Noreen: Conditioning a ‘major culture shift’

The extent of Miami’s first-half struggles were not lost on Anthony Noreen’s family and friends when the first-year RedHawks coach returned to his hometown of Chicago for Christmas.

But despite a 3-13-2 start to his Division I coaching career, Noreen was beaming.

“They’re just so used to my teams winning, so they’re a little bit like, how am I going to be?” Noreen said. “And they’re like, yeah, you seem happiest you’ve ever been, and I’m like, yeah, this is the greatest challenge I’ve ever had. And that, for me, for how my brain works, for what drives me, for what pushes me — there’s nothing that fills my cup more than having an unbelievable challenge in front of me.”

The RedHawks have not won since Oct. 26 vs. upstart Lindenwood and have dropped 10 straight, including their first eight NCHC games. Last season, Miami won six games before the calendar flipped.

MU has been outscored, 32-9 since starting league play.

But the arching goal of this season supersedes wins and losses. The focus is on reversing a cancerous losing culture that has infected Miami hockey for nearly a decade spanning multiple coaching regimes.

“There’s a ton of room for growth still, and there’s things we certainly could’ve done better,” Noreen said. “What you do is you be honest in your evaluation and start with evaluating yourself and your staff and areas you can grow and areas you can be better in and situations you could’ve handled better and then you try to apply those things. That’s an ever-evolving process, and whether you’re in first place or last place, I don’t think that that changes.

“There’s things culturally that we have certainly gotten better as the season has gone on. I think the intention with which we practice and go about our business has gotten much better — it needs to continue to improve, and there’s still room for growth in those areas. The best teams and the best players are the ones that push each other and push the hardest in practice and just don’t know any other way to go about things, and then when it gets hard in games, it’s just who they are and what they are, what they’re used to. That’s a big part of what we’re trying to build and grow within our program.”

So record aside, how does Noreen assess the first half of the season?

“You’ll probably talk to me at some point hopefully in a couple of years when we’ve got this thing rolling — I don’t think you’re ever totally satisfied with where you’re at,” Noreen said. “Having said that, I’m the type of person that’s going to find the positives and be optimistic about the things that we have done well, and I certainly think there are things that we have (improved on), but do we need to be better? Does the record need to be better? Do some of the individual performances and what we get out of guys need to be better? Absolutely.”

One quantifiable metric the RedHawks have made a major improvement in is penalty killing. Miami finished 77.4 percent last season, and but MU killed penalties at a 92.7 percent clip in its first 15 games of 2024-25 and are 85.7 percent overall.

And NHL coach Mike Babcock has stated, killing penalties is almost exclusively effort-based.

The 2024-25 season began well enough, with Miami unbeaten through its first four games at 2-0-2, but MU went 1-5 against non-conference opponents Robert Morris, RPI and Lindenwood — with five of those games on home ice — and limped into NCHC play at 3-5-2.

The RedHawks played two solid games in St. Cloud and came away with one point but were smoked by Minn.-Duluth the following week, getting outscored, 12-2 on their home ice.

Then after losing a competitive game the following Friday at Omaha, Miami was hammered, 8-1 in the finale.

Noreen was visibly upset in the postgame presser.

“Saturday night, I would say maybe along with that Thursday Robert Morris game, was probably only the second time all year that we kind of laid it in, and that is just totally unacceptable,” Noreen said. “For me, if we play hard and compete and we’re good teammates and we stick together, you’re very rarely going to hear me be upset.”

After playing 16 games in eight weekends, Miami finally enjoyed an off weekend. Well, enjoyed might not be the right word as images of Herb Brooks‘ famous Norway practice surface.

“It was not a bye week, it was a week where we really pushed the limits mentally and physically of our team and of each other, and I thought that resulted in better performances,” Noreen said.

The RedHawks responded the following weekend by taking North Dakota to the final minute before losing, 5-4 in the series opener and falling, 4-2 in the 2024 finale, one of its hardest-fought games of the season.

“The Saturday night game I thought was one of the better, if not the best, effort that we had all year as a group, and I think it’s something we can learn from, we can build on,” Noreen said.

For several seasons, confidence has been cited as a major issue for this program, and that certainly remains the case.

Recruiting has been another. Fortunately for Miami, its recently-announced 2025-26 freshman class is quite impressive, so the future is Timbuk3 bright on that front alone.

One that hasn’t been discussed as much is fitness. The RedHawks have been outscored, 24-7 after the second period this season and 10-0 in the third period of their last six games.

Miami has crashed and burned in the final 20 minutes at nauseatingly bad levels for a long time, and it’s still not clear whether those struggles have directly correlated to Cady Arena allowing alcohol sales in the concourse the past couple of seasons.

“That has been one of my biggest points of emphasis, coming in here, is that overall needs to be way better,” Noreen said. “From the beginning, how we eat, how we train, the pace with which we practice, and that’s not something that you snap your fingers and it happens overnight, it’s a major culture shift.

“Third period, it’s like the fourth quarter in football or in basketball: You should feel like when you get in those moments you are totally prepared for it because of the work that you’ve put in, so we’re going to continue to put that work in, and that intensity of that work that we put in is only going to get harder and is only going to get ramped up and we feel like when this season ends and it’s time for spring workouts, there is going to be an intensity level and an action level that is going to be way outside the comfort zone of what these guys have been a part of before. It just is. If we want to get this program to the level we all want to get it to, a lot of your work is done during summer, a lot of your work is done during the spring, and that’s what it’s going to have to be like here.”

And with a much lighter game schedule (USHL and other major juniors leagues typically play roughly twice as many games), players have more time to focus on developing themselves in other areas.

“You’re only playing 34 games, and a big reason why a lot of guys come to college hockey is because of that work off the ice, the work that’s done in the gym and how much you can grow physically, strength-wise and endurance-wise,” Noreen said. “That’s something that we’re all in on as a program is making sure that we get that to an elite level.”

Noreen said that this season, Miami invested in a program called Catapult, which monitors heart rates and how much wear and tear players endure during practices.

Similar to NFL and Division I football athletes, players wear what appears similar to a sports bra under their equipment to track their cardiac vitals.

“That’s been a huge help,” Noreen said. “When we talk about the stuff we’re trying to do on the sports science side to advance our program, that was a huge investment that our program made.”

And sticking to that theme, Noreen said his coaching staff created specific work regiments over the holidays for each player during the extended mid-season break based on the equipment available around their respective homes.

“To me, it’s a lifestyle choice in a way,” Noreen said. “If you’re an elite athlete, you can’t be normal, you can’t eat normal, you can’t sleep normal, you can’t train normal, you’ve just got to have the discipline to be different. A lot of times when it comes down to it, it’s those small edges and small differences and small choices that make the difference in the end when it’s extremely close, and that’s something that we’ve put a big emphasis on here, especially as of late, is our conditioning level.”

In Kearney, Neb., where Noreen coached USHL Tri-City for the previous seven years, his players under 21. Most of the RedHawks are of drinking age, living in a block-by-block buffet of alcohol and unhealthy food.

“To me, I don’t think it should matter if you’re in a college town or in New York City, or wherever you’re at,” Noreen said. “If you want to do what you say you want to do, and you want to be an elite Division I athlete, you’re going to get faced with choices, every single day. You can make the choice that an elite athlete can make, or you can make the other choice, and somebody’s passing up somebody. Either the guy that you’re going up against Friday night is passing you up, or you’re passing him up, and that comes down to choices that you make not just in the season but in the off-season, and again, I think that’s something that we’re trying to teach with our current guys and what we’re trying to recruit for the future.

“That’s not to say that you need to be a choir boy, or that you can’t ever socialize, but if you look at the highest level of sports right now – the days of the Mickey Mantles, those days are over with. You read about these top athletes and what they’re doing and how they treat their bodies. Look at the Sidney Crosbys and read about what he’s doing in the off-season and in between games and LeBron James at his age and what his personal fitness routine is like. That’s just what it’s become, and the best players right now are the guys that are addicted to that stuff. That is their life.”

Noreen, a pescatarian, prides himself on his personal fitness and has since he has played competitive hockey.

Prior to the season, Dave Starman commented on Twit-X that he saw Noreen working out at 10 p.m. at a showcase, exemplifying his dedication.

“I just really believe – and it’s nothing against coaches that don’t do that – but if you’re going to ask your players to do something, I don’t know how you don’t do it yourself,” Noreen said. “So I’m going to ask from these guys and I’m going to demand from these guys and I’m going to push these guys, and I’m going to be the one leading the way in that department.”