The Miami coaching staff has been garnering commits for the upcoming season since being hired last spring, and incoming members of the RedHawks’ 2025-26 class are attracting national attention.
Between traditional recruits, Canadian Hockey League commits and portal transfers, 14 forwards, seven defenseman and a goalie have signed as the newest members of the MU hockey program in the most chaotic off-season in NCAA history.
Of the RedHawks’ six portal pick-ups, two will be sophomores, two juniors and two seniors. The other 16 will be freshmen.
“I wouldn’t say we’re 100 percent officially done, but we’re close,” Miami coach Anthony Noreen said. “Obviously we’re excited about it. As with all things, time will tell, but we feel like we had a really specific plan for what we’re trying to do and the type of people and the type of players that we were trying to look for.”
Across Division I, rosters are solidifying much later than normal, largely because of the uncertainty of the CHL, whose players are eligible to join NCAA teams for the first time ever.
Academic eligibility and NIL money questions are still being settled for potential CHL-to-Division I signees as well, and courts still haven’t ruled on roster maximums. It was originally thought that the rosters for teams like Miami that opted into the new NCAA revenue sharing settlement would be capped at 26, but that issue is still tied up in court.
At present, the judge in the case is leaning toward allowing teams opting into the settlement to carry more than 26 players.
In Miami’s case, the sheer volume of turnover, plus questions surrounding players from last season recovering from surgeries make nailing down a full complement of players even more arduous, so it may be some time before fans get a glance at the completed 2025-26 roster.
It’s also unclear how many of the nine remaining members of the RedHawks’ 2024-25 class will be invited back, but Casper Nassen and Michael Quinn both impressed in their freshman seasons and have locked in roster spots, as has alternate captain and senior-to-be Blake Mesenburg.
Eleven RedHawks underclassmen entered the transfer portal this spring, of which four have already found new Division I suitors.
Having to cut players that spent up to three seasons at Miami was not a task Noreen particularly enjoyed.
“There’s no two ways about it: It was awful,” Noreen said. “Having said that, we were brought here to do a job, and there are certain times when you’re a leader, and it doesn’t matter if you’re the leader of a family or a business or whatever, you have to take your heart out of things and you have to do what you know is best for the business, the organization, whatever it might be. And this was simply one of those situations. There were a lot of really good people sitting in that room, and as a university, we’re going to continue to support those guys in every single way we can. But if you look around college hockey and some of those programs that have drastically turned things around, there’s been a lot of turnover.
“One thing I can tell you is we coached those guys until the very last day — every one of them — as though we were in a playoff race, as though they were going to be here, and at the end of the day…we had to make some hard decisions. We’re not saying we’re completely right with all of them, but all you can do as a coach and a leader is take the information you have and make the best possible decision for the organization moving forward, and that’s what we feel like we did.”
Of the newest RedHawks, three are former NHL draft picks — defensemen Vladimir Lukashevich and Kyle Aucoin (both Florida Panthers selections) and forward Ethan Hay (Tampa Bay).
Forwards David Deputy and Artemi Nizameyev finished in the top 13 in scoring in the USHL, the top Division I development league, and Deputy is tied for the league lead in playoff goals with eight in nine games.
Puck Preps ranked Nizameyev one of the top USHL skaters in 5-on-5 play and Deputy in the top 10.
“A lot of these guys, if you look at where they came from and their numbers — as you can imagine, we were in some serious recruiting battles,” Noreen said.
Deputy teammate and goalie Shika Gadzhiev is also thriving in the USHL postseason, posting a 5-0 record and a league-best 1.74 goals-against average and .948 save percentage. He and Deputy have helped lead their Muskegon Lumberjacks to the Clark Cup final.
Neutral Zone Hockey has Miami’s portal transfer class listed as the eighth-best in college hockey, and multiple publications have the RedHawks’ entire recruiting class ranked in the top 10 across Division I.
“We’re not saying that we’re going to beat the world next season, but the foundation that we have set and what we think it’s going to do for us culturally, just to have a group of guys that are as competitive as these guys are with the different backgrounds they’re coming from and a lot of the different successes that they’ve had, we think it’s going to be a really good starting point to get this program going in the right direction,” Noreen said.
In addition to the fortified talent level, Miami’s 2025-26 roster is better balanced, with a proportional number of smaller and bigger forwards, true centers and wings, and puck-moving and stay-at-home defensemen.
“That was obviously a goal,” Noreen said. “One of the things that I think is really clear: If you break down the teams in the NCHC and most of the top teams in college hockey…and the top scorers, they were committed when they were 16-years-old. Maybe that team waited two years, three years, whatever it may be to get in, so we had to find a way in short order and make this team as competitive as possible while we’re waiting for the guys that we committed on Aug. 1 verbally. The guys we were able to get in pretty short amount of time — we went in a lot of different directions, whether it was Western (Hockey) League or OHL or USHL, other colleges, other conferences — it’s exciting.”
And Noreen’s staff is already building an armament beyond next season, including CHL first-round pick from Gatineau Maxim Dube.
Gadzhiev is the only goalie on Miami’s roster, but Noreen said a second should be announced soon, and possibly a third as well.
With 18 forwards either signed or still formally on the roster, the RedHawks will obviously need to trim a couple of spots up front. Miami may hold one or more non-overage USHL skaters in juniors for another season.
Coach Zack Cisek’s vacated assistant coaching spot has been filled on the interim by Lionel Mauron, who was the previously head coach of Ohio University’s club team and earned ACHA coach of the year honors in 2023.
Mauron headed the RedHawks’ hockey operations last season.
“We’re just really excited about the people, about the type of guys that we have that are going to be sitting in that room and representing Miami hockey next year, and that’s from our incoming freshmen to our guys in the transfer portal, guys from a bunch of different areas with a lot different backgrounds, but the one thing they have in common is they are guys that are truly competitive,” Noreen said. “They love hockey, and if you see a commonality, you’ll see a lot of guys (were) wearing ‘C’s’ and ‘A’s with their (former) teams, and that tells you a lot about the type of guys we were looking to bring in here.”
The full list of signees and their 2024-25 regular season stats, which can also be found in this tab on the site:
FORWARDS
| Player | Team | League | GP | G | A | Pts. | PIM | +/- |
| David Deputy | Muskegon | USHL | 59 | 21 | 36 | 57 | 134 | 22 |
| Artemi Nizameyev | Tri-City | USHL | 53 | 27 | 28 | 55 | 31 | 0 |
| Kocha Delic | Sudbury | OHL | 46 | 22 | 32 | 54 | 56 | -3 |
| Ryan Seelinger | Des Moines | USHL | 62 | 14 | 19 | 33 | 24 | -12 |
| Ethan Hay | Kingston | OHL | 62 | 13 | 18 | 31 | 96 | -7 |
| Matteo Giampa | Canisius | NCAA | 37 | 8 | 22 | 30 | 10 | -10 |
| Justin Stupka | Sioux City | USHL | 60 | 15 | 11 | 26 | 50 | 6 |
| Ilia Morozov | Tri-City | USHL | 59 | 11 | 11 | 22 | 20 | -12 |
| Ian Scherzer | Madison | USHL | 39 | 8 | 12 | 20 | 48 | 9 |
| Max Helgeson | UAA | NCAA | 34 | 8 | 11 | 19 | 16 | -7 |
| Charlie Blanchard | Cedar Rapids | USHL | 55 | 6 | 9 | 15 | 23 | -1 |
| Bradley Walker | Waterloo | USHL | 57 | 7 | 6 | 13 | 106 | 3 |
| Ryan Smith | Quinnipiac | NCAA | 34 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 21 | -10 |
| Doug Grimes | Boston U. | NCAA | 15 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 8 | -4 |
DEFENSEMEN
| Player | Team | League | GP | G | A | Pts. | PIM | +/- |
| Shaun McEwen | Tri-City | USHL | 57 | 7 | 25 | 32 | 89 | 12 |
| Charlie Michaud | Madison | USHL | 61 | 5 | 27 | 32 | 22 | 7 |
| Ryder Thompson | Portland | WHL | 67 | 9 | 14 | 23 | 33 | -9 |
| Michael Phelan | Waterloo | USHL | 52 | 3 | 9 | 12 | 27 | 5 |
| Cal Huston | Youngstown | USHL | 61 | 1 | 8 | 9 | 47 | 29 |
| Vladislav Lukashevich | Michigan St. | NCAA | 29 | 1 | 6 | 7 | 11 | 4 |
| Kyle Aucoin | Harvard | NCAA | 28 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 8 | -3 |
GOALIES
| Player | Team | League | GP | Min. | W-L | GAA | Sv% | SHO |
| Shika Gadzhiev | Muskegon | USHL | 34 | 1,990 | 19-13 | 2.68 | .909 | 3 |
NOTE: The RedHawks can hold non-overage USHL players in juniors next season if necessary.
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