Getting to know U-tah: Director of player development Lee Stempniak

From now through training camp, ALLCITY Network will publish profiles of players and staff on the Utah Hockey Club’s hockey operations side to help Utah fans get to know their new team before the first puck drop on Oct. 8 against the Chicago Blackhawks at Delta Center.

Lee Stempniak
Position: Director of player development
Years experience: Entering third year in current role
Utah development staff:
Brett Stewart, Director of European pro scouting and development
Kyle Bochek, Utah Hockey Club skills coach
Lars Hepso, Utah Hockey Club skating coach
Nathaniel Brooks, Prospects development coach
Jeff Shantz, Prospects development coach
Kurtis Foster, Prospects development coach
Clay Adams: Goaltending scout and development coach
Devan McConnell, Utah Hockey Club high performance director
Mitch Stewart, Utah Hockey Club performance coach
Ryan Wysocki, Utah Hockey Club performance coach
Carl Bombardier, Utah Hockey Club high-performance nutrition coach
Vince Lodato, Utah Hockey Club director of mental wellness/player performance

Tucson Roadrunners
Steve Potvin, Roadrunners coach
John Slaney, Roadrunners assistant coach
Zack Stortini, Roadrunners assistant coach
Jeff Hill: Goaltending development coach (AHL and ECHL)
Parker Poore, Roadrunners performance coach
Jake Wagman, Roadrunners director of hockey ops (also oversees video)

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When Lee Stempniak became the Coyotes director of player development two years ago, the move was viewed as the next critical hire in the franchise’s top-to-bottom rebuild. Stempniak brought a litany of experiences from his 14 NHL seasons playing for 10 different teams and 14 different coaches.

He played on the top line with Sidney Crosby, he was a middle-six wing, he was a depth player, and he was even placed on waivers. He understands the different roles and challenges that players face within a team structure.

Now entering his third year in this role, Stempniak has learned the equal importance of personality traits, and how best to reach and teach those different types of players. The development staff uses a variety of measures to do so.

“The biggest thing for me is just understanding how different every player really is, whether it’s personality, or learning style, or how they respond to adversity, or how they’re motivated,” he said. “Are they a better visual learner where you can model an NHL player for them to see? Should you be using positive clips of them? Or teaching clips of them? How do they take that feedback and what do they do with it?

“You’re trying to piece together what makes each player tick because you want to speed up that process so we’re not losing time trying to figure out, ‘How do they best learn?’ You don’t want to lose four months trying the wrong thing and all of a sudden realize, ‘Oh, this is how he does it.'”

Stempniak joined the organization more than three years ago to serve as a data analyst translating analytics into workable information for the coaching staff and the players. He enjoyed that work. As an economics major at Dartmouth, numbers always interested him, but he also took on a part-time player development role with prospects such as Sam Lipkin, John Farinacci, Carson Bantle, Manix Landry, Ilya Fedotov and Anthony Romano.

That was always a passion. When Stempniak played, there were no development staffs so he had to rely on veterans such as Keith Tkachuk, Barret Jackman, Doug Weight, Dallas Drake and Billy Guerin to teach him how to become an NHL player.

“As I played a little longer, I became one of the veteran players to do that for younger guys that I played with and I really enjoyed it,” he said. “I really understand how hard that adjustment period can be, and how important it is to have both people and resources to lean on.” 

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Media, fans and analysts place a lot of importance on the NHL Draft — and rightly so. It is the lifeblood of successful franchises. But if you don’t develop players properly and fully, many of the fruits of the draft can be wasted.

This philosophy is evident at all levels of the Utah system. GM Bill Armstrong and Tucson Roadrunners (AHL) GM John Ferguson Jr. are of the mind that it’s always better to over-bake a player at the lower levels than to rush him to the NHL and stunt his development. And they impressed upon the ownership group that beefing up the development staff was just as important as beefing up the scouting staff.

“It’s like planting a tree,” Armstrong said. “You want to plant it the right way with the right soil around it, make sure you water it every day and then it’s gonna bloom. You need to put it in the best conditions possible to grow it fastest and make it the strongest.

“That’s what development is all about: having contact with the prospects, helping them through tough times, making sure they’re constantly motivated, and making sure that they have every resource possible to help them get to the NHL.”

Stempniak and an army of development specialists are in constant contact with prospects and their coaches and trainers in Europe, in the Canadian and American junior leagues, in the NCAA and in Tucson.

“Obviously, it’s a lot of work and time and hours,” Stempniak said. “But the interaction with the players and helping them advance through the ranks and hopefully reach the NHL and achieve their dream is really rewarding.

“The biggest thing for us is to make this a constantly evolving process where we meet at the end of the season and ask, ‘What do we need to do better?’ Some of that is asking our players, ‘What do you like? What do you want from us? What can we do better?’ You take in all this information and keep constantly refining it to make it a more efficient model that’s going to make a difference at the NHL level.”

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Stempniak admits that it’s hard to see some of the prospects with whom the development staff has built relationships move on to other organizations. Several of the names mentioned above with whom Stempniak worked are no longer with the franchise, and Utah just traded top center prospect Conor Geekie in a larger package at the draft to help acquire Tampa Bay defenseman Mikhail Sergachev.

“It’s not so much a feeling that the time you invested was for nothing,” Stempniak said. “I just don’t think that’s the right way to look at the role because we have to give up good players to get good players back. But on a personal level, it’s always tough to have that relationship end.

“As a testament to what we built with him, Geeks texted me and Jeff Shantz the night of the trade and just said, ‘Hey, I really wanted to thank you guys for everything.’ I called him the following day and we talked. Just seeing that maturity, where I don’t know if that would have been there when we drafted them, is another rewarding part of the job.”

Every draft brings new players and new possibilities to develop relationships, and to develop NHL players.

“With the due diligence work that our scouting staff puts in, we always get a lot of really, really good kids to work with,” Stempniak said. “This year, we got a lot of big guys. We drafted a lot of size and guys that work hard and are all very receptive and teachable.

“I saw all of that at development camp and it makes me excited to be part of this franchise. It seems like there’s a buzz around it right now with the team, the new ownership, and a new city.”

Related Stempniak links

ALLCITY Network will continue its monthly prospect reports this season. Here are two examples of what you can expect:

Coyotes prospect report: Where is everybody?

Coyotes prospect report: Checking in on Dmitri Simashev, Daniil But, Noel Nordh

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Top photo of Lee Stempniak in his home office courtesy of Jessica Rinaldo, Boston Globe

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