Paul Pearl

Paul Pearl is an American ice hockey coach and former player. He is currently an associate coach for Harvard, having previously served as head coach for Holy Cross for 19 seasons.^[1]

Career

Paul Pearl began attending Holy Cross in 1985 and was a starter for the Division III program for four years, becoming captain of the team in his senior season.^[2] After graduating Pearl became director of the ice hockey program at Portsmouth Abbey School for two years before returning to college as an assistant at Connecticut under Bruce Marshall. In 1994 he was named as head coach for his alma mater and sought to bring the team out of the middling results that had dominated over the previous decade. After two mildly successful seasons, however, Pearl resigned to take a job with Division I Rensselaer but was back with the Crusaders a year later as Holy Cross was beginning to prepare for their own move to the D-I level.

Holy Cross became a founding member of the MAAC ice hockey conference in 1998 and Pearl helped the team celebrate by winning a then-team record 22 wins capped off by capturing the inaugural conference tournament. Unfortunately the MAAC did not possess an automatic bid for the NCAA tournament and Holy Cross was not invited despite its achievement. Pearl and the Crusaders would spend the next two seasons at the bottom of the standings before returning to their winning ways but could not capture another MAAC title before the conference dissolved in 2003. As they had done before Holy Cross won the premier conference tournament for the successor Atlantic Hockey conference but this time were invited to the 2004 tournament. While Pearl's team was blanked by North Dakota their second berth two years later provided what is widely considered the biggest upset in the history of the tournament when they downed the second ranked Minnesota Golden Gophers 4-3 in overtime.^[3]

The 2005–06 season was the finest the school had ever seen but it was also an outlier in Pearl's record. over the next 8 years the team would have 5 losing seasons and be unable to win any conference crown, let alone return to the NCAA tournament. In 2014 Pearl resigned from his position despite being half-way through his most recent contract extension^[4] and took an Associate position with Harvard^[5] A position he still holds as of 2016.

Head coaching record

References

External links

• Paul Pearl's career statistics at The Internet Hockey Database