The Penguins stuck to internal hires in replacing new assistant coach Mike Vellucci's former duties as Wilkes-Barre/Scranton head coach and general manager.
J.D. Forrest, who has spent the last four seasons as an assistant coach in Wilkes-Barre, was promoted to head coach on Friday, Jim Rutherford announced. Assistant general manager Jason Karmanos will handle Wilkes-Barre general manager duties.
Karmanos, 46, has been in the Penguins' organization since 2014. He served as vice president of hockey operations from 2014-17, and has been an assistant general manager for the past three seasons. Prior to joining the Penguins organization, Karmanos was an assistant general manager for the Hurricanes from 1998-2013.
"JD has done an excellent job in his four seasons as an assistant coach in Wilkes-Barre, consistently demonstrating a strong ability to develop the young defensemen in our system," Karmanos said in a team release. "His familiarity with the organization, our prospects and the style of hockey we want to play, together with his work ethic and team-first approach, gives us confidence that he will excel in his new role as head coach."
Additionally, the contract of Wilkes-Barre assistant coach Jarrod Skalde was not renewed after spending the last two seasons behind Wilkes-Barre's bench, so two new assistant coaches will presumably need to be hired at the AHL-level. The Penguins said in a press release that the organization "will not make any additional decisions regarding the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton coaching staff until closer to the start of the AHL season."
Forrest met with myself and several other Wilkes-Barre media members to talk about the hiring.
"I'm really excited," Forrest said. "These are difficult jobs to get. I really want to thank the Penguins organization for having faith in me and giving me the opportunity to coach down here in Wilkes-Barre. It's a big deal, we have a lot of important prospects, a lot of important players. There's a long tradition of that pipeline from Wilkes-Barre to Pittsburgh. My job is to keep that going. I'm excited, I can't wait to get started. I know most of the players, and we have a fantastic team."
Forrest, 39, focused on the team's defensemen and penalty kill in his four seasons as an assistant coach. Under Forrest, Wilkes-Barre had the league's best penalty kill in 2016-17 (86.9 percent), ranked 20th in the league in 2017-18 (82 percent), ranked 26th in 2018-19 (79.4 percent), and returned to top-10 in the league in 2019-20 at 83.1 percent.
Forrest was an assistant under two Wilkes-Barre head coaches, Clark Donatelli and Vellucci. Now, as he replaces Vellucci behind the Wilkes-Barre bench, Forrest spoke highly of his time working under Vellucci and what he was able to learn from him in the last year.
"He's had success, the championship, all through his career as a coach," Forrest said. "It was great working for him, I learned a lot. He's fantastic at managing his staff and utilizing his assistants to the fullest. I think he realized he had some good people around him, and we always seem to have great people in Wilkes-Barre. I'm going to make sure that I take a page from his book on that and really let people flourish in their roles. The other thing I think he did really well was communicate with players, he was really honest with them. Guys really respect that, I plan on continuing that."
That communication, he said, is key to his coaching philosophy.
"I like to be up front with the guys and really honest," Forrest said of his style as a coach. "Players at our level, they want to be challenged. One of the biggest disservices you can do to them is not being up-front with them on what they want to improve on, or what they're really good at. I try to stay real positive in those things and focus on the attributes they have that are going to get themt o the next level, and cultivate them and give them confidence in those things they know they're really good at. At the same time, everyone has something to work on. Being up front with them on what they need to do to close those holes in their game, that's one of the things that I feel really good about on how I can communicate that with the players."
As a player, Forrest played defense for four years at Boston College, where he was teammates with the likes of Brooks Orpik, Rob Scuderi, and Ben Lovejoy on the blue line. He had a nine-year professional career -- one year split between the AHL and ECHL, and the other eight years in Europe with stops in Finland, Switzerland, Sweden, and Germany.
"I loved playing so much, it just got to a point where I was at a crossroads," Forrest recalled of his playing career. "Do I play another year and extend this, or do I start getting into coaching because I know it's something I want to do? I had the opportunity. Don Granato, who is now with the Buffalo Sabres, was the head coach of the National Development Team. He reached out to me and said if I'm looking to make the jump, this is a good spot to do it. And, boy was he right."
After retiring from professional hockey following the 2013-14 season, Forrest spent a year as an assistant coach with the U.S. National Team Development Program, a team that had Auston Matthews, Matthew Tkachuk, Jack Roslovic, Clayton Keller, Adam Fox, and Charlie McAvoy. He was an assistant coach for Team USA in the U-18 World Junior Championship that season, helping lead the team to a gold medal. The following season Forrest was the head coach of EC Red Bull Salzburg's U20 team in Austria before being hired by Wilkes-Barre as an assistant.
