Mark Morris was named the Charles W. Appleton II Head Men’s Ice Hockey Coach at St. Lawrence in May of 2016, returning to the Saint program after a highly successful career as a collegiate and professional head coach.
In his first season with the Saints in 2016-17, the team finished with 17-13-7 record, secured a first-round bye in the ECAC Hockey tournament with a fourth-place finish in the regular season and advanced to the quarterfinals. He enters the 2018-19 season with a 25-40-9 record at St. Lawrence.
Morris, who served as an assistant coach to Joe Marsh from 1985-88 and was part of the 1988 national runner-up team, returned to the North Country after a year as head coach of the Charlotte Checkers in the American Hockey League. He holds the distinction of being the only coach to have won 300 college games and over 300 professional games. He was the seventh all-time winningest coach in the AHL and had the third highest win total among AHL coaches when he left Charlotte to take over at St. Lawrence.
A Massena native and a 1981 graduate of Colgate University, Morris played defense for the Raiders and went on to a three year professional playing career which included stints with the Dallas Black Hawks and the New Haven Nighthawks before entering the coaching profession as an assistant coach at Union College in 1984-85. Morris spent 13 seasons as the head coach at Clarkson following his SLU tenure and compiled a collegiate career record of 306-156-42.
He broke into the professional coaching ranks as a coach with Manchester of the American Hockey League in 2006 where he spent eight years as head coach, compiling a record of 338-224-66 with seven playoff appearances. He joined the Checkers in July of 2015 after serving the previous season as an assistant coach with the Florida Panthers in the NHL. He has also served as a special assistant coach and strength and conditioning coach with the Vancouver Canucks, an assistant coach with the Ontario Hockey League’s Saginaw Spirit and coached at the Northwood School in Lake Placid.
Mark and his wife Cecily are the parents of four children, Michael, who played hockey at SUNY Geneseo, Emily, a four-year player at Wisconsin who played on three NCAA finalist teams and captained the Badgers as a senior, Leah, who played goal at the Taft School and graduated from Boston University and Kevin, who completed his senior year at Miami University of Ohio and was a four-year member of the hockey team there.
Updated 9/18
