The New York Islanders announced that they have hired Jay McKee to serve as head coach of their newly-relocated AHL affiliate, the Hamilton Hammers. The organization’s previous AHL head coach, Rocky Thompson, was promoted to the position of assistant coach on Peter DeBoer’s NHL staff, creating the vacancy filled by this hire.
McKee is no stranger to the city of Hamilton. The 48-year-old has been head coach of the OHL’s Brantford Bulldogs since 2021-22, meaning the first two years of his coaching tenure came when the franchise was still located in Hamilton.
A former NHL defenseman who had an 802-game career playing for the Buffalo Sabres, St. Louis Blues, and Pittsburgh Penguins, McKee’s coaching career began in 2010-11, the very next season after he chose to retire.
His first job as a coach came at Niagara University, where he spent 2010-11 as an assistant coach on the staff of Dave Burkholder. The following year, he was an assistant for the AHL’s Rochester Americans, where he would coach future NHLers such as Marcus Foligno, Brayden McNabb, Zack Kassian, Alex Biega, and Brian Flynn.
After one year in Rochester, he left professional hockey and resumed his coaching career in 2014-15 as an assistant for the OHL’s Erie Otters. On the staff of future NHL coach Kris Knoblauch, he coached numerous future NHLers such as Connor McDavid, Dylan Strome, Alex DeBrincat, Darren Raddysh, Travis Dermott, Taylor Raddysh, Mason Marchment, and Kurtis MacDermid. He left Erie after one season to become an associate coach on the staff of Mike Van Ryn with the Kitchener Rangers.
McKee got his first chance as a head coach in 2016-17 with Kitchener. In year two of his tenure, he took the team to the OHL’s Conference Finals. His Rangers reached the OHL playoffs in every one of his full seasons as head coach, though he was fired after 21 games in 2019-20 after a 7-10-4 start.
In 2021-22, McKee was hired as head coach of the then-Hamilton Bulldogs. He was an instant success. In his first season in Hamilton, the Bulldogs had a 51-12-5 regular season, and steamrolled their way to the OHL Finals, sweeping each of their first three series. In the OHL Finals, the Bulldogs won in seven games against the Windsor Spitfires.
While McKee hasn’t won a title with the Bulldogs since then, he’s kept the franchise consistently among the OHL’s strongest teams. In total, he has gone 213-91-36 as head coach of the Bulldogs, with that championship run and another run to the Conference Finals this past season.
Beyond just that extremely impressive record, his program has also shown it can consistently develop NHL talent. His 2022 championship roster featured future NHLers such as Mason McTavish, Arber Xhekaj, and Ryan Winterton, as well as players who are currently on the NHL/AHL bubble, such as Avery Hayes, Logan Morrison, Jorian Donovan, and Jan Mysak.
His more recent Bulldogs teams have been led by some quality NHL prospects including Marek Vanacker, Florian Xhekaj, Nick Lardis, Jake O’Brien, Adam Jiricek, Ben Danford, Adam Benak, Jett Luchanko, and top 2026 draft prospect Caleb Malhotra.
That record of developing players is especially relevant for this new role. While McKee will certainly be tasked with turning the Hammers into a winning team, (something that has been a very real challenge for Islanders AHL coaches over the last half-decade) he will also be mandated with delivering as many Islanders prospects as possible to the NHL.
That’s something McKee appears prepared to do after nearly a decade as head coach of the OHL. As New York prepares for a season where some of its top prospects, such as first-rounders Cole Eiserman, Victor Eklund, and Kashawn Aitcheson, may begin the year in the AHL, they’ve decided to pull from the OHL to add a promising head coach to oversee their development.