Sacred Heart has announced the hiring of Paul Kirtland as the team’s new assistant coach.Kirtland will oversee the program’s recruiting, implement penalty kill, assist with practice and game planning and the Pioneers video operations, while assisting in the day-to-day operations of the program.”We are very excited to welcome Paul and his wife Colleen to our Sacred Heart University hockey family,” SHU coach C.J. Marottolo said in a statement. “Paul stood out in a very diverse and qualified pool of candidates. Paul has gained a reputation as being a hard worker and a tremendous student of the game. His experiences as an assistant coach with Fairbanks in the NAHL, Trinity College, where he was a part of a national championship team and the Dubuque Fighting Saints of the USHL will no doubt rub off on our players and our program.”At Trinity, Kirtland helped lead the team to back-to-back NESCAC tournament championships and a runner-up in the 2017 NCAA Division III tournament. In 2016-17, Kirtland coached the penalty kill unit to a 89.4 percent success rate, which was the third-best percentage in D-III that season.A 2013 graduate of Ohio State, Kirtland played four years for the Buckeyes and tallied four goals in 50 games.
