Mark Morris (ice hockey)

Mark Morris (born March 31, 1958) is an American former professional ice hockey defenseman. He is the head coach of St. Lawrence having taken the job to succeed Greg Carvel who departed for UMass.

Morris played four seasons (1981 – 1984) of professional hockey, mostly with the New Haven Nighthawks of the American Hockey League (AHL), where he scored 9 goals and 33 assists for 42 points, with 146 penalty minutes, in 156 AHL games played.

Following his playing career, Morris turned to coaching and found his way to Clarkson. He became the Golden Knights most successful coach winning more games, regular season titles, tournament titles and reaching more NCAA tournaments than anyone in school history.

In November 2002, Morris was fired three games into the 2002-03 season following an on-ice incident with one of his own players, forward Zach Schwan, during a team practice. Clarkson president Denny Brown said that in light of both the incident and Morris' refusal to take part in an internal investigation that had taken place, Clarkson had no choice but to fire Morris immediately.

In professional hockey, Morris began his professional coaching career under Marc Crawford, serving from February 2003 to April 2003 as the Special Assistant Coach/Interim Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Vancouver Canucks of the NHL. Then, after a two-year stint at a prep school in Lake Placid, Morris landed a job with the Manchester Monarchs of the American Hockey League in 2006. He spent eight years as head coach, compiling a record of 339-223-67, making him the only coach in history with over 300 wins in both the college and professional ranks.