FIVE MINUTE MAJOR CHL News and Notes

It’s a new week in the major junior hockey off-season and news has slowed down a little bit, but there has still been a handful of things that have come out.

A handful of coaches from across the CHL are getting to put in work in the off-season as they’ll be heading to international tournaments. Some bigger news in the coaching ranks saw Dale Hunter named head coach of Canada’s national junior team going into the 2026 IIHF World Junior Championship tournament. Hunter is a three-time Memorial Cup champion as head coach of the OHL’s London Knights and won a gold medal at the 2020 World Junior Championship tournament.

This announcement comes off of a successful year with the Knights as they captured the OHL title and then the Memorial Cup title. This last season the Knights defeated the Oshawa Generals in five games for the OHL title. The Knights then went on to defeat the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers in the Memorial Cup Final 4-1. Hunter also just became the second head coach in both OHL and CHL history – joining Brian Kilrea – to record 1,000 regular-season wins.

Something else to note about the CHL off-season is that players drafted by NHL franchises don’t get a very long offseason or at least a normal one. Players drafted into the NHL head to that team’s development camp before heading back to the city of their major junior team.

In the WHL, the Wenatchee Wild announced the addition of a new assistant coach on Wednesday with Ethan Goldberg joining the fold. Goldberg joins Wenatchee after a season as the Director of Player Development for the Youngstown Phantoms of the USHL. Goldberg brings a wealth of junior hockey experience to Wenatchee.

His career spanned nine years on USHL staffs for the Phantoms, Sioux City Musketeers and Tri-City Storm. He helped guide Tri-City’s penalty kill over his five years in central Nebraska. The club won the USHL’s Anderson Cup regular-season title in 2019 as he oversaw the league’s top penalty kill in both the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons. He also served on Sioux City’s coaching staff during its run to the Anderson Cup title in 2017.

Goldberg will fill an assistant coaching spot after Chris Clark stepped aside to take more of a front office role as an assistant General Manager to Wild GM Bliss Littler.

Prior to Goldberg joining the fold, Wenatchee announced on Tuesday the addition of goaltending coach Eric Williams. Williams hails from Langley, BC and spent the last three seasons as a goaltender consultant for the BCHL Chilliwack Chiefs. The Chiefs’ future as far as a home city is murky beyond next season with the WHL returning for the 2026-27 season with an expansion franchise.

Williams played four years in the WHL with the Prince Albert Raiders and Spokane Chiefs from 2010 to 2014. During that span, he earned 98 career wins and tied for 21st on the league’s career wins list. Williams also spent time playing for the then Colorado Eagles of the ECHL before returning home to Canada to attend the University of British Columbia hockey team at the USports level, which is Canada’s collegiate athletic governing body.