Greyhounds name assistant coach (3 photos, update)

The Soo Greyhounds have named Donald MacLean as its new assistant coach.

MacLean was introduced on Wednesday as the team rounded out its coaching staff for the upcoming Ontario Hockey League season.

He joins new head coach Drew Bannister and Associate Coach Joe Cirella, a holdover from the Greyhounds 2014-15 staff.

Bannister was hired as head coach on July 10.

“The Soo organization is a well-respected organization so it’s great to be able to work for a club like that,” said MacLean. “Working with Drew and Joe, I can learn a lot from those guys and use my excitement and enthusiasm and past experiences to help them out to win on the ice. I’m really looking forward to the opportunity.”

MacLean joins the team after serving as head coach with Dunaujvarosi Acelbikak in Hungary last season. He made the jump to Hungary after spending three seasons as an assistant coach with Medvescak Zagreb of Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League.

“It’s different, especially when you compare it to the CHL and the Ontario Hockey League,” MacLean said of working overseas. “You can relate a lot of things that happen day-to-day and year-to-year (in the OHL) to the NHL. Overseas it’s a little different. You’re a one-man staff. You don’t have the luxury of doing the things you can do when you have three, four or five on your staff.

“I worked in the KHL and it’s just like the NHL where we have five staff and we went through a lot of processes,” said MacLean. “Last year I was pretty much by myself, so you have to adapt to different things.”

MacLean has 14 seasons of professional hockey under his belt, which includes stops in the NHL, American Hockey League as well as Austria, Denmark and Croatia.

The 38-year-old played in 41 career NHL games, scoring eight goals and 13 points in games split between the Los Angeles Kings, Toronto Maple Leafs, Columbus Blue Jackets, Detroit Red Wings and Phoenix Coyotes.

In the AHL, MacLean was a high-scoring winger, leading the league in scoring in 2001-02 with 87 points and in goals in 2005-06 (56). In 513 career AHL games, MacLean scored 223 goals and 469 points.

“I was a forward by trade and they were defencemen so I hope I can work on some skills with the forwards,” MacLean said. “It’s a different skill-set I can bring to the club.”

Bannister said brining in MacLean rounds out a coaching staff that already featured a pair of former defencemen.

“I wanted to make sure I brought somebody in that had an offensive side,” Bannister said of MacLean’s forward background. “I played against Donald and he’s an offensive-forward. He’s going to take care of the skill development of our forwards. He’s going to work with the forwards and work on the power play with myself. That was one of the main things that I wanted to bring in. When I looked at myself and Joe, the department we were lacking in was having someone with some forward experience and that’s why we brought Donald in.”

Bannister said MacLean stood out in the process of interviewing potential assistants.

“Donald is a lot like me three years ago when I came into the Ontario Hockey League,” Bannister said of MacLean. “I wanted somebody who had a playing background. I looked for somebody who was trying to learn and get better. Donald’s taking his HP1 (coaching program) and that stood out to me but also had some sort of a coaching background too. With the coaching he’s done in the last three years, he stood out. There were a lot of good candidates but we kept coming back to Donald.”

MacLean replaces A.J. MacLean, who served as an assistant coach on Sheldon Keefe’s staff and joined the former Greyhounds bench boss with the Toronto Marlies.

For the Greyhounds, a new staff means new ideas.

“It’s always exciting when you have turnover because you have new ideas, new philosophies and new personalities,” said Cirella. “It’s good as a coach that you get to share ideas and find out how other organizations were doing things.”

“It’s important that we bring in this group and build off what we had,” said Greyhounds General Manager Kyle Raftis. “It’s not a case that we’re starting fresh but at the same time it’s new ideas that we can build off what we’ve done in the past and continually make it better because that’s what we’re in charge of doing every year.”

The Greyhounds open training camp on Aug. 31 prior to opening the OHL regular season on Sept. 25.

(PHOTO: Newly-hired Soo Greyhounds assistant coach Donald Maclean speaks to media during a press conference on July 29, 2015 at the Essar Centre in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Kenneth Armstrong/SooToday)