Ryan Warsofsky follows Calder Cup season with rise to AHL head coach

Charlotte Checkers coach Ryan Warsofsky holds the AHL Hockey Championship Calder Cup. (Charlotte Checkers)

Ryan Warsofsky’s ascent up the hockey coaching ranks continued this offseason when, after helping guide the Charlotte Checkers to the 2019 Calder Cup championship in his first season as their assistant coach, he was named the club’s head coach.

Warsofsky, 31 years old and a native of North Marshfield, Mass., is the youngest coach hired in the American Hockey League since 2000.

And none of this would’ve happened had he listened to a two-time Stanley Cup-winning bench boss when he was younger.

“A good family friend of ours is Mike Sullivan,” Warsofsky said of the Pittsburgh Penguins head coach, who led them to back-to-back championships in 2016 and 2017 after serving as a player development coach for the 2015 Stanley Cup-winning Chicago Blackhawks. “His parents (George and Myrna) are my godparents. When he was coaching the AHL Providence Bruins and when he was the head coach of the Boston Bruins, I went to games. That’s when I realized I wanted to be a coach. I knew I wanted to do it. But Mike tried talking me out of it.”