Don MacAdam

Donald Joseph "Don" MacAdam (August 14, 1950 to November 10, 2026) was a Canadian ice hockey coach, team owner, author and development director whose career, in the words of his family, took him to nine countries on three continents. He was an assistant coach with the Detroit Red Wings under Jacques Demers, a head coach in the AHL, OHL, ECHL and QMJHL, a national champion in Japan, and, in the last chapter of his coaching life, the head coach who led Hungary's men's national team to gold at the 2024 IIHF World Championship Division I Group A in Bolzano and promotion to the top division.

MacAdam grew up in Morell, Prince Edward Island, in a hockey family. When he entered the PEI Sports Hall of Fame in 2006 he joined his cousin Al MacAdam and his uncle A.J. (Albarn Joseph) MacAdam as members. He studied at the University of New Brunswick, earning a Bachelor of Physical Education and a Master of Physical Education in Sports Administration, and played defence for the UNB Reds before spending time with various minor professional teams in the mid 1970s.

He turned to coaching at about 26. Returning to UNB, where he also taught physical education, he coached the Reds from 1977 to 1985, and in 1983-84 led them to their first varsity title in twenty years, winning the AUAA Coach of the Year award. In 2009 members of that team and other former players created the Don MacAdam Hockey Scholarship at UNB, awarded to a player who shows dedication to fitness training and leadership.

MacAdam had assisted Jacques Demers with the AHL's Fredericton Express, and when Demers took over the Detroit Red Wings in 1986 he brought MacAdam with him. From 1986 to 1989 Detroit reached the playoffs every year and the conference final in both 1987 and 1988, including a 1987 sweep of Chicago that was the franchise's first best-of-seven series win since 1966. MacAdam then became head coach of the Cape Breton Oilers, Edmonton's AHL farm club. Hungarian reports say he was called up to the Edmonton staff during the 1990 NHL playoffs, and he owned a Stanley Cup ring from his days with Edmonton.

His travels continued. He coached the PEI Senators in his home province from 1992 to 1994, also coached the New Haven Senators in the AHL and the Soo Greyhounds in the OHL, and was associate coach of the Milwaukee Admirals when they won an IHL division title. In the late 1990s he consulted for Hockey Canada, with national team duties at the Bauer Cup and the World Championships, and coached in Japan, where he led the Nippon Paper Cranes to a national title.

In the ECHL he took over the Charlotte Checkers midway through 1999-2000 and coached them until early 2004, going 146-112-35 with two trips to the Kelly Cup playoffs. In 2004 he joined an investor group that bought the Dayton Bombers and served as their owner, general manager and head coach, taking them to the 2007 Kelly Cup Finals, where they lost to Idaho in five games. He later coached the Lewiston MAINEiacs of the QMJHL from 2008 to 2010. In 2006 he co-wrote Coaching Hockey for Dummies with Gail Reynolds, one of several instructional hockey books to his name, and Charlotte once named him among its 50 most interesting people.

In 2014 he moved to Europe with HC Bolzano in Italy, then coached HSC Csikszereda in Romania in 2018-19. In 2019 Ferencvaros in Budapest hired him as professional director of its junior teams, and he went on to become development director and then sport director of the Hungarian Ice Hockey Federation. He was then asked to coach the senior men's team, and in 2024 in Bolzano Hungary won the Division I Group A world championship and earned promotion to the elite division. He was honoured at the Hungarian Parliament for his contribution to Hungarian hockey.

He believed in "developing the person, not just the player," and his family wrote that it was the people he inspired and the friendships he made that truly defined his career. Late in life he met again his future wife Michelle (Cole), eighteen years after they first met. He embraced her children Lindsay and Andrew and grandchildren Harry and Rose, and loved his cottage at Lakeside Beach, PEI, and the getaway he and Michelle built in Renews, Newfoundland, while living in St. John's.

Don MacAdam died peacefully in Canada, with his family present, on November 10, 2026, aged 76. His family thanked the medical team who cared for him over the previous eighteen months and asked for donations to the Canadian Cancer Society for pancreatic cancer research. The ECHL, Hockey Hungary and clubs across North America and Europe paid tribute.