Marshfield native Ryan Warsofsky named AHL head coach

Ryan Warsofsky, who just helped the AHL’s Charlotte Checkers win a league championship as a first-year assistant, will be the head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes’ top minor league affiliate next season.

Ryan Warsofsky’s rise in the coaching ranks shows no signs of slowing down.

The Carolina Hurricanes announced on Wednesday that Warsofsky, a Marshfield native, had been promoted to head coach of their AHL affiliate, the Charlotte Checkers. At 31, Warsofsky becomes the AHL’s youngest head coach -- and he’s taking over the AHL’s Calder Cup champions.

Warsofsky played a significant role in guiding the Checkers to that Cup. A first-year assistant coach, he was placed in charge of defensemen and the penalty-killing units, molding both into groups that were tough to beat: Charlotte’s team goals-against average of 2.49 ranked second in the AHL, and the penalty-killers were No. 1 with an 86.6 percent success rate. A year earlier, the Checkers were 24th in the AHL in shorthanded situations, at 81.2 percent.

“We’ve been very impressed with Ryan since he joined our organization,” Hurricanes general manager Don Waddell said in a statement. “He was a big part of the Checkers’ championship season … and we’re excited to have him take over as head coach.”

Warsofsky, who played locally at Marshfield High School and later at Curry College, retired after a one-year minor league career. He returned to Curry to join the Colonels’ staff as an assistant in 2012-13, then made the jump to the pro ranks with the South Carolina Stingrays of the ECHL.

After three seasons as an assistant to head coach Spencer Carbery (current head coach of the AHL’s Hershey Bears, after spending 2017-18 as an assistant to head coach Jay Leach at AHL Providence), Warsofsky went 88-44-10-2 over two seasons as head coach of the Stingrays. As a first-time head coach in 2016-17, he guided the Stingrays to the ECHL’s Kelly Cup Final.

Warsofsky will replace Mike Vellucci in Charlotte. Vellucci, who played dual roles in the Hurricanes organization -- head coach of their AHL affiliate, assistant GM to Waddell at the NHL level -- left the organization late last month and was hired to coach the Penguins’ AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.

Coincidentally, one of Vellucci’s players is likely to be David Warsofsky, Ryan’s younger brother. David Warsofsky, a pro for the past eight seasons who played the first 10 of his 52 career NHL games with the Bruins, signed a two-year, two-way contract with the Penguins on July 1.