Down on the Farm: The Bickel Era Begins

Everything seems to fit with the hiring of Iowa Wild Head Coach Stu Bickel. He begins his first season as head coach of the Minnesota’s AHL affiliate when the Iowa Wild begin their 14th season with a pair of road games in Texas. Bickel will make his AHL head coaching debut on his 40th birthday (Oct. 2).

Everything seems to fit with the hiring of Iowa Wild Head Coach Stu Bickel. He begins his first season as head coach of the Minnesota’s AHL affiliate when the Iowa Wild begin their 14th season with a pair of road games in Texas. Bickel will make his AHL head coaching debut on his 40th birthday (Oct. 2).

When the job opened this summer, Iowa Wild General Manager Matt Hendricks began investigating the possibility of Bickel taking over in Iowa. The two Minnesotans were quite familiar with each other during their NHL days after spending summers in the Twin Cities training together.

Bickel was on Hendricks’ radar each of the last few years due to his recent track record of success as an AHL assistant. With that in mind, the Wild invited the fast-rising bench boss in for an interview. Hendricks said the Chanhassen native provided a detailed plan and displayed a high amount of pride in his work.

“When he was presenting to myself and then the rest of our group, you could see just how bad he wanted this opportunity, and that was important,” said Hendricks. “I think Stu has a path for himself right now. He understands the process that it takes to climb the ladder.”

Bickel, a former Gopher and Eden Prairie high school product, grew up watching the Wild. In 2014-15, he played in nine games for his hometown Minnesota Wild and made 43 appearances for the Iowa Wild. He is the second Minnesotan to coach the team, and the first-ever former player to take the reins in Iowa.

It’s safe to say you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in hockey who wanted the job more than Bickel.

“Being with the Minnesota Wild organization is a dream for me,” said the lifelong Minnesotan. “I’m from here. I played various levels of my youth all the way up to high school and the Gophers. “I ended up playing in Iowa and up in Minnesota with the Wild. It’s a special organization to me that I am familiar with. I know they’re great people. I know they want to win. It’s also a great fit for my family.”

Knowing he wanted to coach by the later stages of his playing career, he set a path for himself becoming an unrelenting student of the game. After ten pro seasons, 411 pro games (including 76 NHL games) and 1,172 penalty minutes, Bickel called it a career in 2018.

He joined Bob Motzko’s staff at the University of Minnesota and spent two seasons with the Gophers. In addition to coaching, he also obtained a degree in business administration. Stu credits his time with the Gophers for “helping me find my way in coaching and realize my passion for it. It became something that I really fell in love with from the start of that first season.”

He departed “The U” for an opportunity to lead the NAHL’s Minnesota Magicians as head coach in 2020-21, helping them to a conference finals appearance.

After his season with the Magicians, his career seemed to take off with an opportunity to join the AHL’s Springfield Falcons as an assistant. After a Calder Cup Finals loss in the spring, Bickel found himself on the move again, this time joining Dan Bylsma for the expansion AHL Coachella Valley Firebirds – the farm team for the NHL’s Seattle Kraken.

The Firebirds posted back-to-back seasons with a winning percentage above .700 and lost in the finals in 2023 and 2024, marking the third straight summer Bickel found himself in the AHL’s runner-up spot. Two seasons later, he was primed and ready to become an AHL head coach.

Ironically, he began his pro career in Des Moines as an undrafted prospect for Anaheim, whose AHL affiliate, the Iowa Chops, played at what is now the Casey’s Center. The familiar landscape makes the transition easier, but meeting his new hockey operations staff, from the assistant coaches to the equipment and training staff, has been a blessing for him.

“On the coaching side, Nate (McIver), Ben (Simon), Rich (Bachman), and Eric (Michaud) have been outstanding. They work extremely hard and they’re fun people to be around,” explained the new Iowa head coach. “In addition, Dan (Barker), Shakey (Krouse), Putzy (Putzig), Nick (Peyton), Cory (Chapp) and Mason (Pauley) leave no stone unturned in how they take care of our guys. I’m fortunate to get to work with all of them.”

Bickel will implement the same systems as the parent club, fine-tuning players to jump right into NHL games seamlessly. He does have a vision of what he wants from his team.

“As far as our identity, we want to be a fast team in transition. We want to be a physical team. We want to play on the inside in the offensive zone, which is an area I believe we can improve,” said the former defenseman. “There are some areas we can take a step as a group. Part of that is willingness to play inside. I think once young players start to grasp that idea of going to the hard areas, they’re going to find more success offensively.”

The makeup of the year’s team looks balanced with a strong group of veterans, like forwards Mason Shaw, Tyler Pitlick, Dylan Gambrell, Justin Kirkland and Gerry Mayhew (AHL contract), along with Elk River native Matt Kiersted, who enters his sixth pro season. These veterans have experienced a high level of success in the AHL and will play a key role in showing the youngsters how it’s done.

“We don’t want to be a perimeter team in the offensive zone,” he said. “We want guys at the net and to get pucks down into the dirty areas. If you look at some of the guys that we’ve signed, they are all willing to do those things and lead by example.”