Rookie Faceoff Provides Chiasson Opportunity to Return to Vegas Roots

Michael Chiasson's story is a hockey story. It's also a Vegas story.
Chiasson is the son of the late Steve Chiasson, an NHL player who was killed in a single car accident in the prime of his career.
Now 27 and a coach in the San Jose Sharks organization, Chiasson was just eight when his dad died.
His mother Susan remarried a man from Peterborough - a small town in Ontario. The man's name was Randy Morton and he was an executive at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.

For a young boy with hockey aspirations, Vegas of the late 1990s and early 2000s seemed like a wasteland. Perception, however, was not reality and Chiasson, along with his younger brother Ryan, was about to become part of a hockey bubble in Vegas which produced one NHL player and a number of other players still involved in the game at a high level.
"I was 10 when we moved to Vegas and I really lucked out," says Chiasson, who will make his coaching debut this weekend at City National Arena behind the San Jose Sharks bench at the Vegas Rookie Faceoff presented by NextGen featuring the prospects of the Vegas Golden Knights, Los Angeles Kings, Arizona Coyotes, Colorado Avalanche, Anaheim Ducks and Sharks.
"There was a nice little pocket of former NHL guys who played there for the Thunder [Las Vegas Thunder of the IHL] and had retired. Their kids were around my age. There was Rod Buskas, Eldon "Pokey" Reddick, Ken Quinney and Jeff Sharples who had other jobs on the side, but donated their time. They were coaches of the minor hockey system that I grew up in and at the time it was the Las Vegas Outlaws then it turned into the Nevada Storm and after that it has turned into the Vegas Golden Knights youth program. It was pretty unique because I got some pretty good coaching from guys who had really good NHL careers and guys who played for really good NHL coaches and guys who played with NHL stars. I would say I was very fortunate due to the timing of when I moved there [Las Vegas] and the age group of their kids and was very fortunate to learn from those guys."
Chiasson took advantage of his opportunity and earned a spot with the Omaha Lancers of the USHL before the University of Michigan called. At Michigan, Chiasson played four years, and played with current Golden Knights defenseman Jon Merrill.
Now he's an assistant coach with the Sharks AHL affiliate.
"I think it's pretty exciting. With my new role as an assistant coach of the San Jose Barracudas. This first summer has been figuring out the moves, learning the computer, creating meetings and watching different clips, but I think over the next little bit leading up to rookie camp it will set in more," said Chiasson. "There is a bunch of excitement for me personally, it will be nice to have my family there and be able to share that with them, but I think it will be a pretty unique opportunity."
Chiasson played a season of pro in Europe and then got a call from Sharks GM Doug Wilson about a job in scouting. After a few years working out of Ann Arbor, traveling to watch prospects, and filing game reports, Chiasson was pulled aside by Wilson at this summer's NHL draft in Dallas and asked if he would be interested in coaching.
Which brings him back to Vegas to begin the next phase of his hockey life. That serendipity had him thinking about his minor hockey days and his teammates.
"We were pretty good," recalls Chiasson. "We had a little pocket of guys which included Jason Zucker (Minnesota Wild), Ross McMullen who got a scholarship to play at St. Lawrence and he plays in the East Coast league now, Kenny Brooks who played at Penn State and our goalie Steven Bolton at the time played Division III. So, we had a little pocket of guys who went on to go play college hockey and a handful of guys that went on to play pro. I would say it was a group of guys who played together since we were 10. Our coaches did a really good job of putting us in pretty big tournaments, whether it was in Detroit or Boston or Chicago and we really got exposure of playing against the top kids across the country."
Chiasson's younger sister Ali Morton will celebrate her 14th birthday this Saturday and will do so by bringing a group of her friends to City National Arena to watch her big brother climb behind the Sharks bench.
"It is a small world and it's amazing to see how things overlap and how things connect in roundabout different ways. I grew up playing and fell in love with the game continuously while I was playing youth hockey in Vegas. Now my first opportunity to coach and be behind the bench is going to be at City National Arena," said Chiasson.
"When I got this opportunity to become the assistant coach of the Barracudas that was the first thing when we talked about the logistics of how it would work, and the rookie tournament was Vegas. It was pretty neat to be able to share that with my family, especially my mom, step-dad and my little sister Ali will be there. Ryan will be there and there is talk that my sister Stephanie may fly in for the weekend. So it will be neat and I'm really excited and be able to catch up with Gage (Quinney), whether that's after a morning skate or after one of his games. It'll be pretty neat, I have seen Gage play a little bit in my travels, a couple times in the East Coast league a couple times when I was scouting for San Jose because he played a couple times close to where I was, so I went over and watched the game. When I was at University of Michigan, Jon Merrill was my college roommate, we lived together for two years. Jon is a good man and I am really happy that he has latched on with a good organization and I think he is in a really good spot and he has a great season. It'll be good to catch up with him off the ice too."