College Hockey Insider Mike McMahon on Challenges Facing UNH Hockey & Head Coach Mike Souza

Mike McMahon

UNH Head Coach Mike Souza

Veteran sportswriter Mike McMahon has been covering college hockey for 20 years. He began as a beat reporter for The Eagle-Tribune in August 2026, covering Merrimack College and Hockey East. Later that year, McMahon began contributing to College Hockey News and is currently their columnist and co-host of CHN Insiders Podcast.

Five seasons ago, McMahon launched College Hockey Insider*, a newsletter providing daily coverage of college hockey news, analysis, and commentary. He's also does play-by-play and color analysis on ESPN+ broadcasts of Hockey East games.

Today's "Mailbag" edition of College Hockey Insider included several questions from hockey fans. In his answer to one of them, McMahon provided his analysis of challenges facing the UNH men's hockey program and Head Coach Mike Souza. Here is the fan's question and McMahon's answer:

Fan: "Has Mike Souza’s performance this season tipped the scales at all on his potential departure from UNH, or do you anticipate that the school will extend him again?"

Mike McMahon: "I’ve written about this before, and I know it frustrates some UNH fans to hear it, but the reality is this: New Hampshire doesn’t have a coaching problem. It has a resource problem.
Compared to the rest of Hockey East, UNH funds its program at or near the bottom of the league. For example, they’re still one of the only programs that do not fund a third full-time assistant coach — something that has become standard across most of the country, let alone the conference. And this past year, they lost Ryan Conmy, in large part because of revenue-sharing opportunities elsewhere that UNH couldn’t match.
Someone asked me in January where associate head coach Glenn Stewart had been, because they had not seen him on the bench for several weeks. He was recruiting. Every weekend. Because they don’t have a full-time third assistant like the rest of the teams in their league.
Fifteen years ago, UNH was almost a lock to finish in the top four of Hockey East most seasons. But back then, the program also operated with top-tier resources. That simply isn’t the case anymore. They kept their investment level the same, while everyone else — Providence, UMass Lowell, UMass — all started to invest heavily in the sport.
Institutionally, UNH has fallen behind several of its conference peers. In terms of overall investment, they’re easily in the bottom three in Hockey East — and arguably in the bottom two.
And in today’s landscape, there’s no magic fix. It’s not like 1995, when a new coach could arrive with a different recruiting pipeline and immediately reshape a program. The recruiting world is far more transparent now. Everyone knows who the best players are. UNH just can’t get them to Durham, and that’s a resource and facility issue.
At first, UNH started losing ground because it fell behind in facilities. Now the gap exists in both facilities and revenue-sharing resources. That combination makes the climb extremely difficult, regardless of who is behind the bench."

The same fan replied to McMahon with comments on UNH's budget/resources and Souza's performance plus these follow up questions:

Fan: "does UNH fire Souza with one year remaining on his contract, does UNH have him return next season as a lame duck coach, or does UNH extend him for another few seasons like they did last time? Also, I get the sense that if you were AD of UNH, you would be bringing him back given you think it is a resources issue not a coaching issue, but am I wrong on that?"

Here are excerpts of McMahon's reply:
Mike McMahon: "I don't think they'll fire him. They had him go into the last year of his deal three years ago, and I think they'll do the same here. I do think it's a resource issue, and not a coaching issue. They don't staff their program to Hockey East levels, and from a budgetary standpoint, they are in the bottom tier with Merrimack and Vermont. Those are institutional problems."

"I'd rather see the school invest first, and then see what Souza and his staff can do with comparable resources to the rest of Hockey East. I believe he's a good coach. If they do that and it's still not working, then you have to figure it's time for a change. Until then, I think you're looking at a school that's just looking to pass its investment shortcomings onto a coach."

"And if I were the AD, I'd want to see what the current staff could do with a real Hockey East budget, and with real Hockey East resources. You get what you pay for. I don't think you can expect even a middle-of-the-pack finish when you're funding your program at the 10th-place level."


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