Dan Muse has won in Pittsburgh before.

In this case, “before” was April 13, 2013, when the Frozen Four was staged here.

As an assistant coach, Muse helped Yale win the first NCAA title in program history and was celebrating with players as well as fellow staffers on the ice of what was then called Consol Energy Center.

“Most of those players on that team were players that he recruited, his influence as a coach bringing those players together,” Yale head coach Keith Allain said. “He was running pre-scout (meetings) right until the championship game in Pittsburgh.”

Muse will be running things in Pittsburgh once again.

On Tuesday, he was named the 23rd coach in Pittsburgh Penguins history.

His selection came at the conclusion of a laborious search over five-plus weeks by president of hockey operations Kyle Dubas after the abrupt departure of previous coach Mike Sullivan on April 28.

“What separated Dan was his ability to develop players, win at all levels where he has been a head coach and his consistent success coaching special teams in the NHL,” Dubas said in a statement. “From his success in developing college and junior players, to his impactful work with veteran players during his time in the NHL, Dan has shown a proven ability to connect with players at all stages of their careers and help them to reach their potential.”

A quick examination of Muse’s nomadic career would validate that postulate.

Two decades ago, he began coaching at a prep school in Massachusetts. Today, he’s running the bench of one of the NHL’s most high-profile franchises.

“That’s the dedication and the passion to succeed and keep elevating himself,” said Scott Monaghan, assistant executive director of the United States National Team Development Program. “You don’t have to necessarily play 20 years in the NHL to be good (as a coach) if you work really hard at what you’re doing.”

While he is a native of Canton, Mass., Muse and his family roamed around the country, making stops in Northern California and Alabama. The Deep South, of all places, is where he first played organized hockey on the ice as a kid.

Getty Images As an assistant coach with the New York Rangers, Dan Muse oversaw that team’s forwards.  

“He worked his way up both as a player and as a coach coming out of a nontraditional background,” said Monaghan, who worked with Muse at the USNTDP. “His favorite football team is the Alabama Crimson Tide because that’s where he grew up a number of years. “

Muse’s family eventually returned to hockey-mad Massachusetts, and he played four years as a forward with Stonehill College, a program at the NCAA’s Division III level.

Following his senior season of 2004-05, Muse jumped to the coaching ranks immediately, becoming an assistant with Milton Academy, a prep school in Massachusetts, all while working as a full-time history teacher at another school, Archbishop Williams.

That led to brief stops at Williams College and Sacred Heart as an assistant.

When Shaun Hannah stepped down as head coach of Sacred Heart fairly late into the 2009 offseason, Muse essentially ran the program on an ad hoc basis at the age of 27 before jumping to Yale.

“One of my assistants ended up taking the head job at Sacred Heart,” Allain said. “Through that process of talking to him and in seeing this young guy kind of keep this program together all by himself for a month, I made a ‘trade.’ I brought Danny to my place, and he was really good right away.”

Muse took on a variety of duties with the Bulldogs.

“He was with us for six years,” Allain said. “His role grew as his abilities grew. By the end of it, he did all of those things. He was obviously doing recruiting for us. The penalty kill, he did the power play. I had him running pre-scout meetings. He did individual skill work with the guys on the ice, one on one.

“His role kind of got increased every year he was with us.”

After being promoted to associate head coach in 2014-15, Muse moved to the junior ranks, taking over the Chicago Steel of the United States Hockey League, leading that team to a Clark Cup Championship in his second season.

That success led to the professional ranks when he was hired as an assistant coach with the Nashville Predators in 2017 under head coach Peter Laviolette. Overseeing that team’s forwards and penalty kill, Muse helped the Predators win the Presidents’ Trophy, which goes to the team with the most points during the regular season, in 2017-18.

After Laviolette was fired midway through the 2019-20 campaign, Muse finished the season, which was prematurely halted by the pandemic. By August 2020, his contract was not renewed and he jumped to the USNTDP as head coach of the under-18 team.

Muse had the task of helping guide that program out of the pandemic when there were more questions than answers, particularly with regard to its schedule against USHL teams.

AP Dan Muse (left) spent three seasons as an assistant coach with the Nashville Predators under head coach Peter Laviolette.  

“If you remember back to that time, nobody knew will there be college sports, will there be a hockey season,” Monaghan said. “I remember sitting there with him and our other head coach, (current Michigan State coach) Adam Nightingale and saying, ‘Hey, there might not be anywhere to play but if we bring them back, can you guys make it work to train them up? We could practice together, mix and match kids, do scrimmages, do whatever.

“He was gung-ho for that. He said we had to get these kids going. It was a very unique year for him. We had 82 versions of our schedule before it was over. But he read and reacted every time when something came up. We had several times where we had to shut down a team because of illness or other teams shut down and canceled games. That showed me he was really detailed, very disciplined. But he’s also able to read and react and make a decision on the fly.”

During his time with the USNTDP, Muse guided a number of players who developed into high-end NHL prospects.

The likes of current Penguins forward Rutger McGroarty and Utah Mammoth forward Logan Cooley, a native of West Mifflin, eventually became first-round draft picks.

“You can always debate how much of an impact does a coach have on a (player’s) development,” Monaghan said. “But I think when you look at that group and how many guys are having success already in the (NHL), that speaks to it right there. He had to have some kind of major impact in how they’ve developed as players and people.”

Muse was on the move again in 2023, joining the New York Rangers as an assistant coach when Laviolette took over as that team’s head coach.

In two seasons with the Rangers, Muse oversaw the team’s penalty kill.

After Laviolette was fired by the Rangers on April 19, he was replaced by Sullivan on May 2, himself jettisoned by the Penguins on April 28.

Barely a month later, Muse is replacing Sullivan, having taken a circuitous journey to reach this point in his coaching career.

“Dan’s a self-made guy,” Monaghan said. “He’s worked his way up through the coaching ranks.

“He is tireless, he is detailed, and he is a forward thinker. He is constantly studying what other people are doing in the game, whether or not it’s something that he may use. He does that a lot. He’s a great communicator. He’s really good at getting his message through to kids, in the one-on-one environments as well.”

And according to those who know him, simply getting an NHL job won’t satisfy Muse.

“The thing that I always knew about ‘Musey,’ if there was something he didn’t know, he would learn it,” Allain said. “That’s really what he’s been about as a coach all the way through those 20 years. He found a way to get better at the craft, and he’ll continue to get better at the craft each week he’s with the Penguins.

“I know he’ll be a better coach this time next year than he is right now. And the organization will benefit from it.”

---

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)

---