By: Chris Pierce
On a chilly Monday evening outside of Roanoke, Virginia Tech Men’s Ice Hockey Head Coach Joey Mullen parks his car at the Lancerlot Sports Complex. After an emotional weekend of celebrating the careers of players he fostered for the last four seasons, Mullen takes a deep breath in his car before opening the door.
The biggest week of the season is here, everyone in the program knows. A historic 22-3-1 record may statistically look appetizing to players and fans alike, but Mullen knows the job is not done. There are still countless weeks left in this long season, one that dates to August of last year.
After seventeen seasons on the job, you learn a thing or two about the stakes each week brings. For Coach Mullen, as the years go on and the development of players, leagues, and the sport continues to grow exponentially, he finds himself comfortable in adjusting to the fundamental challenges.
Opening the door, Mullen takes his first step out onto the concrete pavement. The feeling is reminiscent of when he was two years old, lacing up his skates and stepping foot onto the Lancerlot ice for the first time.
Growing up in a hockey family, Mullen was bound to dawn the skates at one point or another. His father, one of five siblings, coached youth hockey in the Roanoke Area where Joey was raised.
“[My dad] would cone off a little area during his practice and I would just skate around pushing a chair with a little stick in the corner by myself,” said Mullen. “About five years old is when I started playing organized hockey, and then my brother was put in the corner at three, pushing the chair while I was practicing.”
Mullen’s family hockey ancestry has roots that reach as deep as the NHL. His Uncle, NHL Hall of Famer Joe Mullen, played 16 seasons in the league with the St. Louis Blues, Calgary Flames, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Boston Bruins. Mullen’s other uncle Brian was a former professional hockey player who spent eleven seasons with the Winnipeg Jets, New York Rangers, San Jose Sharks, and New York Islanders.
Through the rich hockey history of his family, Mullen saw his father and uncles as his role models as to what inspired him to play hockey.
“It was easy to get advice from them. They'd always help us out with whatever we wanted,” said Mullen. “My dad's brothers taught my brother how to shoot because, you know, sometimes you don't listen to your parents. But we always had them, and we were always around…in the Penguins and Rangers locker rooms. Just seeing those guys it was pretty cool.”
Although hockey was the clear number one sport in the household, Mullen attempted to be versatile in other activities like soccer, baseball, and football growing up. While he attempted to try each sport, Mullen’s passion for hockey was a no-brain decision when deciding what sport to pursue at 12 years old.
Now out of the car, Mullen looks up at the beaming Lancerlot Sports Complex sign above the entrance. Before walking in, he turns around and heads towards the trunk of his car to collect his hockey bag. More personal than a common suitcase or bookbag, a player's hockey bag collects memories and smells that will forever define where they came from.
While hockey in Southwest Virginia was still beginning to blossom, Mullen began his youth hockey career on travel clubs that played opponents within the region of North Carolina and South Carolina. Some of Mullen’s early successes included a trip to nationals in Florida as well as up north to participate in CAN/AM tournaments.
Along the way of his youth and travel achievements, early life lessons about hockey serving as a team sport were critical to Mullen’s development as a player. The aspiration of being a great player meant Mullen had to learn how to become a great teammate.
“You got to be a good teammate. That's the biggest thing,” said Mullen. Growing up where I played, one kid could beat everybody. As you get older, the kids get better…you can’t do it by yourself.”
Today, the lesson comes full circle in what Mullen sees with coaching the Hokies.
“Kids come in, especially out of high school where they were the guy in high school. They could win a game by themselves. They can sometimes have a tough adjustment period learning how to not be the guy anymore,” said Mullen. “Some kids get it, and some kids don't. Some kids take longer. If you can learn that at a young age, that you don't always have to be the guy, it'll make you play wherever you go a lot easier.”
After high school, Mullen would go on to continue his academic and hockey career at Radford University, playing on the Highlanders club hockey team. One year later, he would venture north to compete in the Junior leagues in Connecticut and New Jersey.
The transition from club hockey to Juniors was a wake-up call for Mullen in his first year.
“There wasn't a ton of competition at that [club] level…I didn't have to work hard,” said Mullen. Going away the next year, now I'm the third, fourth-line guy playing every other game. It’s a big culture shock.”
Throughout his tenure with the Hokies, Coach Mullen has helped transition players coming from the Junior leagues to the club hockey level, a reverse of what he did as a player. One example is freshman defenseman JH Lages, who is putting up historic numbers in his first season with the team.
“Juniors was a grind. You are in the rink every day for multiple hours, and you are battling,” said Lages. “There is more time and space at the club level than what it was like in the past years, which allows me to make the plays that I would normally do.”
Anxious to see how his players like JH will start the week, Mullen takes his bag and closes the trunk. One foot in front of the other, he makes his way past the sliding doors into the Lancerlot Sports Complex. On the wall to his left is an outdated Virginia Tech hockey poster from years ago. Glancing over, Mullen thinks back to when he first took over at the helm thirteen years ago.
The last year of Juniors was tough for Mullen. During one of his team’s practices, a stop-and-go drill, Mullen snapped his leg. The injury would end his playing career at 21 years old, though it was not long before a phone call came in from a former friend.
Since they were four years old, Mullen and Jesse Long had been skating together, playing against and on the same teams growing up in the Roanoke area. Both of their dads coached hockey, as the two kids constantly matched up with one another. The bond shared on and off the ice led to similar paths by attending Radford for one year and then transferring over to the Junior leagues.
After Juniors, Long and Mullen were approached by Ray Campbell, founder of the Blue Ridge Hockey Conference, to coach at Radford University for their club hockey team, a fitting full-circle moment.
Learning the ropes of coaching was not an easy task for Mullen in his first three years at Radford.
“The hardest thing for me was I couldn't learn how to tell them what to do instead of hey, I'm going to go do this drill, watch what I do and do it this way,” said Mullen. “I had to learn how to communicate to different types of players because not all players are the same.”
While Mullen stayed at Radford for another season, Long ranked himself up with a position joining the Virginia Tech Men’s Ice Hockey team. A year later, Mullen would be asked to coach up I-81 and work for the Hokies staff as an offensive specialist.
In his first season with the Hokies, Mullen helped guide the team to a regional playoff appearance. Through turmoil with the head coach at the time and the players, Mullen was named interim head coach and led tech to the program’s first-ever national appearance, defeating several powerhouse club programs along the way.
A second set of sliding doors welcomes Mullen into the rink sector of “The Lot” where the temperature makes your body feel numb unless, of course, you are a hockey player. Walking to the locker room, Mullen is greeted by players and Assistant Coach Dave Standley, one of the founders of Virginia Tech Hockey.
After his playing days at Tech, Standley still found himself around the team, positioning around the boards during games as a photographer. Both he and Mullen met each other early and formed a bond, now several years in the making, that has impacted both men.
“It was clear to me that he knew the game and he could relate to these players,” said Standley. “It takes a special mindset to deal with club athletics, and it was clear to me that Joey had both that mindset and personality. He could certainly work as the head coach to do whatever needed to get done, but he had built good relationships with the players and that's what jumped out at me.”
After the early years of Mullen’s tenure with Virginia Tech as the Hokies photographer, Standley got the call up from being on the sideline to behind the bench, serving as the team’s Assistant Coach.
“Dave just was a natural fit. We got along great,” said Mullen. “He knows the game of hockey. We kind of think of it the same way. It was an easy transition for whenever I needed help, he was always there to step in…. When it came time to needing a coach because I was the only one there, he was just a natural fit.”
Over the years, Standley has seen how Mullen has interacted with fellow players, staff, and others in creating a family-first locker room environment.
“He [Joey] builds a really solid coach-player relationship, and I think it goes beyond that,” said Standley. “I think uh there's a true friendship relationship with these guys. But he also has a relationship with them that says, look, when you need instruction or you need to correct something, I'll put my coach's head on and I'll take care of that…It's the kind of atmosphere that both he and I want to create and I think we've done that, which I think is why senior night sometimes is hard or God forbid, you know, last year we lose the first round of the playoffs.”
Sitting down in his office chair, Mullen is instantly greeted by the leaders of the team. A group that has changed the culture set forth by their respect for one another, teammates and coaches alike. The value of these relationships is what Mullen hoped for the program when he took over as head coach and is still evolving with every new season.
“If you can’t evolve and be able to relay effective communication to the guys you have in the room every year, then it's going to make you it's going to make your life tough,” said Mullen. “ Sometimes it's not pretty, but uh I always made it a policy that no matter what happens, we could have a screaming match in the locker room with each other after the game, if you needed me, you could call me and I'm picking up the phone.”
Especially during Mullen’s early years, the reiteration of relating to the players has always been critical to developing the team’s success on and off the ice.
“Joey knows how to relate to the kids…he is not quick to make a decision, good or bad,” said Long. “He likes to analyze it. He has a strong suit when it comes to dealing with, multiple personalities, and different backgrounds of kids, and parents, and he does it very well…he's relatable. Every single kid that we've coached has loved him and every parent that's come through with their children has respected him and loved him as a coach as well.”
Culture is also important to every team Mullen has coached. Specifically, the 2024-25 Virginia Tech Hokies team has been the most impacted by the team’s ability to develop chemistry from game one.
“I think the culture of the team has improved a lot over the years,” said Hokies senior forward Dom Fantozzi. “There were some cliques on the team before, but now there aren’t any. The team has responded well to coach letting us take the lead in team meetings and make certain decisions.”
As Mullen looks through his notes and laces up his skates for practice, he remembers the “why” of it all. Why coaching hockey matters to these kids. Why coaching hockey matters to his family. Why coaching hockey matters to him.
“I want to see these kids succeed and get to these places like they haven't been,” said Mullen. “No kid on this team has been to regionals. No kid's been to nationals. I want to see them experience those things so they can take those memories... I want them to enjoy this time, and I want it to be the best time they’ve ever had.”
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