Where Eagles Soars

My last day at the professional ballpark in the city came and went today as the home portion of the local professional baseball team is now done. Because baseball is now over for me, I'm also ending the 2023 HBIC Summer Project that looked at some of the great women who played baseball in the AAGPBL, played some high-level hockey, and the women who are carrying on that two-sport tradition today. The end of baseball always means that the autumn season is near, and that also means that hockey training camps will be getting underway for most teams if they haven't started already. Players will be tested, teams will be built, seasons will be played, and championships will once again be handed out to the best teams standing at the end of their respective seasons!

There are players, though, who have chosen to move on and do other things with their lives as retirement from the game will happen to every player who skates. Some make news while retired while others fade into obscurity, and I often find myself wondering where some of these players landed. For every Wayne Gretzky, there is a fourth-line player who didn't seek a TV analyst role or front office career in management. Today, we pull one of those players out of obscurity to find out that he led a very incredible life after his professional hockey career ended!

You may remember Mike Eagles from his time with Quebec, Chicago, Winnipeg, and Washington in the NHL, but the Sussex, New Brunswick native had a solid junior career with the Kitchener Rangers and a good start to his professional career with the AHL's Fredericton Express. Eagles wasn't remembered for his scoring, but his defensive play as a forward made him a valuable player to the teams on which he played as he often drew checking assignments against the opposition's best players. Eagles would play 853 NHL games where he scored 74 goals and 122 assists, and he also added two goals and six assists in 44 NHL playoff games before retiring in 2000.

After retiring from the NHL, Eagles wasn't out of the game for long as he accepted the head coaching position for the St. Thomas University Tommies men's hockey team in the AUS. St. Thomas, which had finished 7-19-2 and dead last in 2001-02, saw an immediate turnaround under Eagles as the Tommies went 16-7-5 to finish atop the standings in the AUS! As a result, Eagles was named as the 2003 AUS Coach of the Year, becoming just the third St. Thomas coach to win the award in the program's history! The Tommies would fall short in the playoffs, though, and miss out on an opportunity for the CIS National Men's Hockey Championship.

St. Thomas would drop to 11-15-2 and sixth-place in 2003-04, drop out of the playoffs at 9-17-2 in eighth-place in 2004-05, bounce back to a 14-12-2 record for fifth-place in 2005-06, repeat their fifth-place finish in 2006-07 with a 14-14-0 season, and climb to fourth-place with an 11-11-6 mark in 2007-08. While he never guided the Tommies to the same success he had in his first season behind the bench, Eagles donned a second hat in the summer of 2008 when he was named St. Thomas University's Athletic Director!

The dual jobs that Eagles held may have occupied more of his time that he normally gave to hockey as the 2008-09 version of the Tommies fell to seventh-place on the strength of an 8-16-4 record. They actually fell further in 2009-10 as the Tommies finished in eighth-place out of eight teams on a 7-19-2 season. 2010-11 was the lowest point of Eagles' coaching career with St. Thomas as the Tommies put together a woeful 3-21-4 record to finish dead last by a large margin, and it forced a decision that affected Eagles' coaching career and the direction of the Tommies.

St. Thomas University interim president Dennis Cochrane decided that the dual roles that Eagles was filling wasn't doing justice to either position, so Cochrane asked Eagles to step down as the head coach to focus on his work as St. Thomas's Athletic Director. Obviously, the Tommies needed a head coach with the position vacant after Eagles chose to remain as Athletic Director, and former Acadia Axemen assistant coach Troy Ryan - yes, he of the current Canadian women's national team - was named as the new head coach of the Tommies on April 28, 2011. Ryan officially started the job on May 2 as he looked to lead the Tommies back to the AUS playoffs.

There's no denying that Troy Ryan is a very capable and intelligent coach, but it seems that whatever happened in 2011-12 and 2012-13 simply wasn't working as Ryan's Tommies went 8-42-6 in those two seasons. Ryan informed Eagles at the end of the 2012-13 that he would be resigning from the head coach position, telling STUTommies.com, "It just got to the point where I didn't think it was the best fit. Whether I wasn't the best fit or they weren't the best fit for me, it's time to leave.".

While it was disappointing for Tommies fans and players to see Ryan leave, the cracks in the financial foundation of the university were beginning to show in 2013 as the Fredericton-based university was expected to post a $600,000 shortfall that year. The Athletic Department under Eagles pressed on, though, and Tommies alumnus Patrick Powers was named as head coach for the 2013-13 season with former Tommies players Quade Lightbody and David Reynolds serving as his assistants. Could these three men boost the program out of the AUS basement?

In one word: no. The Tommies posted a 6-20-2 record to finish in seventh-place in 2013-14. 2014-15 saw the program take a significant step back once again as the Tommies went 2-22-4 in that campaign to finish in eighth-place once again. And as hard as it may be to believe, the 2015-16 version of the Tommies was actually worse than they were one year earlier as they finished the season with a 2-25-1 mark that included going oh-fer-14 on the road that season. While things looked bleak on the St. Thomas campus for the men's hockey team, the worst was about to come.

The Tommies men's hockey team had been a Fredericton fixture since 1938, playing games every winter as the sands of time poured through the hourglass. In 2016, though, the school was facing a a growing deficit in excess of $1 million, and the difficult decision was made to eliminate unnecessary expenses that the school was funding. One of those expenses was men's hockey whose budget was $245,000, so the school went ahead and saved a quarter of a million dollars by shutting down men's hockey.

"The costs of operating the men's hockey program are unsustainable in light of our other financial priorities, especially in academic and student areas — it is simply beyond our means," Dawn Russell, the university's president and vice-chancellor, said. "We have an operating budget deficit and are closely examining costs across our operations."

That news - delivered on April 5, 2016 - wasn't received well by any of the students or staff who represented the hockey program, a number of fans, and the Athletic Director at the school, Mike Eagles. Eagles had discussions with the administration on what could be done to keep hockey going, but the final decision stood as the hockey program was cut from the Athletics Department. Because of the saving, it also meant that no other sports would be in jeopardy of being cut, forcing Eagles to view this cut from a bigger perspective.

"The decision has been made and I'm moving forward with an acceptance of the decision," he stated matter-of-factly. "At the end of the day, I know the university is in a very tough spot with the finances the way they are."

The bleeding didn't stop there, though, as an article written by Tiana Trevino on November 6, 2019 in The Celt Independent highlighted the ongoing financial difficulties that the university face. Tiana wrote,

"The University of St. Thomas has run a deficit of $8 million since the beginning of 2019, according to Vice President for Finance Spencer Conroy, an increase over the 2018 deficit of $7 million quoted to the Independent by Vice President for Communication and Marketing Jeff Olsen.

"Fundraising and the UST community as a whole, however, have helped lower the 2019 net deficit to about $2.5 million, according to Conroy."

While cutting hockey temporarily slowed the bleeding, it's pretty clear that St. Thomas was still hemorrhaging money despite efforts to prevent the deficit from growing since 2013. I'm not saying that men's hockey should have returned to St. Thomas while they were splashing red ink all over the school's ledgers, but cutting hockey didn't quite put an end to the problem either. Whatever financial problems were still plaguing the university never went away, and that means hockey wasn't coming back.

While none of that could be solved by Mike Eagles, it wasn't like he was neglecting the other athletic teams at St. Thomas. STU has hosted numerous Atlantic Collegiate Athletics Association championships, Canadian Collegiate Athletics Association championships, and U Sports national championships which saw the school host the 2014 CIS Women's National Hockey Championship.

In terms of individual sports, the Tommies men's volleyball team won their second-straight ACAA championship in 2021-22, the women's hockey program earned their first win at the CIS National Championship with a 2-1 win over McGill in 2015-16, and the Tommies brought home the 2021-22 ACAA Men's Soccer Championship. While losing men's hockey is certainly a downer on one's career as Athletic Director, Mike Eagles has seen his teams bring home hardware on a number of occasions!

You might be asking why I wrote a long piece on a former fourth-line NHLer who moved into the world of university sports, but it mattered to me because Mike Eagles officially retired from his position as Athletic Director at St. Thomas University on June 27, 2023 to start living a more quiet life where he can focus on things he likes doing in his personal life like triathlons, gardening, and spending time with his family. Honestly, after 21 years with St. Thomas in some capacity, I don't think anyone can say he hadn't earned himself a nice break.

"Student-athletes from St. Thomas and across our wider AUS conference have benefitted greatly from Mike's dedication throughout the years," said AUS president and CEO Phil Currie. "His expertise and his passion will be greatly missed around our table. We wish him all the best and congratulate him on his retirement."

I love finding out what some NHL players are doing in their lives after their careers. For the most part, they all seem to be doing something fun and/or interesting, but Mike Eagles certainly took a different path than what other former NHLers have done. For the record, Mike is a member of the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame, Fredericton Sports Wall of Fame, and Sussex Sports Hall of Fame, so it's pretty clear he's been inspiring kids in and around New Brunswick for some time whether it was as an NHL player, an AUS head coach, or a school's Athletic Director.

Congratulations on a fantastic hockey career and an incredible post-hockey career, Mike. HBIC wishes you all the best in your retirement after being one of this writer's favorite Winnipeg Jets in the 1990s!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!