Michigan just hired the man who turned the Saginaw Spirit into a Memorial Cup champion and a draft factory, and if you still think this is a routine associate-head-coach shuffle, you have not been watching Brandon Naurato build.
Chris Lazary left the OHL on July 22. Michigan made it official on August 24. In between, the rest of college hockey slept on what that move actually means. I have watched this sport long enough to know when a program is filling a vacancy and when a program is buying a pipeline. Naurato just bought the pipeline.
Lazary’s résumé does not need padding. Eight seasons as Spirit head coach. Two hundred forty-nine regular-season wins, a franchise record. Five hundred seven games total, more than any coach in Saginaw history. Three West Division titles. The 2024 Memorial Cup, the first in franchise history. The 2023-24 season alone: fifty wins, one hundred two points, another franchise high-water mark. Eighteen NHL Draft selections came off his teams during his head-coaching run, five of them top-fifteen overall picks. He coached Canada’s staff at the 2025 World Juniors. That is the man walking into Yost.
He said it himself when Michigan announced the hire. “I am incredibly honored and grateful for the opportunity to join the University of Michigan as associate head coach. Michigan is one of the premier programs in college hockey, with a rich tradition of excellence and a standard that is recognized across the sport. I want to thank coach Brandon Naurato and Warde Manuel for their belief and trust in me.”
Read that again. He is not thanking them for a job. He is acknowledging a standard. And he knows exactly what he is walking away from.
Saginaw Built the Case Michigan Just Cashed
Leaving the Spirit was not theater. Lazary spent roughly a decade there, associate coach first, head coach from November 2018 on. When he stepped down he told the organization straight: “The past ten years with the Saginaw Spirit have been the most rewarding of my coaching career. Together, we built something I’m incredibly proud of, culminating in a Memorial Cup Championship and the development of so many outstanding young men. Accepting this new opportunity was an incredibly difficult decision because of what Saginaw means to me and my family.”
Spirit GM Dave Drinkill did not soft-pedal the loss either. “He has done an outstanding job developing young talent, creating a culture of winning, and helping to build this organization into one of the premier programs in junior hockey.” That is the CHL saying out loud what every NCAA recruiter already knew. Lazary does not just win. He develops. He puts kids in the NHL conversation and then puts rings on their fingers.
Michigan needed that after Rob Rassey left to take the Harvard head job. Plenty of programs would have reached for another college assistant and called it continuity. Naurato reached into the OHL and pulled the coach who just proved the junior-to-pro pathway still runs through development and culture. That is a different hire.
This Is the Arms Race, Not a Staff Note
I keep hearing people frame CHL coaches in the NCAA as lateral moves, nice résumés, maybe a recruiting edge on Canadian kids. Wrong scale. Lazary arrives with relationships that already produced five top-fifteen picks and a Memorial Cup roster. Prospects notice who develops them. Parents notice who wins. Commitments follow the man who can point to Michael Misa, Zayne Parekh, Pavel Mintyukov, Nikita Klepov and a dozen others and say, I put that kid in that draft slot.
Michigan is already living in the elite-talent conversation. Adding Lazary accelerates it. The Wolverines are not waiting for the CHL-to-NCAA rules and the portal chaos to settle. They are staffing for the world as it exists: junior hockey is still the factory, and the factory just lost its best recent operator to Ann Arbor. Every Big Ten rival and every national contender just watched Naurato plant a flag on that ground.
I have seen programs treat associate head coach as a title. Naurato is treating it as leverage. Lazary’s track record says the kids will come. The Memorial Cup says the systems travel. The World Juniors résumé says the national federations already trust him. College hockey’s power structure just tilted another few degrees toward Michigan, and it happened because one coach refused to treat the OHL like a dead end.
The rest of the league can keep calling this an assistant hire. I call it what it is. Michigan just hired the proof that junior championships and draft boards still matter more than any press-release buzzword, and every program still scrambling for elite talent just got a clearer picture of how far behind they already are.
