With a ‘Last Lecture,’ Hockey Coach Offers Words of Wisdom

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A Conversation with Coach Schafer

As Mike Schafer ’86 prepares to retire, a packed house takes in his life lessons—on topics from team culture to mental toughness

By Beth Saulnier; photography by Ryan Young

“So I have a question,” Mike Schafer ’86 asked the audience in a Baker Lab lecture hall. “Do professors swear?” It was a tongue-in-cheek intro to the “Last Lecture” from the legendary coach—delivered just weeks before he’ll retire after three decades at the helm of Big Red men’s ice hockey.

As Schafer observed in the April 2025 speech: in addition to being his “last lecture”—a forum in which academics and other notables share from-the-heart messages—it was in fact his first, at least beyond locker-room talks and promoting Big Red hockey to alumni and supporters.

“To really think about what you’d say in your last lecture, and try to piece that all together with all the different things that you try to teach your players throughout the course of a 40-year career,” he said, “is kind of intimidating.”

(And as for the setting, the vast Baker 200: “My last memory of this was an exam, and that didn’t go well—so hopefully this goes a lot better than that.”)

But Schafer’s hourlong speech—accompanied by some slides and short videos, but delivered extemporaneously—was a huge hit with the standing-room-only crowd, which numbered about 500 in the lecture hall and another 100 watching on Zoom in an overflow space.

“I just moved all my stuff from my office: championship rings, coach of the year awards,” Schafer noted at one point. “Do you know where they are? Where my wife put all my awards from college: in a bin in the basement.”

To really think about what you’d say in your last lecture—and try to piece that all together with all the different things that you try to teach your players throughout the course of a 40-year career—is kind of intimidating.

His overarching message: that the journey matters more than the destination—and that winning games or awards is ultimately far less important than building character. "If you find the wisdom to know the difference between what you can and can’t control," he told his audience toward the end of his remarks, "you’ll live a happier life."

The following are excerpts from Schafer’s lecture, which included words of wisdom on a range of topics, from leadership to modern manhood. (Quotes have been lightly edited and condensed.)

On the crucial role of university athletics:

“Lynah Rink combines students, faculty, townspeople, and alumni—all in one place. When you guys go to Lynah, it’s probably not because you know a lot about hockey. It’s to cheer on your school and have pride. When you see 14,000 Cornellians in Madison Square Garden dressed in red, you see the importance of athletics. It brings that school spirit. Studying chemistry in Baker Lab doesn’t drive that bus.” [He laughs.]

On his background:

“I’m the youngest in a family of nine. Our home was 900 square feet. I was what Cornell embodies: I was the first generation. How many people here are the first generation in your family to go to college? Hands up! [Many hands rise.] That’s crazy, right?”

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On what motivates him:

“I say to our team all the time: you either love to win or you hate to lose, but there’s always something that really motivates you. For me, it was my mother, who told me, ‘You could never go to college.’ Okay—I’ll show you. My motivation is to prove people wrong—to prove that I can do it. Always has been, and always will be. And I tried for our team to embody that a little bit—to have an underdog mentality.”

On his early hockey career:

“I left home when I was 17 and played junior hockey, and that’s when I realized that sports were a bit of a cutthroat living, because lots of guys got cut from our team and traded. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to stay there and survive—whether I was going to get sent back to my hometown and have to work in the factory, like my five brothers did. And then I got into Cornell.”

When you see 14,000 Cornellians in Madison Square Garden dressed in red, you see the importance of athletics. It brings that school spirit.

On his introduction to the Hill:

“I still remember being on North Campus and listening to all these kids talk about their achievements, and seeing how smart they were. And I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I don’t belong here.’ I came from a really small town, and I learned so much by talking to other people from across the world. It opened my eyes up, for a kind-of-redneck guy from Durham, Ontario.”

On his early days as an assistant coach:

“I spent four years here, and then I knew I needed to leave. I needed a change. I needed a challenge. I needed to go somewhere else and learn from someone different. I went to Kalamazoo, Michigan, and I was there for five years. Western Michigan just won the [2025] national title in hockey. It was kind of bittersweet, because I was wishing we were there to beat them.”

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A Trivia Tribute to Coach Schafer

After Three Decades, Big Red Men’s Ice Hockey Passes the Torch

On his return as head coach in 1995:

“I was 32 years old. Okay, now I got the job. What do I do? And for me, it was pretty easy: I was going to build a culture—everything that I grew up learning, a work ethic.”

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On a key lesson from his dad:

“I remember going home my freshman year thinking I was pretty hot, playing hockey at a Division I school, going to college. I was exhausted, and my dad woke me up at 6:30 in the morning: ‘Let’s go. We’re putting up a snow fence.’ And for the next eight hours I’m in the snow, putting in a fence. I’m like, ‘Oh, I’d better get that degree.’ But his work ethic was tremendous—he worked three jobs—and that’s a lot of what I based our teams on: ‘We are going to outwork you in every situation.’”

On instilling team culture:

“I told our guys at my first meeting. ‘I want you to work hard, but I want you to encourage each other. I want you to take care of each other.’ So we’re running the stadium steps and they’re starting to drop, but there’s not one guy helping anybody else. So I’m like, ‘Again, let’s go.’ It took them a long time to figure it out. But as soon as one guy helped another guy, we were done; that was the start of our culture. We were going to outwork everybody, but we were going to be tight as a hockey team. That is still one of the pillars of our program.”

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On promoting a “growth mindset”:

“Everybody wants to win a national championship, to win a game, to be financially successful, to be happy in their job. But applaud the process rather than the result; praise effort, not talent. We have nothing in our room that says anything about players of the week, players of the month, All-Americans. We never bring it up, because all I want to do is praise effort.”

I told our guys at my first meeting. ‘I want you to work hard, but I want you to encourage each other. I want you to take care of each other.’ We were going to outwork everybody, but we were going to be tight as a hockey team.

On a positive vision of manhood:

“‘Being a man’ is always about material things, conquests, to be as rich as you can, and have power, right? Go for the money, have success—but what are you going to do with it? Are you going to use it wisely and be a strong person in your community? Are you going to help others? Those are things we talk about with our guys. Being emotional, being vulnerable; we have a retreat where we talk about the person that you respect most in the world, the worst and best days of your life. To see young men break down and cry—it’s powerful.”

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On the primacy of trust:

“It’s in everything you do. If your players don’t trust you, if you’re not trusted as a boss, if you’re not trusted as a husband—what kind of relationships do you have? I’m a very vengeful person. [He laughs.] What I mean by that is, you break my trust, it’s over. I wish I was a better person than that, but I’m not. I’m 62, I’m retiring, and probably not changing. Trust is the most important thing in my relationship with anybody in my life.”

On the value of selflessness:

“How many guys walk into my office: ‘I’m really struggling. I’m going to blow this. I’m not playing.’ I’m like, ‘Hey, why don’t you get away from the “I” and ask other guys how they’re feeling? Can you do something for them? Give them a ride home?’ Being a lot less selfish and more selfless—that’s the key to mental health and longevity in any job or in life.”

If your players don’t trust you, if you’re not trusted as a boss, if you’re not trusted as a husband—what kind of relationships do you have?

On leadership:

“Someone’s always gonna be unhappy with a decision you make—with the starting lineup, who plays, who doesn’t play. So in my position as a leader, I always thought: make the right decision and live with it, because then you can put your head down to sleep at night. Don’t question yourself. Don’t worry about the person that’s mad. Just worry about making the right decision.”

On why confrontation is not only positive, but essential:

“The number-one thing in leadership is confrontation. Most people hate it. They avoid it, and that undermines team-building. Confrontation is key to being a great leader, because a leader is a conduit to accountability. What I mean by that is: 'I didn’t fire you; you got yourself fired. I didn’t cut you; you cut yourself. You’re not doing your job. You’re not being productive. I’m just the bearer of bad news.' Leaders have to make those tough decisions.”

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On what it means to be mentally tough:

“Mentally tough people welcome challenges; if I fail, I get back up. Don’t worry about being judged and pleasing people. Don’t resent other people’s success. Do what makes you happy. Don’t expect immediate results. A lot of kids feel they’re owed something; mentally tough people don’t feel that way. They don’t feel like they should be the first-line left-winger. They don’t feel they should be on a power play. They just figure, ‘If I work hard, I will get that promotion.’”

Published April 29, 2025

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