The route to the NHL was anything but a straight line for Cail MacLean.
The Middleton native first left home to chase his dream as a 15-year-old and just arrived at the final destination this summer when the Calgary Flames named him an assistant coach. Along the way, MacLean played five years of junior in Ontario and spent 22 seasons in the AHL and ECHL – 11 as a player and 11 more as a coach.
“It’s pretty exciting and it hits you,” the 44-year-old said about his new job with the Flames. “There was a week of of just sharing the moment with the people in my life, all the way back to people who coached me in minor hockey, everyone I grew up with and all of my family. There’s been so much support and I really wanted to make sure they knew how much I appreciated that. Then it soon sets in that I’ve got a big job and a huge opportunity so I want to make sure I do everything I can to help the Calgary Flames in any way I can.
“Now we’ve sort of gone by the honeymoon stage and we’re into the phase of moving our life. We’re trying to sort out getting our family to Calgary, finding a new school for our daughter, moving cars and furniture and all that stuff, but at the same time trying to prepare for the hockey side of things. So it was all excitement early on and now I’m settling in to getting ready for all the work to do to be prepared to get off on the right foot.”
Back when MacLean was a star with the Valley Wildcats of the Nova Scotia Midget AAA league in the early 1990s, the QMJHL hadn’t yet expanded to the Maritimes so he knew his only option to pursue hockey at the highest levels was to leave Atlantic Canada. He opted for junior A in Ontario because his original goal was to chase a scholarship to an NCAA program.
But he caught the eye of the OHL’s Kingston Frontenacs during the 1992-93 season with the CJHL’s Ottawa Senators and they convinced him to change paths. MacLean went on to a terrific major junior career, highlighted by a 74-point final season as captain of the team. His distinction as a leader uncovered his biggest strength as an athlete and created an identity that continues to this day.
MacLean was a team captain at numerous stops during his ECHL and AHL playing days, then transitioned immediately into coaching because of his natural inclination to lead.
“When I was finishing playing, I knew I was getting long in the tooth for the ECHL level,” explained MacLean, who skated in 847 professional games. “When you look at the different leagues, age becomes a factor more quickly in the lower professional levels because that’s where young players go to develop. So I knew that I’d have to look for positions where I was a leader on my various teams and I started seeing myself in a capacity where I was more of a conduit between the coaching staff and the players. It was something I definitely paid attention to and I had the opportunity to play for a lot of different coaches and learn from them.
“What happened was when I was in South Carolina (ECHL), my playing days came to an end and I was also finishing my degree off so that was a fortuitous place for me to be because I needed extra time to work on my degree but there was also an opporunity to be a part-time assistant with the Stingrays, who I’d been playing for. So that matched up well because I could do both but also stay involved.”
“I don’t think I was surprised by how much I liked coaching because it was really more of a continuation for me,” he added. “I always just saw it as being part of a team and helping a team win, so suddenly I was still doing that but just in a different capacity. It got me on the ice and I got to stay in a sport I loved. I grew up playing hockey and I viewed it as really a seamless transition because all I’ve ever wanted to do to was help a team have success so I never had any pangs of jealousy with the guys who were still playing. There wasn’t anything like that. It just felt really natural and the only change was having a bit more accountability on a different side of things.”
Just one season after retiring as a player and transitioning to that assistant’s role with the Stingrays, MacLean became the team’s head coach. He stayed in that position for two years before moving up to the AHL to be an assistant with the Abbotsford Heat.
He spent two years in that position, followed by another two-year stint as an ECHL head coach with the Adirondack Thunder. His big breakthrough came with his next organization, the Stockton Heat, who hired him as an assitant coach in 2017-18 and then promoted him to head coach the following year.
“Becoming a head coach at the AHL level was a big step,” MacLean said. “That’s a great opportunity the Calgary Flames gave me and it was obviously something that I looked at as a real honour because of the way (Flames general manager) Brad Treliving talked about the position in their coaching tree. He described the importance of developing prospects for the organization in that role so that was something I was really honoured to take on. And being an AHL head coach was something I hadn’t experienced so it was definitely a challenge and a great opportunity.”
After three seasons grooming the Flames’ top talent in the AHL, the Flames decided they wanted MacLean in Calgary to work with some of those same players at the NHL level, while also adding value to their coaching staff in other ways.
“We’re going to work further this summer on nailing down what all the staff is going to do but I know that my role will be one in which I’m going to be up in the press box (during games) being the eye in the sky,” MacLean said. “I’m going to working on breaking down the opposition so pre-scout duties are going to be a big part of my job. I’m also going to be working with players one-on-one both on and off the ice. So I view it as an opportunity to look at the game from a different angle and I’ll be working with a great staff and I’ll be able to work with some of the players I’ve worked with up through the ranks. I got to form relationships with them and now I’ll be working with them in a different capacity at a different level so that’s an exciting opportunity.”
As much as MacLean views his arrival at the NHL level as the achievement of his life’s goal, he also sees it more as a starting point than the finish line. He has new goals now and jokingly confesses to being frustrated training camp is so far away.
“It’s something I’ve been working towards for a while and it’s certainly exciting but also rewarding in the sense that there are a lot of people that have helped me along the way,” he said. “It’s fun to see the excitement from other people in my life as well. When you look at my coaching stops along the way, there’s been a lot of movement so I give my wife (Keri) and daughter (Ashton) a lot of credit because we’ve had to change addresses and schools and homes so many times. That’s certainly something that’s part of the job but at the same time I really appreciate them being willing to do it as a group and support me as I’ve been working towards this. So that’s been an adventure.”
October 19, 2002: @TheHersheyBears and @HersheyEnt open their new arena, Giant Center, with a 4-1 victory over Rochester.
Current @AHLHeat head coach Cail MacLean scores the first goal in the building’s history. pic.twitter.com/m7T7z4WYvm
— American Hockey League (@TheAHL) October 19, 2020
And when he thinks back to having to leave home nearly 30 years ago to start his journey, MacLean said that was one of the biggest sacrifices he had to make but knew from the start that was no other way to do it.
“When I was young I was back in Nova Scotia as soon as I could be. I spent all of my summers there and I really enjoyed it,” said MacLean, whose father Paul still lives in Middleton but his mother Trinda Lee passed away three years ago. “I had my family and friends and great support there. I had a good friend who I trained with and that was excellent. I loved going back but when it got later in my playing carer I had to start staying in the cities where I was in terms of having a home and building a family.
“Then when you hit those coaching jobs you’re going for the full season and you need to be around your city to keep up on that. That’s when I started just being able to go home for visits and I would say that was one of the harder things about our job, being very transient as a family and it being difficult to spend the time I’d like to with my family at home because of the nature of the business. That was one of the big trade-offs but I love to get home whenever I can.”
