Bits of business have slowly been wrapped up all over the organization as we near the true doldrums of the offseason, and another pretty significant piece was announced today. The Phantoms announced that their coaching staff for next season has fully come together, with John Snowden getting the nod with the promotion to Head Coach, while Terrence Wallin and Nick Schultz will fill out the staff as his assistants.
These are all names that, for one reason or another, might feel familiar. Snowden served as an assistant coach for the Phantoms over the last two seasons, after spending five seasons in Toronto’s organization (during which he spent three seasons with the ECHL Growlers, and won a Kelly Cup, and then two behind the Marlies’ bench as an assistant). Wallin moves up after spending the last three seasons as the ECHL Mariners’ head coach (and also was around as a player and eventually assistant coach when Danny Briere was running the show up there), while Schultz moves over from the development side with the Flyers. It’s a staff filled out through the network of known commodities, to be sure, but it also signals a significant shift in ethos for the team, heading forward.
“I coached against [Snowden],” said Flyers Director of Player Development Riley Armstrong back at Development Camp, “he was in Orlando, I was in Wheeling, and I didn’t know him at all, and I met him at a game. And [then] he went up to Newfoundland and he was the coach up there, then I became the head coach of Maine, then we battled against each other and we had some really good games. And then when I moved into this spot, he moved into my spot in Lehigh as the assistant coach. It was pretty cool, that we never really met but we were always like texting each other and calling, talking on the phone, stuff like that about different styles of game play and everything. But having him here and his mind for development, which is a big part of what we’re going to do with the Phantoms, it helps me out a ton and on the other side, I help him out a ton because we think the game the same way.”
Between the clear synergy in mindsets between the Phantoms’ new head coach and the Flyers’ development staff, along with adding a former member of that same development staff as an assistant coach, the message is clear that while they’re still hoping to build a successful team at this level, they’re emphasizing to a much greater degree the development of the growing number of high-end prospects on their roster. The stakes are rising for some of these young players to pan out to help push the Flyers into the next stage in their rebuild, and there’s no shortage of assets being brought together to work towards that aim.