The New York Islanders’ development camp did more than give the front office a close look at prospects in a controlled setting. It also put a spotlight on Jay McKee, the new head coach of the Hamilton Hammers and the man now guiding a key part of the organization’s next wave.
For Pete DeBoer, McKee’s first camp in the role made a strong impression.
“I’ve been following his coaching and playing journey, and seen how much success he’s had in the OHL,” DeBoer said. “I was really impressed with what I saw this week and what he did.”
McKee arrives with a background that makes him easy to relate to young players. He was a first-round pick, taken 14th overall by the Buffalo Sabres in the 1995 Draft, and he spent three seasons moving between the AHL and NHL before locking down a full-time NHL job in 1998. He went on to play more than 800 NHL games.
His coaching path has been just as steady. McKee started in the OHL with the Erie Otters in 2014-15, then had a head coaching run with the Kitchener Rangers from 2016-20.
He took over the Hamilton/Brantford Bulldogs in 2021-22 and won the OHL’s J. Ross Robertson Cup in his first season.
That track record is part of why the Islanders’ prospects seemed to connect with him so quickly. Three of them - Vladimir Dravecky, Gabriel Frasca and Layne Gallacher - already knew McKee from 2025-26. Dravecky, the Islanders’ 2026 fifth-rounder at 141st overall, along with Gallacher and Frasca, all played for him.
Frasca said McKee brought a different kind of teaching style.
“He was much different from other coaches in the sense that he’s more of a teacher,” Frasca said. “I learned so much from him, and he really helped with my development.”
Gallacher, meanwhile, said McKee was the coach who first helped him handle junior hockey after coming out of his youth program.
“I came to him as a 16-year-old and he gave me a lot of opportunity,” Gallacher said. “He taught me how important it is to play both sides of the ice and how to adjust to a professional setting.”
McKee’s teams were known for making life miserable on the other side, and 2025 first-round pick Kashawn Aitcheson saw that up close. His Barrie Colts knocked out McKee’s Bulldogs in this year’s OHL playoffs, a series McKee joked he “hates him for,” but Aitcheson said the challenge was obvious.
“He always had a top team, and that wasn’t by mistake,” Aitcheson said. “Their systems were unreal.
They were creative and a super hard team to play against. It was always a challenge to take two points from them.”
Now that he’s on McKee’s side, Aitcheson said the week of camp only deepened his respect.
“The conversations throughout the week with him and his staff have been great,” Aitcheson said. “They’ve been giving us a ton of information, so it’s now up to us to apply it and be a sponge.”
For Frasca, watching McKee move up the ladder has felt fitting.
“He deserved this, and it’s great to work with him again,” Frasca said. “It’s a lot of similar stuff to what we saw in Brantford.”
The week also gave McKee and DeBoer a chance to get the NHL and AHL staffs together and “talk shop” about the season ahead. DeBoer left camp feeling good not just about the prospects, but about the people tasked with developing them.
“I think we have a tremendous AHL staff led by Jay,” DeBoer said. “They did a great job this week and I’m excited for the bond we’ve built between both of our staffs."
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