MR. POSITIVE

Griffins assistant coach Ben Simon remains thrilled to have found a career in hockey.

Story and photo by Mark Newman

Ben Simon counts his blessings every day.

Making a career in hockey is something that he never imagined when he was young. “I didn’t really play year-round,” he said. “I played baseball with the same group of friends, and in the summer we were on our bikes, cruising the neighborhood. We were just hanging out with our buddies. It wasn’t hockey, hockey, hockey, like it is now.”

But Simon played hockey every year, through mite, squirt and pee wee, until he played Junior-A hockey for the Cleveland Barons. He tried out and played for Team USA in a tournament in Japan and soon found himself on the radar of a number of colleges.

He made five official campus visits before choosing Notre Dame, drawn by the allure of being in the first recruiting class of head coach Dave Poulin, a 13-year NHL veteran who had played for the Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Bruins and Washington Capitals.

“It’s a football school, no question, but there’s a mystique about Notre Dame,” Simon said. “Everybody thinks there’s a mystique about their alma mater, but there’s something about that school that makes it quite the experience. The tradition of athletics and academics made a win-win situation.”

Simon not only earned a degree in sociology, but he also met his wife there. Beth Cooper was a Kalamazoo Central High graduate who was a member of the women’s golf team at Notre Dame.

“You talk about what the game of hockey can do for you. I was a kid from Cleveland who played a game because my brothers played it and had fun doing it and all of a sudden I get a scholarship to a great academic institution, I meet my wife, have kids, travel to different countries, get the job I have now – all because of chasing a stupid puck.

“It’s funny what a game can do for your life.”

The job Simon now has is being an assistant coach for the Grand Rapids Griffins, a position for which the seeds of success were sown many years earlier.

Drafted in the fifth round (110th overall) in 1997 by the Chicago Blackhawks, Simon saw his rights traded to the Atlanta Thrashers (“for a bag of pucks,” he jokes) before he ever played a game professionally. He was a winner right from the start, capturing championships in his first two pro seasons. On both occasions, his team defeated the Griffins during its playoff run.

In 2000-01, he was a member of the Turner Cup-winning Orlando Solar Bears, a team that was led by Todd Richards, Mark Beaufait and Jarrod Skalde. (The roster included several players – Hugo Boisvert, Bryan Adams, Yves Sarault, Wade Brookbank and David Gove – familiar to Griffins fans).

“We had 10 or 11 rookies – it was a young group of guys who were enthusiastic about coming to the rink every day,” he said. “You may not remember all the wins and loses, but you remember the people and the times you went through together as a team and the fun you had at the rink.”

In 2001-02, Simon won a Calder Cup with the Chicago Wolves, a team led by Steve Maltais, J.P. Vigier, Cory Larose and goaltender Kari Lehtonen. He also saw his first NHL action, appearing in six games with the Thrashers. “Once you get a taste, you want more,” he said.

After another season split between Chicago and Atlanta, Simon signed a contract with the Nashville Predators. But his 2003-04 season began on a sour note when a former teammate, Dan Snyder, died in a tragic car accident.

“He was one of my best friends and any time you lose a friend, it’s tough,” he said. “I was struggling because I felt like I wanted nothing to do with hockey.”

Playing for the Milwaukee Admirals, Simon returned from a two-week road trip to learn he had been traded back to Atlanta. He spent the rest of the season in the NHL. He scored three goals in 52 games as the fourth-line center of the Thrashers.

“What came out of that whole experience is that you can’t take anything for granted,” he said. “Come to the rink every day, have fun. Every day is a chance to get better. Every day presents an opportunity to embrace the challenge. I really took those things to heart. The game of hockey has a funny way of teaching you life lessons.”

During the 2004-05 NHL lockout, Simon was back in Chicago. The Wolves reached the Calder Cup Finals, losing to a Philadelphia team that included Mike Richards and Patrick Sharp. “That might have been some of the best hockey I ever played,” he said. “Both teams were stacked with some really good prospects who were right at the cusp of breaking through.”

By the 2005-06 season, Simon had reached proverbial journeyman status. He signed with the Columbus Blue Jackets and bounced up and down between the NHL and the team’s AHL affiliate in Syracuse until then-Griffins general manager Bob McNamara, another Notre Dame grad, brought him to the Griffins a couple of months before the end of the 2006-07 season.

Simon had hoped to stay in Grand Rapids the next season, but he went unsigned and played in Springfield instead. A year in Germany followed, then he auditioned with the ECHL’s Kalamazoo Wings at the beginning of the 2009-10 season before he was called back to the AHL by the Toronto Marlies.

“Dave Poulin, my old coach at Notre Dame, was director of hockey operations in Toronto, and I had played with (head coach) Dallas Eakins in Chicago, so I was happy when they called,” he said. Simon played 44 games with the Marlies, but it was becoming evident that he was nearing the end of his playing career.

Unable to secure a job in the AHL, Simon headed to England to become the player-coach of the Sheffield Steelers.

“I wanted to play one more season and nothing was really popping over here,” he recalled. “My agent found the Sheffield job and it was a good opportunity to explore coaching a little bit. A lot of players think it’s a natural progression, but I wasn’t sure if I would like it. I figured it was a good way to get one more year of playing out of my system while finding out whether or not coaching was for me.”

His team won the regular season championship with a record of 43-10-0-1. “Sheffield is an old steel town where the original Stanley Cup was made,” he said. “It was a new cultural experience. We saw some cool parts of the country, Ireland, old castles, Belfast, and Saint Andrews.”

More significantly, he discovered he loved coaching.

“From the coaching side, it was a blast,” he said. “It really taught me organizational skills and things like time management, because the job included things like marketing, ticket sales and payroll. It was a good learning experience, plus I got to play a little bit, too.”

Simon returned to the States in 2011 to become an assistant with the Rockford IceHogs. He was hired by Stan Bowman, another Notre Dame graduate. “When I interviewed, it was the first time we met,” he said. “It was a tremendous organization. Chicago does a lot of things right and they do a great job of developing players. It was fun to be a part of their 2013 Stanley Cup run as black aces.”

Unfortunately, he was looking for work again after the 2012-13 season when Rockford downsized to one assistant. He became the head coach of the Cincinnati Cyclones for 2013-14, leading the team to the ECHL finals where the Cyclones lost to Alaska in six games.

All the while, Simon was becoming a stronger coach.

“You get a little sharper in terms of picking things out, little habits that can help players,” he said. “You learn systems, ways of presenting, how to approach guys. It’s no different than a job in a factory or a farm. You get better with age. For better or worse, you learn something from every experience.”

Simon spent last season in Toronto, where he was an assistant coach for the AHL’s Marlies.

“It was a chance to work for the Toronto Maple Leafs organization with two people I thought the world of. Gord Dineen, who was the head coach, is one of the most down-to-earth, humble people you’ll ever meet, and associate coach Derek King is one of the most personable, fun-loving guys with the biggest heart in the world.

“It was fun going to the rink with them every day. I learned a lot. We had a lot of young guys and had a slow start. We began the year 5-12, but we finished the year 25-15. We clawed our way into the playoffs and then we played Grand Rapids.

“We were up 2-0 in games and we were rolling, and then all of a sudden we poked the bear. We had a lot of young guys and I think that played into how we let the series slip away. Blash (Jeff Blashill, then Griffins head coach) obviously did his homework. He made some corrections and his team responded.”

It was a devastating loss for Toronto. “At the end of the year, they blew everything up,” he said. “They got rid of the GM, the coaches, the scouts. They were going to rebuild.”

After Blashill was promoted to Detroit, Simon reached out to Red Wings assistant general manager Ryan Martin and Todd Nelson, who was rumored to be the leading candidate to replace Blashill, to express his interest in coming to Grand Rapids.

Simon is thrilled to be back with the Griffins. He sees it as not only a good move for his career but also for his family. His daughters, Meg, 12, and Kate, 9, both play travel hockey. “They love life and they’re having fun,” he said.

Best of all, he’s doing what he loves.

“Hockey is Xs and Os, but at the end of the day, you’re dealing with people. The game doesn’t change. It’s the same game that eight-year-olds play, it’s just the people and the teams that change. It’s managing personalities and egos. It’s giving a guy a pick-me-up when he’s sent down, it’s the thrill of telling a kid that he’s been called up.

“You can’t put a price on the smile you get when you give a kid the news. Of course, you’ve got to give full credit to the player, but as a coach it’s hard not to think that you had a little something to do with it. It’s pretty cool to see them achieve their boyhood dream. To help facilitate that feels almost as good as doing it yourself.”

He is doing his best to provide the direction and guidance that will help the Red Wings’ top prospects reach the next level.

“You try to keep them accountable,” he said. “You have to hold players to a high standard. There’s a fine line between being too nice and laying down the hammer when it’s needed. In pro sports, if you’re not doing your job, somebody else is going to come along and take it away.

“Each person is wired differently and that’s the fun of coaching. You’ve got to figure out how to press these guys’ buttons, how to get them to react and produce. That’s our job as coach and there are a lot of moving parts, but that’s what we’ve got to figure out.”

The Griffins’ slow start failed to put a damper on his enthusiasm.

“Winning is contagious,” he said. “Being positive is contagious, just as a negative attitude is, too. Whether you’re winning or losing, it’s important to have that positive environment, a place where guys want to work, compete and have fun. At the end of the day, it’s still a game.”

Griffins assistant coach Ben Simon remains thrilled to have found a career in hockey.

Story and photo by Mark Newman

Ben Simon counts his blessings every day.

Making a career in hockey is something that he never imagined when he was young. “I didn’t really play year-round,” he said. “I played baseball with the same group of friends, and in the summer we were on our bikes, cruising the neighborhood. We were just hanging out with our buddies. It wasn’t hockey, hockey, hockey, like it is now.”

But Simon played hockey every year, through mite, squirt and pee wee, until he played Junior-A hockey for the Cleveland Barons. He tried out and played for Team USA in a tournament in Japan and soon found himself on the radar of a number of colleges.

He made five official campus visits before choosing Notre Dame, drawn by the allure of being in the first recruiting class of head coach Dave Poulin, a 13-year NHL veteran who had played for the Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Bruins and Washington Capitals.

“It’s a football school, no question, but there’s a mystique about Notre Dame,” Simon said. “Everybody thinks there’s a mystique about their alma mater, but there’s something about that school that makes it quite the experience. The tradition of athletics and academics made a win-win situation.”

Simon not only earned a degree in sociology, but he also met his wife there. Beth Cooper was a Kalamazoo Central High graduate who was a member of the women’s golf team at Notre Dame.

“You talk about what the game of hockey can do for you. I was a kid from Cleveland who played a game because my brothers played it and had fun doing it and all of a sudden I get a scholarship to a great academic institution, I meet my wife, have kids, travel to different countries, get the job I have now – all because of chasing a stupid puck.

“It’s funny what a game can do for your life.”

The job Simon now has is being an assistant coach for the Grand Rapids Griffins, a position for which the seeds of success were sown many years earlier.

Drafted in the fifth round (110th overall) in 1997 by the Chicago Blackhawks, Simon saw his rights traded to the Atlanta Thrashers (“for a bag of pucks,” he jokes) before he ever played a game professionally. He was a winner right from the start, capturing championships in his first two pro seasons. On both occasions, his team defeated the Griffins during its playoff run.

In 2000-01, he was a member of the Turner Cup-winning Orlando Solar Bears, a team that was led by Todd Richards, Mark Beaufait and Jarrod Skalde. (The roster included several players – Hugo Boisvert, Bryan Adams, Yves Sarault, Wade Brookbank and David Gove – familiar to Griffins fans).

“We had 10 or 11 rookies – it was a young group of guys who were enthusiastic about coming to the rink every day,” he said. “You may not remember all the wins and loses, but you remember the people and the times you went through together as a team and the fun you had at the rink.”

In 2001-02, Simon won a Calder Cup with the Chicago Wolves, a team led by Steve Maltais, J.P. Vigier, Cory Larose and goaltender Kari Lehtonen. He also saw his first NHL action, appearing in six games with the Thrashers. “Once you get a taste, you want more,” he said.

After another season split between Chicago and Atlanta, Simon signed a contract with the Nashville Predators. But his 2003-04 season began on a sour note when a former teammate, Dan Snyder, died in a tragic car accident.

“He was one of my best friends and any time you lose a friend, it’s tough,” he said. “I was struggling because I felt like I wanted nothing to do with hockey.”

Playing for the Milwaukee Admirals, Simon returned from a two-week road trip to learn he had been traded back to Atlanta. He spent the rest of the season in the NHL. He scored three goals in 52 games as the fourth-line center of the Thrashers.

“What came out of that whole experience is that you can’t take anything for granted,” he said. “Come to the rink every day, have fun. Every day is a chance to get better. Every day presents an opportunity to embrace the challenge. I really took those things to heart. The game of hockey has a funny way of teaching you life lessons.”

During the 2004-05 NHL lockout, Simon was back in Chicago. The Wolves reached the Calder Cup Finals, losing to a Philadelphia team that included Mike Richards and Patrick Sharp. “That might have been some of the best hockey I ever played,” he said. “Both teams were stacked with some really good prospects who were right at the cusp of breaking through.”

By the 2005-06 season, Simon had reached proverbial journeyman status. He signed with the Columbus Blue Jackets and bounced up and down between the NHL and the team’s AHL affiliate in Syracuse until then-Griffins general manager Bob McNamara, another Notre Dame grad, brought him to the Griffins a couple of months before the end of the 2006-07 season.

Simon had hoped to stay in Grand Rapids the next season, but he went unsigned and played in Springfield instead. A year in Germany followed, then he auditioned with the ECHL’s Kalamazoo Wings at the beginning of the 2009-10 season before he was called back to the AHL by the Toronto Marlies.

“Dave Poulin, my old coach at Notre Dame, was director of hockey operations in Toronto, and I had played with (head coach) Dallas Eakins in Chicago, so I was happy when they called,” he said. Simon played 44 games with the Marlies, but it was becoming evident that he was nearing the end of his playing career.

Unable to secure a job in the AHL, Simon headed to England to become the player-coach of the Sheffield Steelers.

“I wanted to play one more season and nothing was really popping over here,” he recalled. “My agent found the Sheffield job and it was a good opportunity to explore coaching a little bit. A lot of players think it’s a natural progression, but I wasn’t sure if I would like it. I figured it was a good way to get one more year of playing out of my system while finding out whether or not coaching was for me.”

His team won the regular season championship with a record of 43-10-0-1. “Sheffield is an old steel town where the original Stanley Cup was made,” he said. “It was a new cultural experience. We saw some cool parts of the country, Ireland, old castles, Belfast, and Saint Andrews.”

More significantly, he discovered he loved coaching.

“From the coaching side, it was a blast,” he said. “It really taught me organizational skills and things like time management, because the job included things like marketing, ticket sales and payroll. It was a good learning experience, plus I got to play a little bit, too.”

Simon returned to the States in 2011 to become an assistant with the Rockford IceHogs. He was hired by Stan Bowman, another Notre Dame graduate. “When I interviewed, it was the first time we met,” he said. “It was a tremendous organization. Chicago does a lot of things right and they do a great job of developing players. It was fun to be a part of their 2013 Stanley Cup run as black aces.”

Unfortunately, he was looking for work again after the 2012-13 season when Rockford downsized to one assistant. He became the head coach of the Cincinnati Cyclones for 2013-14, leading the team to the ECHL finals where the Cyclones lost to Alaska in six games.

All the while, Simon was becoming a stronger coach.

“You get a little sharper in terms of picking things out, little habits that can help players,” he said. “You learn systems, ways of presenting, how to approach guys. It’s no different than a job in a factory or a farm. You get better with age. For better or worse, you learn something from every experience.”

Simon spent last season in Toronto, where he was an assistant coach for the AHL’s Marlies.

“It was a chance to work for the Toronto Maple Leafs organization with two people I thought the world of. Gord Dineen, who was the head coach, is one of the most down-to-earth, humble people you’ll ever meet, and associate coach Derek King is one of the most personable, fun-loving guys with the biggest heart in the world.

“It was fun going to the rink with them every day. I learned a lot. We had a lot of young guys and had a slow start. We began the year 5-12, but we finished the year 25-15. We clawed our way into the playoffs and then we played Grand Rapids.

“We were up 2-0 in games and we were rolling, and then all of a sudden we poked the bear. We had a lot of young guys and I think that played into how we let the series slip away. Blash (Jeff Blashill, then Griffins head coach) obviously did his homework. He made some corrections and his team responded.”

It was a devastating loss for Toronto. “At the end of the year, they blew everything up,” he said. “They got rid of the GM, the coaches, the scouts. They were going to rebuild.”

After Blashill was promoted to Detroit, Simon reached out to Red Wings assistant general manager Ryan Martin and Todd Nelson, who was rumored to be the leading candidate to replace Blashill, to express his interest in coming to Grand Rapids.

Simon is thrilled to be back with the Griffins. He sees it as not only a good move for his career but also for his family. His daughters, Meg, 12, and Kate, 9, both play travel hockey. “They love life and they’re having fun,” he said.

Best of all, he’s doing what he loves.

“Hockey is Xs and Os, but at the end of the day, you’re dealing with people. The game doesn’t change. It’s the same game that eight-year-olds play, it’s just the people and the teams that change. It’s managing personalities and egos. It’s giving a guy a pick-me-up when he’s sent down, it’s the thrill of telling a kid that he’s been called up.

“You can’t put a price on the smile you get when you give a kid the news. Of course, you’ve got to give full credit to the player, but as a coach it’s hard not to think that you had a little something to do with it. It’s pretty cool to see them achieve their boyhood dream. To help facilitate that feels almost as good as doing it yourself.”

He is doing his best to provide the direction and guidance that will help the Red Wings’ top prospects reach the next level.

“You try to keep them accountable,” he said. “You have to hold players to a high standard. There’s a fine line between being too nice and laying down the hammer when it’s needed. In pro sports, if you’re not doing your job, somebody else is going to come along and take it away.

“Each person is wired differently and that’s the fun of coaching. You’ve got to figure out how to press these guys’ buttons, how to get them to react and produce. That’s our job as coach and there are a lot of moving parts, but that’s what we’ve got to figure out.”

The Griffins’ slow start failed to put a damper on his enthusiasm.

“Winning is contagious,” he said. “Being positive is contagious, just as a negative attitude is, too. Whether you’re winning or losing, it’s important to have that positive environment, a place where guys want to work, compete and have fun. At the end of the day, it’s still a game.”