CRANBERRY, Pa. -- New Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins head coach Kirk MacDonald was asked Monday to describe the "pillars" of his brand of hockey.
"Attention to detail," MacDonald said. "Work ethic. Commitment. And being relentless in how we play."
Now, none of that has to do with any real tactics or systems for actual gameplay. That's all secondary for MacDonald.
"To me, the systems don't matter if you don't compete, you're not hard to play against," MacDonald said. "I think relentlessness is a mentality that you can have in every facet of the game, and I hope to bring that to Wilkes this year."
MacDonald, 40, will be entering his first season as an AHL head coach, having been hired this summer after the organization opted to not renew the expiring contract of former head coach J.D. Forrest. It was assistant general manager Jason Spezza that led the search, and he said it was MacDonald's knowledge and enthusiasm that attracted them to him.
"I think he's served his time," Spezza said. "He's been the East Coast League for a while, went back to the USHL, and has a very diverse background. So I think to me, that was really appealing. He's just a guy that's coached junior kids as well as pros, and I thought we saw the game philosophically the same way. I could tell he was hungry for the job too, which I think the players feel the enthusiasm."
MacDonald's certainly been at this for awhile. He had a six-year professional career as a forward in the minors that ended with him winning the ECHL's Kelly Cup with the Reading Royals in 2013. He immediately got his start in coaching in the 2013-14 season as an assistant at his alma mater, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The next season he went back to the Royals, where he served as assistant coach for three years before being promoted to head coach and director of hockey operations -- a secondary title many ECHL head coaches get since they're responsible for signing their own ECHL-contracted players -- and stayed in that role for the next five seasons. He stepped down as Royals coach to coach the USHL's Dubuque Fighting Saints, and was behind the bench in Dubuque for two seasons before being hired by the Penguins. He took Dubuque to the Clark Cup Final in his final season, ultimately losing to Fargo.
Between his playing and coaching days, that's a lot of time grinding it out in the minors, riding buses. That enthusiasm Spezza mentioned has to be there to do what MacDonald has done for so long.
"I think it's just a love the game," MacDonald said of where that enthusiasm comes from. "You love to be around the guys. I think if you don't enjoy doing it, why are we here, right? It can be a grind at times. But I think for me personally, I enjoy the grind, and that was the allure of going back to pro. I think it's going to be fun. I think seeing these guys get better is really it's enjoyable."
He said that the most enjoyable part for him coaching young players is when you finally see it "click" with a prospect and he figures out how to be successful at that level.
"That's fun as a coach," MacDonald said. "To put that work in and know you had a little bit of a hand in helping a kid progress to the next level and play to his full potential is really exciting."
MacDonald has been around the team for a little while now -- he was in Las Vegas for the draft and got to have meetings with management and the NHL coaches, and he's been at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex in Cranberry, Pa. this week for development camp. He joked that development camp might as well be called the Pittsburgh Fighting Saints because there are three of his former Dubuque players here -- 2024 fourth-round pick defenseman Joona Vaisanen, free agent invite defenseman Lucas St. Louis and free agent invite forward Ryan St. Louis. They spoke highly of their former coach.
"It's incredible," Vaisanen told me of joining the organization at the same time as MacDonald. "I'm really excited for him to be here."
Ryan St. Louis described MacDonald as more of a "players coach."
"He wants everyone to feel welcome," Ryan said. "He was a great coach to have when he was in Dubuque. It was his first year coaching junior, so a little step down from when before he was in the Coast. But he was a great coach. I'm happy I got to play with him, and it's awesome seeing him around here."
Ryan's brother Lucas called MacDonald "an awesome coach, awesome person."
"I played for him for two years, and he just set a good culture right off the bat," Lucas said. "It's awesome to play with a good culture."
Joining an AHL team brings some different goals. You're aiming to have your players leave you for the NHL, and that's something MacDonald feels strongly about.
"I think a lot of the interview process for this job was was related to that," MacDonald said of his views on player development. "I think the American League staff is really an extension of the player development staff, right? Our job is to help the prospects, the guys under contract, take that next step, get better. It's a day-to-day process. There's the individual skill development, there's a team skill development, incorporating that into your practice every day. Video, all these things. I think it's exciting, the opportunity here, needing to develop players to play here in Pittsburgh, and I'm really looking forward to it."
But there's also a secondary goal of trying to win a Calder Cup at the AHL level, something Wilkes-Barre has never been able to accomplish. That goes hand-in-hand with the player development goals.
"We've got to develop players for Pittsburgh, and part of developing is winning, right?" MacDonald said. "Winning is a habit, and so is losing, unfortunately. And we've got to try and build really good habits in Wilkes so they become winners and have a winning mindset, a championship mindset, to come here and do the same thing."
Wilkes-Barre doesn't just develop players, though. It's sent a number of its coaches to the NHL -- Mike Sullivan, Todd Reirden, Dan Bylsma, John Hynes and Michel Therrien are among the former Wilkes-Barre head coaches who went onto be NHL head coaches. MacDonald is hoping to add to that list one day.
"Anybody that's in the American League, their end goal is to play or work in the National Hockey League," MacDonald said. "Yeah, I think everybody's aware of the players and the coaches that have developed in Wilkes. It's an exciting opportunity. There's only 32 jobs in the American League, and they're coveted. It's an honor to be considered and then eventually named as the head coach in Wilkes."
