By Sam Dykstra/DFP Staff

Providence College named Nate Leaman as its 12th head coach in program history Friday. Leaman was coming off his eighth season as the Union College bench boss, the most successful campaign in the program's history. The Dutchmen finished with a 26-10-4 record, captured its first regular-season ECAC title and earned its first-ever NCAA tournament berth before bowing out to eventual national champion University of Minnesota-Duluth in the first round.

Leaman, who recently won the Spencer Penrose Award as the national coach of the year, takes over a Friars squad that finished last season with an 8-18-8 overall record with a 4-16-7 mark in Hockey East play. He replaces Tim Army, who relinquished his head coaching duties after failing to lead the team to its first winning season since 2005-06 (his first as coach of the Friars).

Before earning a 138-127-35 in his time at Union, Leaman had served as an assistant at Harvard University and a volunteer assistant at University of Maine, where he helped coach the 1999 national championship team.

Providence was the last Hockey East team left without a head coach for the 2011-12 season after University of Massachusetts-Lowell announced the hiring of Norm Bazin on Thursday.