Michigan Tech Hires Joe Shawhan as New Assistant Coach

Michigan Tech had a vacant assistant coaching position to fill, after assistant coach Damon Whitten was hired as the new head coach at Lake Superior State.

The Huskies appear to have filled that vacant position. First reported by Tim Braun of the Tech Hockey Guide, and since confirmed by others, the Huskies have hired Northern Michigan assistant coach Joe Shawhan to fill Whitten's vacancy.

Shawhan played his college hockey at Lake Superior in the '80s, and worked on the Lakers staff as a volunteer assistant coach through their glory days in the early '90s. He then moved across town, working as head coach/general manager of the Soo Indians of the NAHL, where he notably coached a young Ryan Miller.

Shawhan returned to the college ranks in 2005 as an assistant coach at his alma mater, where he worked for three seasons before having his contract not renewed due to a disagreement with Laker head coach Jim Roque. In 2010, he was hired as an assistant coach at Northern Michigan--a job he had turned down a year before being let go by Lake Superior--where he has remained until this season.

In a strange bit of coincidence, Shawhan, who remains immensely popular in Sault Ste Marie, was one of the local favorites to take the vacant head coaching job at Lake Superior earlier this summer, though he was not granted a final interview by the Lakers' selection committee. Instead, he will be taking the job vacated by the man Lake Superior hired.