When the NHL comes calling, you better answer the phone. You don’t get too many opportunities to take the step of joining the top league in the world, so who can blame anyone for taking their shot?
Shattuck St. Mary’s Hockey is a factory. Some say it is “the factory” for future NHL talent when looking at Prep Schools in the United States. It is hard to argue against that premise.
The Sabres announced the team has hired former Shattuck Prep Head Coach Tom Ward as an assistant coach and Shattuck Bantam Head Coach Adam Nightingale as Sabres video coach.
Ward joins the Sabres after spending the last 18 seasons as head coach of the Shattuck St. Mary’s Boys Prep team. Under Ward’s guidance, the Boys Prep team captured nine USA Hockey National Championships. Ward also served as the school’s director of hockey from 2004 to 2016, during which time the school won a total of 21 National Championships.
Nightingale was in the past has been the director of hockey operations and video coordinator for the Michigan State Spartans. In addition to his time in the NCAA, Nightingale served as head coach of the Shattuck St. Mary’s Boys Bantam team for the last two seasons and led the team to a National Championship in 2016. Internationally, Nightingale was also the video coach for Team USA at the 2015 IIHF World Junior Championship.
Who takes over “the factory” now? Considering the conversations with Ward began weeks ago and Shattuck was aware of those conversations, we are pretty sure a short list of successors was drawn up before this announcement. We are also sure that the short list was made by Ward himself with preliminary conversations having already taken place with those people.
Look for Shattuck to make an announcement rather quickly as students are scheduled to arrive in just over four weeks.
Joseph Kolodziej – Publisher
