St. Cloud State Brings Back Former Captain, Assistant Coach At Helm For Next Season

St. Cloud State has hired Nick Oliver to return to their program after being an assistant coach of the national runner-up University of Wisconsin Badgers.

Oliver, a 34-year-old, was born and raised in Minnesota, winning a state championship with Roseau High back in his playing days. He will replace former head coach Brett Larson.

A press conference to welcome him to the Husky faithful will be held at 3 p.m. Central time on Monday.

This will not be the first time Oliver will be stationed on the campus northwest of Minneapolis. Oliver played his collegiate hockey at St. Cloud State from 2011-15 with the Huskies, notching 145 games in his four-year tenure.

40 of those games were spent with the C on his jersey, the captain in his senior year.

Oliver came back to the program in 2018 as an assistant coach, eventually leaving in 2022 for his first-ever head coaching gig with the USHL’s Fargo Force.

His hiring at St. Cloud State is the first-ever NCAA head coaching job in his career.

Some might question his youth in his mid-30s, being the second youngest head coach in the NCAA behind LIU’s Brendan Riley. 

St. Cloud State is looking to hit a “David Carle” home run hire. Carle, Denver’s Head Coach, has been nothing short of successful since being hired as a 28-year-old in 2018.

The Huskies are coming off a 16-19-1 season, finishing fifth out of nine teams in the Goliath NCHC, which now has another national championship to their conference’s name.

The four teams that finished above the Huskies? Four NCAA tournament teams are in North Dakota, Denver, Western Michigan, and Minnesota Duluth.