Patrick Williams, TheAHL.com Features Writer
Kyle Dubas has spent much of the past 14 months reworking the look of his NHL roster.
Coming to Pittsburgh from the Toronto Maple Leafs in June 2023, the Penguins’ president of hockey operations and general manager has been tasked with trying to deliver more success utilizing the club’s long-time core – as well as positioning the organization for the future.
A substantial portion of that plan involves the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.
Dubas learned the pro hockey business with the Toronto Marlies, building the Leafs’ on- and off-ice AHL operations into a Calder Cup champion in 2018. He saw how important the American Hockey League is as the underpinning for a successful NHL franchise, a philosophy that he took with him as general manager of the Maple Leafs and now on to Pittsburgh.
As Dubas continues to settle in with the Penguins, more and more of his ways of doing business are beginning to take hold in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton. Assistant GM Jason Spezza, who has spent the past two seasons – one in Toronto, one in Pittsburgh – learning the business from Dubas, will add the role of Wilkes-Barre’s new general manager this season. Amanda Kessel, a fixture with the U.S. national women’s program for more than a decade, has also been promoted to become Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s new assistant general manager as well as the organization’s manager of minor league operations.
And there to help orchestrate it all will be new AHL Penguins head coach Kirk MacDonald, hired in June after two seasons with Dubuque of the United States Hockey League, capped by a trip to the league finals. Mix the organization’s management and coaching changes with aggressive work in free agency to bulk up the depth chart, and this will be a new-look Wilkes-Barre/Scranton operation in 2024-25.
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton has churned out NHL coaches the past 20 years: Michel Therrien, Todd Richards, Dan Bylsma, Todd Reirden, John Hynes and Mike Sullivan have all gone through northeastern Pennsylvania on their way to – or back to – NHL head-coaching gigs. MacDonald hopes to be next. Landing the job involved a trip into Pittsburgh and a full-day meeting and interview with Dubas and Spezza. Both sides talked through philosophies, approaches and how they view the sport’s details.
Hiring an AHL head coach is a major decision for an NHL organization, and there was plenty to sift through in order to determine whether MacDonald was the person for the job.
“It was quite a thorough process,” MacDonald said. “It felt like there was a pretty good connection on how the game should be played, and how we wanted to teach it.”
MacDonald, 40, is coming from the U.S. junior ranks, but he has extensive pro experience as well. Before joining Dubuque, he spent eight seasons with Reading in the ECHL, working as an assistant and later head coach and director of hockey operations. He also played six seasons professionally, including four years with the Providence Bruins playing for AHL Hall of Famer Rob Murray and current Vegas Golden Knights head coach Bruce Cassidy.
The USHL feeds top talent into the NCAA, and Dubuque offered MacDonald a chance to focus more closely on teaching the game rather than devoting a significant amount of time to administrative tasks.
“You really learn to work with guys, communicate and manage people,” MacDonald said. “It’s not just, ‘Oh, you can trade your way out of a problem.’ You’ve got to work with people and try to connect with each guy to get the best out of them.
“In the same sense, it’s hockey. You’re coming in every day [asking] how we can help these guys get better.”
Now MacDonald is ready to apply that know-how in hockey’s top professional development league. Along the way, he has been able to learn from the likes of Murray and Cassidy among others.
“I wasn’t very good,” MacDonald joked of his playing days. “You’ve got to work and put the time in. I think the one thing you can say is I showed up every day. You do that, and I think the results start to take care of themselves.”
In college at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, MacDonald played for former Rochester Americans head coach Seth Appert as well as Jim Montgomery, now head coach of the Boston Bruins. Playing for Appert, MacDonald remembers, was the first time “really where you saw a newer-age coach.” That experience has helped shape MacDonald’s coaching approach to this day.
It’s easy to see, then, how MacDonald clicked with Dubas and Spezza. Dubas has long put a heavy emphasis on a strong player-friendly environment, and Spezza has held a friendly, outgoing approach going back to his own days as an AHL prospect in the Ottawa organization.
“It’s OK to have a conversation and just be human,” MacDonald said. “You start to see that the more you are relatable to guys, the more they’re going to want to listen to what you’re saying.”
TheAHL.com features writer Patrick Williams has been on the American Hockey League beat for nearly two decades for outlets including NHL.com, Sportsnet, TSN, The Hockey News, SiriusXM NHL Network Radio and SLAM! Sports, and was most recently the co-host of The Hockey News On The ‘A’ podcast. He was the recipient of the AHL’s James H. Ellery Memorial Award for his outstanding coverage of the league in 2016.
