest coach for the Washington Capitals Development Camp in 2010 and the Swedish National U20 team camp in 2009.
Dave and his wife, Lucia – a former two-time NMU All-American volleyball standout – have three children, Kristian, Sheldon, and Isabela.
