Meet Allen Americans Assistant Coach Brett Ferguson

Brett Ferguson

I had a chance to sit down with Allen's recently selected assistant coach, Brett Ferguson, last week and have swapped messages with him several times while putting together this story. He is a very busy guy between moving his family from California to Texas and jumping into recruiting and planning for the upcoming hockey season. When I texted him yesterday he was at the airport as he and  head coach B.J. Adams were headed to Salt Lake City to attend Utah's rookie camp. A great opportunity for the coaches to see the young players in the Utah/Tuscon organizations and network with the Utah and Tuscon coaches and scouts. FYI, Allen forward James Hardie is attending the Utah rookie camp and forward Mark Duarte is attending rookie/prospect camp with Ottawa.
 

Brett Ferguson's path to the Allen Americans assistant coach is a long and interesting one. When you grow up in a hockey family like the Ferguson family you are almost predestined for a career in hockey. Brett's grandfather, Lorne Ferguson, had an eight year NHL career in the 1950's and played for three of the six original teams (Boston, Detroit, Chicago). His dad, Bob Ferguson, has spent his entire working life in hockey. He was drafted by the New York Islanders in 1974. After bouncing around the minor leagues for a few years, Bob Ferguson switched from player to coach. At the age of 27 he was offered a head coaching position in the USHL. He spent his first 14 years as a head coach in the USHL splitting time in Sioux City and Des Moines Iowa. He won five championships and was selected as the USHL Coach of the Year five times. In 1995 he moved on to professional hockey which included head coaching positions for two ECHL teams (Augusta and Florida). He was the back to back ECHL Coach of the Year in 1999 and 2000 with the Florida Everblades. In 2011-12 Ferguson moved from coaching to a front office job as an assistant general and then general manager in the Anaheim Ducks organization. He has been with the San Diego Gulls since 2015-16.

 

- Brett was born in Sioux City, Iowa and spent his early years in West Des Moines, Iowa. Being the son of a hockey coach he spent a lot of time in hockey rinks growing up, but baseball was also a favorite sport. There were many stops along the way as his dad switched jobs. While Brett has never worked in the ECHL he knows about life in the ECHL because he used to go on road trips with his dad when he was coaching in the ECHL.

 

- Brett won three Iowa state championships in high school (two in hockey and one in baseball) including being the winning pitcher in the state baseball championship game as a senior. After high school Brett played a year of junior hockey (USHL) in Des Moines before switching to baseball. A right handed pitcher, he played a year at a junior college and then played at the University of South Carolina (Aiken) where he earned his degree. After graduating he had the opportunity to go back to his USHL team in Des Moines as an assistant coach which started his career in hockey. He has spent the last 14 years in the Anaheim Ducks organization with their AHL affiliates in Syracuse (2010-2012), Norfolk (2012-2015) and San Diego (2015-2019). He was then promoted to the NHL team and has been Anaheim's video coach since the 2019-20 season. 

 

-  What makes Brett want to leave the NHL lifestyle after five years as the Anaheim Ducks video coach? It is his desire to be a bench coach. He had the opportunity to do that in San Diego for a couple of seasons when Dallas Eakins was the Gulls head coach. When Eakins was promoted to the Anaheim Ducks head coach position he brought Brett along but he returned to only doing video coaching. When his contract was up after last season he made the decision he was done being a full time video coach. He started applying for coaching jobs and when he saw Allen had an assistant coaching job vacancy and the team was operated by Zawyer Sports he called Zawyer. He didn't know Joe Ernst, but Joe knew Brett's dad from his days in the ECHL when Ernst was a referee. In his own words Brett shared, "I talked to a couple of different teams and B.J. interviewed me and we really hit it off. We share the same vision and style of play which includes being a younger, faster team that is hard to play against."

 

- What will Brett's duties include? He will work with the forwards and be responsible for the power play. He ran the power play in the AHL and is comfortable with that. He said, "We will have a younger team so development will be a focus for both B.J. and myself. It was a big part of his role as an OHL coach and it was a primary focus for me to develop young forwards in the AHL." 

 

- Brett will still be involved as a video coach and will be using the same software as he used in the NHL. It will be new for the Allen Americans. Zawyer is buying it for all of their teams. It is called Catapult and is the industry standard. Ferguson and Adams will use Catapult for development and pre-scout video in team meetings and individual player meetings. 

 

- We had an interesting discussion about the number of skaters that dress for each game increasing from 17 to 18. With this increase ECHL teams are signing more tough guys for the upcoming season. Brett's take is that the 12th forward will not contribute much offensively, but every team will have to have one of those guys that can answer the bell if needed. 

 

-With the ECHL 10 fight rule it won't be like it used to be, but it seems like most teams, especially in the Mountain Division, will have a fighting specialist on the roster. As Steve Martinson used to say, it's better to have a pack of wolves than one lion. The ECHL may have wolves and lions on the rosters this season. Major penalties have fallen dramatically since Allen joined the ECHL in 2014-15. In its first ECHL season Allen won the Kelly Cup and has 65 major penalties. Those number have fallen over time to an all-time low of 25 major penalties last season. With an extra player dressing for games this season you will likely see the long downward trend in major penalties reverse in 2024-25.               

- Brett and his wife Amanda have three young sons; Caleb (8), Aiden (5) and Reid (2). Brett and Amanda met while he was working in Syracuse (she is from Syracuse) and they have moved to Norfolk, San Diego, Anaheim (Irvine) and now Allen (Melissa). Like a lot of hockey players, Brett married "up" as he said to me, "Amanda is the athlete in the family (she played lacrosse for Cornell University) and the brains in our family."  The kids are already signed up for Allen Youth Hockey, fall baseball and yes they will play lacrosse. I found this quote from Brett that describes him as a hockey dad when his oldest son started playing hockey, "I’ve played in hundreds of games and have coached in hundreds more. State championships, national tournaments, AHL playoffs, and I have never been as nervous as I was for my four year old son’s first hockey practice."

 

- What does Brett like to do away from the rink other than all of the youth sports with the kids? "We spend our summers up in the Thousand Islands on Lake Ontario. We do a lot of stuff on the water; boat, fish and jet ski. With the kids we are big into card collecting (baseball and hockey). I golf when I can but haven't done much of that. The cheapest you could find in Southern California for a round of golf was $110 so, hopefully I can find some cheaper prices in the DFW area." (Maybe some of you golfers can hook the coaches up).

- I asked Brett about some of the favorites in his card collection figuring he has some gems given his family history. He didn't disappoint:

"We love to collect my grandfather's cards. His rookie card is in the famed 1951-52 Parkhurst set. It is the first post-war hockey set. Gordie Howe's rookie card is in the set along with other Hall of Famers. It makes my grandpa's card sought after because of the popularity and scarcity of the set. The 1954-55 Topps set, which he is featured in, is the first Topps produced hockey card set. It is also a very sought after set for hockey set builders. Then he is also in the 1957-58 and 1958-59 Topps set. He is also featured in the Beehive set which was from the Beehive Corn Syrup Company in Canada. They had a redemption program where you would receive a player photo after sending in proof of purchases. I also like to build o-pee-chee (Canadian version of Topps) baseball sets. They started producing cards in 1965 and have about 10% of the print run of Topps, so it makes a nice chase for some of the older sets."   

 

DID YOU KNOW: Brett Ferguson's dad never made it to the NHL and his hockey career was cut short because of injury. However, he played during the time when the WHA was conducting a draft and Bob Ferguson was one of the players that was drafted by both the NHL and WHA. In 1974 he was drafted by the NHL New York Islanders and the WHA Winnipeg Jets.