Dana Borges is driving Sun Devil hockey's player development program to new levels

Colgate hockey coach Don Vaughan was looking for a volunteer assistant coach for the 2016-17 season so he posted a flier at the annual American Hockey Coaches Association convention in Naples, Florida.

When Dana Borges threw his name in the hat, Vaughan immediately began discussing ways and resources for Borges to make a living in the Hamilton, New York area while he volunteered his time at the school. Borges stopped him midway through the spiel.

“Dana’s like, ‘No, I’ve been working 60 or 70 hours a week to save enough money so that I don’t have to have another job,'” Vaughan said. “‘I want to be all in. I want to be the volunteer coach at Colgate, and I’ll be there every day and do whatever it takes.'”

The Red Raiders had topped 20 wins in each of the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons, ending a nine-year NCAA Tournament drought in the process. But by the time Borges came onboard as a full-fledged assistant coach in 2018-19, the program had slipped to the bottom rungs of the ECAC.

“I don’t know what happened,” Vaughan said. “Maybe we got a little complacent when we were winning, but we just weren’t where I thought we should be so Dana, myself and the other assistant coach went two and a half hours up the St. Lawrence River, locked ourselves in a hotel room for a weekend, and we basically just blew up the program. We started with, ‘How do we want to play? What kind of players is it going to take to play that way’ within the parameters of being at a highly selective academic school like Colgate?

“That was the beginning of our whole development model. No skill was too small, and everything had to be structured with a progression in mind. We weren’t just going to do a drill for the sake of doing a drill — without having it progress to, ‘Why did we do the drill and what’s next?’

Borges had already shown off his communication and organizational skills as a volunteer. When Vaughan handed him a marker and a mic in front of the entire team at the start of that first season — and without warning — Borges put together a persuasive and powerful presentation from his pulpit.

The longer timeframe and the confines of that hotel room up the St. Lawrence River allowed Borges’ passion to flower.

“That’s when I first got a sense of how really impressive Dana is,” Vaughan said. “He really drilled down into the specifics of what development means, how we would chart our players’ progress, and what it was going to take to help a player get better.”

That passion is what impressed Sun Devils hockey coach Greg Powers when he worked with Borges at various USA Hockey camps. When Mike Field left the program and the NCAA allowed programs to expand from two to three paid assistants, Powers fielded a ton of applications for the two openings.

One of those hires was former BU coach Albie O’Connell, who left the Sun Devil Hockey program this summer to oversee the Montréal Canadiens amateur scouting in the United States, and has been replaced by former Quinnipiac assistant Mike Corbett.

Borges was always on the short list to fill the other slot.

“I knew the holes people would poke in my background as the head coach when we started this program so the first thing I did was hire a guy that played Division III hockey and turned himself into an NHL player in Alex Hicks,” Powers said. “Hicksie’s a guy that, with vastly less resources than these kids have, got to where they all want to go. He knows what it takes. He’s lived it. 

“But when we moved into Mullet Arena and then joined the NCHC, things were going to a different level. I was so impressed with what Dana helped Colgate do (win an ECAC championship in 2023). I was so impressed with the way he communicated, the way that he viewed development, and the way that he just committed to it. It was the right time to bring somebody in with his skill set to take our program to the next level.”

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There are multiple pieces to the Sun Devils’ development program in both philosophy and practice. The foundation is built on four pillars that Powers instituted at the beginning: Technical, Tactical, Physical and Mental. Those pillars have evolved over time as coaching methods or playing styles have evolved.

A critical component of the current program is what Borges calls ownership. Players must be engaged and actively driving their own development.

“I take that to heart and it’s my responsibility,” Borges said. “These kids, these people that I work with, they’re gonna go places and they’re gonna get there, but it’s on them. They’re the driver. Our job as coaches is to help create environments that speed up that development; that are a catalyst to getting there faster.

“When a kid comes into our program, we tell them: ‘We are going to build an environment that’s going to be unlike anything else you’ve ever experienced. It’s going to be hard and challenging. You’re going to be under pressure; making decisions constantly.

“When you train this way, your development curve is gonna go up. There are gonna be moments of severe struggle that take you to new levels, and you will keep busting through those new levels. Ultimately, it’s on you, but we’re gonna give you an environment where, if you buy into it, you’re going to reach your maximum potential with us.”

Powers, Hicks and Borges work with multiple staff members within the program and within ASU’s greater athletic department such as nutritionists and trainers. That list includes Sun Devil Athletics Director of Sports Performance and Olympic Sports, Liane Blyn.

“When guys come in as freshmen, we evaluate them to look at their strengths, weaknesses, lower-body and upper-body power,” Blyn said. “We look at their overall injury history. From there, we build a development plan of what they need by putting guys in buckets. Is it overall strength he needs? Is it power? Is it speed? Is it increasing lean muscle mass or decreasing fat mass? Is it just the fact that their body has to develop because they’re still boys; they’re not men yet. 

“I’m an open book with the coaches with whatever they want to see. I have it in a dropbox on my computer that’s shareable so where these players are at any given time and that works in reverse, too. I talk to the coaches all the time. ‘What are you seeing on the ice? Does this athlete need better first step quickness? Does this athlete need more power, more explosiveness? How’s their recovery going?’ We use Polar heart rate monitors in practice to see how well they’re recovering or not recovering, and then design plans from there when it comes to the fitness piece.”

Borges also keeps a spreadsheet that charts every element of a player’s progress whether it’s on the ice with skills development, skill retention and skill implementation, or off the ice and classroom work.

“Chaos is a big word in coaching,” Borges said. “The way we coach is if we’re creating chaos and you’re constantly problem solving, you’re going to become that much better. Some players have elite hockey IQ and some just have average IQ, but you can increase IQ if you put kids in the right environment. 

“If I’m a winger and I’m getting the puck on the wall and I’ve got a guy coming on me, how do I roll? Just seeing those scenarios over and over and over helps a player become smarter. And that’s where our progressive practice planning model comes in. It starts with basic, small-group work and lots of reps, and then it progresses into small games, live-action environments, and into big games.”

Every step of the way, the staff engages the players in that process.

“We can’t babysit 26 or 27 guys so we have check-ins to ask, ‘Did you do what we talked about? You said you need to have better eating habits. We connected you with a nutritionist. How regularly have you been going?'” Borges said.

“Analytics play a really big role in this, too. If we tell a kid we really want him to work on getting shots through from the point, we can show him, ‘Here’s your analytics on it.’ We can give him a program and then we can chart his progress. If he’s not making progress, we can go back to that plan we built together and ask, ‘Well, are you doing the things we talked about doing?'”

Borges has been around the game his entire life. His dad, David Borges, just announced his retirement in March from coaching at Stonehill College after 11 seasons. When Dana’s playing career ended in 2014, he took a job as a youth hockey director for the Walpole Express while also serving as a Stonehill assistant.

While directing Walpole, he built close ties with USA Hockey and earned model program status from the nation’s governing body. Borges had considered becoming a doctor or lawyer, but those early experiences set the wheels in motion on his current career.

“I can’t speak enough of how much Don gave me the ability to be who I am and help inject my beliefs into that program,” he said. “It has been the same thing here with Greg. He ultimately brought me here because he learned what I did at Colgate and wanted to implement a lot of that here, but Greg’s gift is the culture that he’s already set in place here.

“He’s created such a great mental component for this program, and I believe it’s what’s been so critical to helping players get to the levels that they’ve never gotten to before.”

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Sun Devil hockey has always had its detractors. When ASU elevated the program to Division I nine seasons ago, critics rightfully mocked decrepit Oceanside Ice Arena, they questioned Powers’ pedigree, and they wondered how the program could ever achieve recruiting success outside of a conference.

Mullett Arena and ASU’s Power 5 resources have erased all doubts about the program’s facilities — even giving it an edge on the majority of Division I programs other than the Big Ten schools.

Despite Powers’ supposed lack of pedigree, and in spite of playing an entire season on the road during Covid, the program has eclipsed the 20-win mark in three of the past six seasons.

O’Connell helped silence the recruiting angle and so did the enrollment of projected NHL first-round pick Cullen Potter. Now ASU is joining the National Collegiate Hockey Conference, which has produced six of the past eight national champions.

With all of those targets removed, critics have taken aim at the Sun Devils’ development program, suggesting that they don’t develop NHL players in spite of the existence of Utah forward Josh Doan and Seattle goaltender Joey Daccord.

Powers just shrugs when he hears the critique du jour. He knows that ASU’s holistic approach is serving all of his players, not just the ones who are going on to the NHL or pro hockey careers in other leagues. His business background has provided him with contacts to help players earn jobs in medical device sales, supply chain management or other professions.

Even so, he knows that ASU will always be judged on the players that make it to the pros. With Borges on board and all of the hurdles removed, he is ready for that assessment.

“Now that we have these resources, the facilities and the conference, we have access to better players so you’re going to see more of those guys coming through on their way to bigger things,” he said. “Don’t judge us based off an independent era in a 700-seat ice rink with no resources. Judge us off of this next decade.”

Top photo of Dana Borges via Sun Devil Athletics

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