Minnesota Gophers Hockey: Gophers Hire Steve Miller as Assistant Coach

The Minnesota Gophers finally made their hire this past week for a new assistant coach, and they made a great one. Minnesota will hire longtime assistant coach State Miller as their new associate Head Coach. He replaces Garret Raboin who left to take over as head coach of the new NCAA DI program at Augustana in Sioux Falls.

Miller comes to Minnesota with loads of NCAA and international coaching experience. He most recently was the associate head coach at Ohio State for the past five seasons helping the Buckeyes to the Frozen Four in 2018. Prior to the Buckeyes he was an assistant coach at both Air Force and Providence in the mid-2010’s. His main coaching success came at Denver where he spend 19 seasons as an assistant with the Pioneers leading them to both the 2004 and 2005 NCAA Championships and coached and recruited 45 NHL draft picks, 65 all-league selections, 17 All-Americans and two Hobey Baker Memorial Award winners, Matt Carle (2006) and Will Butcher (2017). Miller recruited the bulk of the Denver team that would win the 2017 NCAA title as well.

He also has extensive international experience and was selected by Bob Motzko to be his lead assistant with the US Junior National Team in 2017 when the team won Gold and in 2018 when they together won bronze. Miller has continued to be a presence behind the US bench at the World Juniors where he added a silver medal in 2019 and another gold medal in 2021, and is set to be behind the bench in 2022.

The Sun Prairie, Wisconsin native started his playing and coaching career at St. Mary’s University in Winona.

Miller comes highly respected in the coaching world. When the announcement was made, Minnesota was lauded on social media.

Congrats to the Gophers on a great hire and welcome aboard Steve!