When is a Thursday night hockey practice more than just any old Thursday night hockey practice?
For the Niagara-on-the-Lake Wolves U9 minor development and local league hockey teams, it’s when you welcome the winner of the 1996/1997 Jack Adams Trophy as the NHL’s coach of the year to the Meridian Credit Union Arena.
Though Ted Nolan’s NHL coaching career ended in 2015 before any of the players were born, all it took was Wolves coaches Mike Cwiertniewski and Gary Friesen to inform them of their guest’s career on the ice and behind the bench for Nolan to earn a round of sticks slapping onto the ice to break their pre-practice huddle.
Nolan was invited to run the Thursday, Feb. 20 practice session by his cousin Tracee Smith, whose seven-year-old son Ekkian Christmas is on Cwiertniewski’s U9 minor development team.
“He’s my Mom’s cousin,” Tracee told The Local. “I see him occasionally when the family gets together and I’ve been meaning to ask him to come help with a practice. It just happened to work out this week.”
“To have him be here to not just teach the kids but to also teach Gary and me a few things on the ice is awesome,” said Cwiertniewski. “I’m a Leafs fan but we had season’s tickets to the Sabres when I was growing up. His time there was my heyday for watching hockey and becoming involved with it.”
St. Davids resident Nolan grew up in the Garden River First Nation near Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. He first learned to skate on frozen ponds before playing house league hockey where he caught the eye of OHL scouts. After a year playing junior hockey in Kenora, Ontario he came home to play for the OHL’s Soo Greyhounds.
Nolan was drafted by the Detroit Red Wings in 1978. He spent a few years in the American Hockey League and won a Calder Cup there before his 1982 call-up to the Wings. Nolan was later traded to the Pittsburgh Penguins but back issues forced him to retire as a player in 1986.
Three years later Nolan began his coaching career, becoming the head coach with his hometown Greyhounds. He led them to three straight OHL titles and a Memorial Cup win in 1993.
He broke into the NHL’s coaching ranks as an assistant with the Hartford Whalers before the Sabres offered him their top job in 1995. Nolan was with the Sabres until 1997 when they captured first place in the Northeast Division, earning him the Adams Trophy. He went on to coach the New York Islanders from 2006 to 2008 and was brought back into the Sabres fold from 2013 to 2015. He later coached the Latvian and Polish national hockey teams.
Even with all of that experience coaching some of the world’s top players, it was clear from watching Thursday’s practice that the 66-year-old has never forgotten what made the game fun for him.
He eagerly put the boys and girls through a few warm-up skating and stick-handling drills, a smile on his face and constant words of encouragement shouted throughout. Later, while he fed some passes to kids for one-on-one drills it was hard to tell who was enjoying the activity more, Nolan or the youngsters.
“It was a throwback to the days when I was a kid,” Nolan told The Local after the session ended. “Kids should have a lot of fun doing it. It shouldn’t be a chore for them. They seemed to be having a good time. You just have to stay with the fundamentals and let the kids enjoy themselves.”
Since 2013 Nolan has been visiting various First Nations communities across Canada with his sons Brandon and Jordan, each of whom had NHL careers, through their 3Nolans Hockey School. The school’s mandate is to develop kids’ hockey skills and knowledge, teach them how to live healthy active lifestyles, be positive role models and become future leaders in their communities.
Nolan was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, in 2022. While undergoing chemotherapy his weakened immune system kept him from that work for more than a year. So an opportunity to lace up his skates near home was a welcome diversion.
Wolves president Pete Flynn dropped in to watch a bit of the practice. Also a St. Davids resident, Flynn often runs into Nolan in the village and they stop to talk hockey. Flynn said Nolan frequently mentioned that he would love to help with NOTL minor hockey, so he was elated to see him on the ice in Virgil on Thursday.
Nolan continued to rave about how much fun he had working with the seven- and eight-year-old hockey players.
“Just watching them compete, battling for this little black puck and trying to put it in the net,” he laughed. “It’s a lot of fun to treat sport the way it should be treated. These young kids want to get out, meet new friends, stay in hotels and eat some fast food. Sometimes we think about the big picture way too soon rather than just letting the kids enjoy themselves.”
So will the 1996/1997 NHL coach of the year be back on a Virgil ice surface any time soon?
“If it can be anything like today I am certainly open to it,” said Nolan. “Sometimes we pigeonhole kids too early in life. You can’t take a dream away from the kids. Let them dream and whatever will be will be.”
