Brad Ralph’s success, including three straight Kelly Cup championships, has created a respected coaching tree within professional hockey.
Ralph’s former assistants include Tad O’Had in Kansas City, Jesse Kallechy in Fort Wayne, and Anthony Peters in Reading.
Neil Graham, who worked with Ralph in Idaho, is now an assistant coach for the NHL’s Dallas Stars.
Reading Royals’ head coach Anthony Peters stepped into the press room and stood at a microphone. In front of him were southern Pennsylvania news media members, and when he looked down he saw a laptop with a Zoom screen showing a reporter from Southwest Florida for some reason. It was the first day of ECHL training camp, and Peters’ first training camp press conference as a head coach.
There were doubtless a lot of thoughts that day about what Ralphie would do.
Brad Ralph, who is in his 10th season leading the Florida Everblades, has turned the franchise from a solid annual performer into a league juggernaut that won three straight Kelly Cup Championships from 2022-24, an ECHL record. No man has coached more ECHL postseason games than Ralph, and his 105 playoff wins is nearly twice that of the second-place holder, John Brophy, who set the previous record of 55 way back in 2000.
But a lesser-known achievement is the coaching tree that Ralph has planted. All three assistant coaches who worked with Ralph in Estero have gone on to be head coaches in the ECHL themselves — Peters in Reading, Tad O’Had in Kansas City, and Jesse Kallechy in Fort Wayne. And a fourth, who worked with Ralph when he led the Idaho Steelheads, achieved that and more, as Neil Graham is an assistant coach with the NHL’s Dallas Stars.
The fans see the players scoring goals, hitting other players into the boards, and stopping shots. They see the head coach yelling at the referee, answering reporters’ questions, and holding up the championship trophy. But the assistant coaches often pass from notice, doing their part behind the scenes. And the good ones are learning from their mentor as they go.
“We all have our strengths and weaknesses,” Ralph said. “And I think that’s what makes the head coach and the assistant coach relationship work. You just appreciate each other for what they’re good at and what they bring to the table. And then we’re all understanding that there’s certain aspects of the job that maybe we don’t love or we’re not good at, and we just help each other through those times.”
The Old Hand: Tad O’Had
When Ralph first arrived in Estero, assistant coach Tad O’Had had already been there for three years under previous head coach Greg Poss. And he was a fixture in the arena before that, having founded the Florida Junior Blades team and leading it as general manager and head coach through a highly successful three-year stint. He continued to have a role with the Junior Blades and the Junior Everblades youth program while assisting with the Everblades.
When Ralph arrived, O’Had was elevated to the title of associate head coach and stayed for four more years. He started by spending time in film sessions and learned from Ralph and team president Craig Brush the ins and outs of building an ECHL roster. That was a point of strength for him. During O’Had’s time, the Everblades signed players now on the all-time greats list, such as long-time captain John McCarron, Fort Myers native Logan Roe, and two-time Kelly Cup Playoffs MVP goaltender Cam Johnson.
“His recruiting is excellent,” Ralph said. “He’s great at building teams. On the administrative side of the job he’s very organized. Full marks in that department for Tad.
Under their leadership, the team won the Brabham Cup for the best regular season record and the E.A. “Bud” Gingher Trophy as the Eastern Conference champions in 2018.
Following the pandemic-shortened 2019-2020 season, O’Had accepted the position of head coach and general manager of the Kansas City Mavericks. After missing the playoffs for the first two seasons, the Mavericks have made the postseason three straight years, including an appearance in the 2024 Kelly Cup Finals, which pitted O’Had and Ralph against each other.
“It’s not ideal,” Ralph said. “I mean, you’re happy that you know that he’s had the success that he’s had, you know there’s going to be a lot of commonalities between the two teams and two coaching styles. We saw each other briefly, gave each other a hug, and said ‘Good luck.’ And then the war was on, you know?”
The master beat the pupil, as the Everblades won the third Kelly Cup in their three-peat. So O’Had was there, in the arena that he had worked in for more than a decade, to see his former team make history, but he was on the other bench.
“I spent seven years in Florida, so to come back to Florida and lose in the Kelly Cup Finals was gut-wrenching, but it was also very rewarding,” O’Had said. “When I got to Kansas City, it was a last-place team. To win the Brabham Cup and play in the last two conference finals, to be honest with you, there’s no other team outside of Kansas City that I’d rather see win than Florida. Brad’s done a phenomenal job in Florida.”
After bowing out in last season’s Western Conference Finals, the Mavericks started this season with 13 returning players, more than any other ECHL team, so they are eyeing a Kelly Cup run. After all, one of the ways the Everblades have been successful is by having a franchise that players want to return to, so it tracks that O’Had would establish something similar in Kansas City.
O’Had still owns a house in Florida where he spends his summers. He considers Ralph to be the best coach in the ECHL, though Ralph provided a qualification to that label.
“The metric for that is winning a championship,” Ralph said. “So for three years, I was the best coach in the league, but I guess that the great part about our jobs is every year everyone starts back at zero. So the challenge is back on and not that I’m trying to establish myself as a better coach than anyone else, but certainly we want to raise another banner and hoist the Kelly Cup again.”
Following the trailblazer: Jesse Kallechy
With O’Had off to Kansas City, the Everblades had to find an assistant coach for the first time in seven years. And they had to do it in the midst of the COVID pandemic. They found that in former goalie Jesse Kallechy, whose professional career as a player and a coach to that point had been exclusively in the Southern Professional Hockey League, one tier below the ECHL.
Ralph’s coaching career started in the SPHL, going straight into the head coaching position with the Augusta Riverhawks in 2010. He took that team to the President’s Cup Finals as a rookie coach, and after another season in Augusta, he headed west to become the head coach of the ECHL’s Idaho Steelheads.
With Ralph’s success in both Idaho and Florida, Kallechy saw somebody whose career path as a coach had some similarities to his own. He saw Ralph was somebody to learn from and emulate. So even though he was the SPHL Coach of the Year, he gave up his head coaching position with the Fayetteville Marksmen to become an ECHL assistant with the Everblades.
“What really interested me was that Brad and I both had similar paths,” Kallechy said. “We both started in the SPHL, and Brad was able to transfer that into being the best coach in the ECHL and winning a lot of games. So for me it was always a path that I was interested in, and who better to learn it from than the guy who made that trail?”
For his part, Ralph saw a successful coach willing to take a chance by leaving a good job to advance his overall career at a time when there was no guarantee that there would even be a team to go to.
“It was the whole – I hate even saying the word – but the whole COVID era,” Ralph said. “He moved down here with a lot of uncertainty with the job and what the future was going to hold. So full credit to Jesse for taking that leap of faith.”
The ECHL did come back and so did the Everblades, and Kallechy took advantage of the opportunity. A skilled recruiter like O’Had, Kallechy helped the team continue its success as a finder of talent. One of their better signings was captain Oliver Chau, who joined for his rookie season and – other than short AHL callup stints – has been there since.
During Kallechy’s time, the Everblades made a number of late-season roster moves, taking advantage of the trade deadline, the end of college season, and free agency, and subsequently integrating the new players into their system.
“His best quality is he adapts,” Kallechy said of Ralph. “We used to say it all the time: ‘Adapt or die.’ I think with him, it’s something he’s always great at. That’s the biggest thing I took away.”
Kallechy was also on the bench for the 2022 and 2023 Kelly Cup championships, making him a trivia answer as the only Everblades assistant with two rings. In the summer of 2023, he became the head coach of the Fort Wayne Komets, a team that had won the 2021 Kelly Cup, but bowed out in the first round of the playoffs in each of the next two seasons.
The Komets missed the playoffs in Kallechy’s first season, but finished second in the Central Division and made it to the division finals in his sophomore campaign.
The growing network of former assistants and players in the league has helped Ralph build his teams each year. Ralph and Kallechy collaborated on a trade in the spring of 2024, with forward Matt Wedman coming to Florida and eventually scoring the Kelly Cup-winning overtime goal. The Komets didn’t get stiffed. Defenseman Dustyn McFaul is returning for his second season in their regular lineup.
“The game is always evolving, so you’re trying to stay ahead of it and anticipate and make the appropriate changes when you see it evolving,” Ralph said. “It’s nice to have good people. We’re in each other’s corners, and we’re here to help each other, not that we don’t want to beat each other in the standings or when we play against each other.”
They did play against each other last year in Fort Wayne. The Everblades went 2-0-1 in the series. The Estero homecoming for Kallechy will be a 3-game series on November 5, 7, and 8. Kallechy relished the opportunity to take on his former boss then, and he relishes it now.
“We won back-to-back championships together,” Kallechy said. “That’s the stuff that I thought of, all the long hours, the nights, and the time that we put in together and established a real friendship. To look across the way and see a friend, a mentor, an excellent coach, it was something that I really enjoyed doing and I’m looking forward to it this year, as well.”
From the crease to the bench: Anthony Peters
When Anthony Peters hung up his mask and blocker after his last pro season in Slovakia in 2023, there was no coaching in juniors, college, or the SPHL. He got to start his career with his former ECHL team, joining the Everblades staff.
Ralph knew what he was getting. Peters was the lead goalie for Ralph’s first season with Florida.
“I knew he had a competitive fire to him,” Ralph said. “I knew his work ethic was off the charts. And I knew he was funny. So I thought when I hired Anthony, we’d either fight in the office or we’ll have a great time. And we certainly had a great time.”
That great time included the 2024 Kelly Cup championship. It also included a two-year master class in how to run a hockey team. Peters already knew that Ralph is a great competitor who treats his players well. But he learned there is a lot going on behind the scenes that the players don’t see, because he was now doing it as a coach.
“It’s an open book,