By Warren Kozireski–
When Brooklyn/New York native Rick Gotkin started as head coach of Mercyhurst, gas was 91 cents per gallon.
30 years later and he just guided the Lakers to their second Atlantic Hockey Association regular season title—the 544 victory of his career, which stands 19th all-time and eighth among active coaches from all levels of college hockey.
“I’m just glad no one talks about my 400 losses.
“I’m blessed because we have had really, really good players and we have had really good assistant coaches who have made me look a lot smarter than I really am,” Gotkin said after the last game of the regular season.
“It’s those guys; I’m rarely the smartest guy in the room. But what I do is I listen and I ask questions.”
Gotkin is the only coach in NCAA history to take a team to the NCAA Tournament at all three levels and has six NCAA tournament appearances with Mercyhurst.
“It’s been great. We’re blessed to be able to do something that we love and be around young people every day.
“I owe my whole life to Erie and Mercyhurst and coaching. I met my wife in Erie, our kids were born and raised in Erie, our kids all graduated from Mercyhurst.
“We’re not the University of Minnesota and we’re not Wisconsin, but we know who we are and like they say ‘it’s not what you have, but what you do with what you have’.”
Last August Gotkin was appointed as a member of the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Ice Hockey Rules Committee serving a four-year appointment and in June of 2015 was inducted into the Erie Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
During his tenure with the Lakers, Gotkin has produced seven All Americans, four ECAC Players of the Year, three ECAC Rookies of the Year, five MAAC First-Team selections, an AHA Player-of-the-Year, 24 AHA All-Conference selections, three AHA Rookies of the Year and one AHA Defenseman of the Year.
As a player, Gotkin was a defenseman via the Binghamton Barons of the old NY-Penn junior league before playing two years at Canton Tech and two more with Brockport State, where he scored just three goals in two seasons with 44 assists.
One year as an assistant coach at Brockport before two years in the same role with RPI led him to Mercyhurst in 1988-89 succeeding Fred Lane.
But the 58-year old isn’t yet thinking about retirement although he will start his fourth decade this fall.
“I told my wife that I need to start thinking about an exit strategy and she said ‘that’s fine, but what are you going to do for money?’
