Arizona State Parts Ways With Greg Powers and Hires Dave Hakstol as the Mayich Review Continues

Arizona State tried to turn a page on Thursday, and the family at the centre of the story said, in public and within hours, that the page is not theirs to turn. The university announced a mutual agreement to part ways with Greg Powers, the coach who built its Division I hockey programme, and the immediate hiring of Dave Hakstol. The independent review of the August workout that left defenseman Matthew Mayich on life support is still running, and nothing in Thursday’s announcement answers the questions it was commissioned to ask.

What exactly did the university announce?

A clean break, in negotiated language. Arizona State said it had reached a mutual agreement to part ways with Powers and thanked him for establishing the programme and for nearly two decades of service, Reuters reports. A university spokesperson told Front Office Sports that Powers was not fired for cause and did not resign, and that a financial agreement exists but its terms were not provided. The detail that gives the wording weight is what Powers had signed: an extension last year, supported by a major gift, that made his the university’s first endowed head coaching position and carried his name, Reuters and Front Office Sports report. Programmes do not usually exit contracts like that in October without a reason, and the reason here has a name and a hospital room.

Why was Powers already away from the team?

The leave came first, in September. Reuters reports Powers was placed on paid administrative leave after seven members of the team asked the university to remove him pending an investigation into Mayich’s collapse during an outdoor workout on August 20. Assistant coach Alex Hicks, who was present at the workout, has also been away from the team, Sportsnet reports. USA Today, citing the Arizona Republic’s reporting, says the military-style workout was run by a non-staff instructor whose vetting has since been questioned. Those are the reported contours of the case, and the desk is treating them as exactly that: the findings belong to the review, not to Thursday’s press release. College hockey has seen programmes play through a coach’s absence before, but rarely with the players themselves as the group that asked for it, a dynamic closer to a holdout reaching the regular season in Winnipeg than to a normal midseason change.

What is known about Mayich’s condition?

Only what his family, through their attorney, has put on the record. Mayich, 21, a sophomore defenseman drafted by the St. Louis Blues, collapsed during the workout on the first day the NCAA allows official team activities, Sportsnet reports. His family’s attorney, Robert Carey, says exertional heat stroke reduced the flow of oxygen to his brain and that he is not expected to recover, Reuters reports. He remains on life support in a Tempe hospital. Nothing in this article goes beyond that sourcing, because nothing verified does: the workout’s conditions, supervision and response are precisely what the independent review exists to establish. Mayich’s Blues connection made this a league story as well as a campus one in a week when St. Louis rookie Dylan Peterson’s debut fight in Ottawa was the organisation’s other headline, for reasons at the opposite end of hockey’s risk scale.

What did the family say about the exit?

That a settlement is not an answer. In a statement reported by Front Office Sports, the family said the departure looks more like a negotiated agreement than accountability, and that Justice Scott Bales’s investigation must continue at full scope, covering everyone involved in that morning’s workout and in approving it, with its findings made public. Powers’s own statement, provided by the university, wished strength and healing for Matthew and his family and pledged support for the new staff, Reuters reports. The two statements were published the same day and do not meet anywhere: one announces a new chapter, the other insists the old one is not finished being read. Lawmakers at state and federal level have backed the family’s call for an independent inquiry, Front Office Sports reports.

Who is taking over, and how fast?

Immediately, and with a résumé built for a programme in this exact spot. Hakstol, 58, spent 11 seasons at North Dakota, reaching the Frozen Four seven times, then coached the Philadelphia Flyers and the Seattle Kraken before joining Jared Bednar’s staff in Colorado, where he ran the power play, Reuters reports. He will be behind the bench on Friday and Saturday at UMass Lowell. Colorado moved quickly to fill his seat, hiring Brett McLean, USA Today reports, a small transaction that underlines the speed of the whole week: on Monday the Avalanche were granting permission for talks, a process Sportsnet tracked while Nathan MacKinnon was fighting Roope Hintz in Dallas, and by Thursday the hire was announced. Hakstol has also added former NHL defenseman Matt Greene as an assistant while retaining Jimmy Mullin, the Arizona Republic reports via USA Today.

What happens next in Tempe?

Two clocks, running at different speeds. The hockey clock is this weekend in Lowell and a season that continues under a new coach, in a conference race that will not wait for December. The other clock is Bales’s review, which the university has asked to be completed by early December, AP reports, and whose publication the family has now demanded in advance. When it lands, it will be the first document in this story that was not written by one of the parties to it. Until then, the most accurate summary of Thursday is the narrow one: the coach is gone, the replacement is experienced, and the question the programme has been carrying since August 20, how a supervised workout ended with a 21-year-old on life support, is still officially unanswered. The desk will follow the review in place on this article, the same way it tracked Connor Bedard’s return timeline in Chicago until the player himself settled it.