On Thursday Jim Hulton made the surprising announcement he was leaving the Charlottetown Islanders after 11 seasons to look for a new opportunity. On Friday morning Amherstview’s Jay McKee resigned from the OHL’s Brantford Bulldogs to become the new Head Coach of the New York Islanders American Hockey League farm in Hamilton.

The Islanders recently moved their AHL team from Bridgeport, Connecticut to the Steel City where they will be known as the Hamilton Hammers. It is McKee’s first opportunity as a Head Coach in pro hockey and many feel he is headed towards an NHL head coaching career.

There were rumours this past season McKee might be the next head coach in Belleville with the Ottawa Senators AHL farm team. Sens owner Michael Andlauer owned the OHL’s Hamilton Bulldogs when McKee coached there.

After four seasons as head coach in Kitchener, McKee joined the Hamilton Bulldogs in 2021 and that first season they won the OHL championship and went to the Memorial Cup. The following year, the team relocated to Brantford just 39 kilometers away, after it was announced that lengthy, extensive renovations were being done to Hamilton’s Copps Coliseum.

This past season McKee guided Brantford to the league’s best regular season record, and a year ago they were tops in the Eastern Conference.

McKee has coached 31 players who have been drafted or signed to pro contracts during his five seasons with the Bulldogs. Caleb Malhotra should be a top five pick in the upcoming NHL draft.

McKee told the Brantford Expositor, “my philosophy coaching is no different than when I was playing, your ultimate goal is to develop and try to achieve the highest level possible.”

McKee, who started his junior career playing Junior C hockey in Amherstview, was a first-round pick of the Buffalo Sabres in 1995 and played over 800 NHL games. He was inducted into the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame in 2023.

Hamilton has a spotty record for pro hockey. Copps Coliseum opened in 1985, and former Blackberry CEO Jim Balsillie was heavily involved trying to bring an NHL team to Hamilton. It never happened. In 1990 Hamilton was chasing an NHL expansion team, but two new franchises went to Ottawa and Tampa Bay that came into the league in 1992.

By the early 2000’s Balsillie made three different aggressive attempts to buy NHL teams, Pittsburgh, then Nashville and finally Phoenix. None of those bids were successful and the feeling around Hamilton was the Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres killed it, believing an expansion team would infringe on their NHL territory and hurt fan support for their own teams.

Hamilton was one of the host cities for the memorable 1987 Canada Cup – a best-on-best tournament – where Wayne Greztky and Mario Lemieux created on-ice magic for Team Canada. The final two games were played at Copps Coliseum with Canada winning both games 6-5 over the Soviets. It was Gretzky to Mario Lemieux for the tournament winning goal and the iconic Dan Kelly on the call .

Hamilton has a long history of pro hockey, they had an NHL team in the early 1920’s – the Hamilton Tigers – in 1925 the players went on strike looking for more money and the franchise became the New York Americans the following season. Hamilton had a minor pro team in the International Hockey League after the Tigers left, but that team moved to Syracuse in 1930.

In the early 1990’s, Vancouver’s AHL farm team was in Hamilton for a couple of years, they also left for Syracuse in 1994. The Montreal Canadiens and Edmonton Oilers shared the Hamilton Bulldogs as their top AHL farm team from 1996 to 2015, winning the Calder Cup in 2007. The franchise was sold and relocated to St. John’s Newfoundland.

In 2015,  Michael Andlauer bought the OHL’s Belleville Bulls and moved the team to Hamilton to become the Bulldogs.

Just a couple of weeks ago the PWHL awarded an expansion franchise to Hamilton and it will share the TD Coliseum with the Hammers. For Jay McKee after a ton of success in junior hockey,  it’s the next stop on a road that may see him back in the NHL as a Head Coach.

Mark Potter is a longtime Kingston broadcaster, Past President of the Original Hockey Hall of Fame and 2012 inductee into the Kingston & District Sports Hall of Fame.