The American Hockey League announced today that Todd Nelson of the Hershey Bears is the winner of the Louis AR Pieri Memorial Award as the AHL's outstanding coach for the 2023-24 season. The award is voted on by fellow coaches and members of the media in each of the league's 32 cities.
Nelson, 54, is just the sixth coach in franchise history to earn this honor, joining Frank Mathers (1968-69), Chuck Hamilton (1975-76), Doug Gibson (1979-80), John Paddock (1987-88), and Spencer Carbery (2020-21).
After guiding Hershey to a Calder Cup title in his first year behind the bench for the franchise in 2022-23, Nelson returned to the Bears and led Hershey to a 53-14-5-0 record this season, winning the AHL's MacGregor Kilpatrick Trophy as regular season champions. Hershey's .771 points percentage was the best in the franchise's 86-year history and is second in AHL history to the 1992-93 Binghamton Rangers.
With Nelson at the helm, the Bears allowed a league-low goals against per game (2.10), the ninth-lowest average in league history. Hershey also surrendered the lowest shots per game at 25.97. The club went 24-2-0-5 in one-goal games, claiming the most one-goal wins in the league this season, and the most one-goal wins in a single season in club history. Hershey also finished first in the AHL on the penalty kill (87.7%) for the best penalty-killing rate in franchise history, and ranked sixth in the league on the power play (20.1%). Hershey did not lose back-to-back games in regulation for the first time in franchise history.
Hershey went a league-best 29-7-0-0 on home ice this season, and also finished 24-7-0-5 away from home, good for the best road points percentage in franchise history (.736).
During the 2023-24 campaign, Nelson sent 12 players to the National Hockey League to compete with the Washington Capitals, and six members of his 2023 Calder Cup title team were in the lineup for the Caps' Stanley Cup Playoff opener on Sunday.
In his two seasons with Hershey, Nelson owns a 97-33-5-9 record, good for a .722 points percentage. Over 10 AHL seasons, Nelson has a career head-coaching record (W-L-OT) of 406-222-77, ranking eighth on the all-time wins list.He has compiled eight 40-win seasons and reached four conference finals, including Calder Cup championships with Grand Rapids in 2017 and Hershey in 2023. Nelson was also an assistant coach on Chicago's Cup-winning team in 2008, and won a title with the 1993-94 Portland Pirates as part of his 12-year playing career.
The Louis A.R. Pieri Memorial Award, which was first presented in 1968, honors the late Mr. Pieri, a long-time contributor to the AHL as the owner and general manager of the Providence Reds and a member of the American Hockey League Hall of Fame. Previous winners of the award include Frank Mathers (1969), Fred Shero (1970), Al MacNeil (1972, '77), John Muckler (1975), Jacques Demers (1983), Bill Dineen (1985, '86), Larry Pleau (1987), Mike Milbury (1988), John Paddock (1988), Marc Crawford (1993), Barry Trotz (1994), Robbie Ftorek (1995, '96), Peter Laviolette (1999), Claude Julien and Geoff Ward (2003), Claude Noel (2004), Randy Cunneyworth (2005), Kevin Dineen (2006), Scott Gordon (2008), Scott Arniel (2009), John Hynes (2011), Jon Cooper (2012), Willie Desjardins (2013), Jeff Blashill (2014), Mike Stothers (2015), Rick Kowalsky (2016), Roy Sommer (2017), Pascal Vincent (2018), Mike Vellucci (2019), Karl Taylor (2020), Spencer Carbery (2021) and Mitch Love (2022, '23).
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