Don Nachbaur was worried.
In his first stint as head coach with the Seattle Thunderbirds in 1994, the team had a dreadful start with just one win and 11 losses. He was called into a meeting with general manager Bob Tory and team president Russ Williams.
“I thought I was going to get fired,” said Nachbaur. “They said to me, ‘We love the job you’re doing, and we’d like to add some money to your contract and give you another year.’ I almost fell out of my chair. But they gave me a vote of confidence.”
Under Nachbaur’s leadership, the Thunderbirds had a dramatic turnaround, finishing the season with a 42-28-2 record and he was the WHL's choice as coach of the year. Two years later, he guided Seattle to the WHL final.
“We were expected to be last in our division, and I ended up being coach of the year,” he said. “I go back to how fragile coaching is. That moment they could have fired me, and I would have been out of coaching, and we wouldn’t be talking about 700 games. My coaching career could have been a lot different if that day had been different.”
Twenty-one years later, the coach who spent his formative years in Prince George is now the WHL’s third-winningest coach. At 66, he’s still going strong, entering his fourth stint in junior hockey and his first season as head coach of the Wenatchee Wild.
Heading into Wednesday’s game in Kamloops, Nachbaur had 714 wins, needing just 37 more to surpass Don Hay’s all-time WHL record of 750 wins. He reached the 700-win milestone on Nov. 20 in Kelowna.
“I was really fortunate. I had good teams, good players who bought into the game plan, and good staffs to work with. The other side is good health and staying in the game a long time,” said Nachbaur.
“I’m proud of the 700, but what I’m most proud of is how I helped mentor young players,” he said. “There were a lot of guys who went on to pro careers, but it’s the guys who didn’t make it to the pros—those who became RCMP officers, accountants, doctors—that I’m proud of. The discipline, getting up every day at a certain time, sticking to a routine—that’s what’s important in their lives.”
Nachbaur, whose nickname “Snack” was inspired by a chocolate confection, didn’t realize the impact he had on his players until returning to Kent, Wash., on Nov. 4, 2023, for the Seattle Thunderbirds’ retirement of Patrick Marleau’s No. 12 jersey.
“I got invited to go on the ice, and I think 22 guys showed up for that retirement,” he said.
“We went up to a suite, then to a restaurant where we ate, drank, and reminisced. That’s when it hit me—the impact I had 30 years ago with those guys, who are all in their 40s now. They started a chat line called ‘Snackisms,’ things I said in the locker room that they still use in their businesses today. A lot of times, you think the players aren’t hearing you, but those players heard everything.
“One player, Chris Thompson, who owns his own accounting firm in Prince Albert, sent me a message that said: ‘Always prepared, never surprised.’ I used to put that on top of the scouting report—know the other team better than they know themselves. He uses that saying every Monday with his accounting firm to get all his employees dialed in for the week. That’s what coaching is all about—teaching players.”
Nachbaur played 15 pro seasons as a centre, with NHL stops in Hartford, Edmonton, and Philadelphia, nine years in the AHL, and a four-year stint in Austria. Drafted by the Whalers in the third round, 60th overall, in 1979, he didn’t play for Hartford until the 1980-81 season, the year after Gordie Howe retired. He was a teammate of Howe’s sons, Mark and Marty, and his hockey idol, Dave Keon, for two seasons.
“I was lucky, I got 15 years of fooling people,” Nachbaur chuckled.
He played 223 regular-season NHL games, recording 23 goals, 69 points, and 465 penalty minutes (including fights with Bob Probert, Tiger Williams, and Chris Nilan). He also played for two Flyers teams that reached the Stanley Cup final. He appeared in seven playoff games in 1987 and took warm-ups in the first game of the final series against the Oilers that year.
“It was a long grind, a month and a half, and we lost in Game 7, but the Oilers were a good team,” he said.
Born in Kitimat, Nachbaur lived in Inuvik, Fort St. John, Dawson Creek, Kamloops, and Surrey before the family settled in Prince George when he was 10. Nachbaur, a 1977 graduate of Prince George Secondary School, grew up in Spruceland on Vedder Crescent. He played school sports, Little League baseball at Rainbow Park, and was a quarterback for the Spruceland Bombers in the Prince George Minor Football Association. He and Darcy Rota would sometimes box at the Spruce City Boxing Club.
“I learned how to hit, probably not in hockey, most likely in football,” he said. “I liked tackling guys, and when you’re carrying the ball, you’re going shoulder to shoulder with guys. I was geared to the physical side of football.
“As a kid, I did all the sports. Maybe that’s the difference between kids today. Back then, hockey season was from September to April, and after that, you played baseball, football, lacrosse, and school sports. All those other sports were good for me.”
Nachbaur left Prince George after bantam hockey. At 17, he attended the Calgary Centennials’ WHL camp and was sent to their BCJHL farm team in Merritt. The following year, he made the cut for Calgary’s team in the 1977-78 season.
“The team was sold to a businessman in Billings, and we were told in the middle of training camp we’d be moving to Billings. Most of us had no clue where Billings, Montana was,” said Nachbaur. “That year, we started with Andy Moog and Mike Vernon as our goalies—until Mike got traded to the Calgary Wranglers.”
One of his teammates in Billings was Jim Dodds of Prince George, and 10 years later, Nachbaur married his sister, Kim Dodds.
“It turned out to be a great place to play,” said Nachbaur. “I was fortunate to have a really good coach, Dave King, who went on to coach the Montreal Canadiens, Calgary Flames, and Phoenix Coyotes. He mentored me to be a pro, teaching me a lot about the physical side and competing. I thought I was a skilled player, but he got that part out of me, and when I got to the NHL, I realized how important that side of the game was for me.”
The Bighorns went 20 games deep into the 1978 playoffs before being swept in the final by the New Westminster Bruins, who went on to win the Memorial Cup. Nachbaur set a league record that season with 18 playoff goals and tied another with five goals in one game in a 7-4 win over New West in the round-robin tournament.
He’ll never forget his first game in the WHL, in New Westminster. The Bighorns had just acquired tough guy Brent Gogol, who warned his teammates there would be trouble.
“Nobody knew him, and he said in the locker room, ‘I’m going to start a brawl, there’s a player on that team, and I’m going to get him,’” said Nachbaur. “No sooner did we get out for warm-ups, and we had a 30-minute pre-game brawl—no linesmen, no referees, no policemen—nothing on the ice. We fought until the teams separated. We had three players on my team carried off the ice injured after getting sucker-punched, knocked out. That was the old days, my first time in Queens Park Arena.”
In Vancouver on March 2, Nachbaur saw Ernie McLean, coach of the New West Bruins, who is now 94.
“They were called the Big Bad Bruins, and they played a tough, physical style. We had a long season and a long playoffs fighting those guys,” he said.
One of the highlights of his playing career came in 1988 when he was captain of the Hershey Bears, who went 12-0 in the playoffs and won the Calder Cup.
Before taking over the Wild bench last summer, Nachbaur spent two seasons as an associate coach with the AHL’s Calgary Wranglers from 2022-24. There, he coached future NHLers such as Connor Zary, Jakob Pelletier, and goalie Dustin Wolf, a Calder Trophy candidate this season with the Flames.
“I’ve worked with a lot of young goaltenders, including Carey Price, and (Wolf) was as dialed in as a first-year guy in the AHL,” said Nachbaur. “He won back-to-back Goaltender of the Year awards, and you knew from his work ethic—he came out early and stayed late—that those professional traits were in him from the start. I’m not surprised he’s had success. He earned it because he worked for it.
“He’s not a big guy, but he reads plays and gets to the puck in time. He’s not passive. He’s very aggressive. He reminds me of Jonathan Quick when I had him in L.A.”
Nachbaur was WHL Coach of the Year for the second time in 2008 when he led the Tri-City Americans to a 52-16-2-2 record and set a franchise record with 108 points. His third Dunc McCallum Memorial Award came in 2010-11 during his first of seven seasons with the Spokane Chiefs.
Nachbaur is looking forward to returning to Prince George this weekend to face the Cougars. The Wild are the remnants of the former Winnipeg Ice franchise, which moved to Wenatchee in 2023. They started the week three points behind Seattle and now have five games left, including two in Prince George at CN Centre on Friday and Saturday. The Cougars won both games in Wenatchee last week by identical 4-3 scores.
“I give our guys a lot of credit,” said Nachbaur. “We work hard, we compete hard, we play structured, but we’ve made mistakes with the puck, which has cost us some games. I respect what the guys have done.
“We’ve battled injuries all year, which has meant I haven’t had all four lines intact every night. Continuity’s been a real problem.”
Nachbaur also noted the challenge of playing three games in three nights, which has contributed to injuries and fatigue.
“That’s all part of being dialed in every night,” he said. “This league teaches you mental toughness and focus.”
In 2002, Nachbaur bought a home in Richland, Wash., just before joining the Tri-City Americans. He has kept that as his base since then. His son Daniel, a former BCHL forward with Merritt and Prince George, played two hours away in Wenatchee with the Wild in their first year as an expansion team before moving on to UMass-Lowell.
Nachbaur says he has a winning record in Prince George because he’s had such strong teams. He last coached at CN Centre on Feb. 14, 2017, with Spokane. His parents, Walter and Melitta, have passed away, and his sister Judy lives on Vancouver Island, but his older brother Andy still lives in Prince George, as do his wife’s brother and sister and their families.
“I’ll be nice to get up there not just to see them but to catch up with old coaches, old players, and people I went to high school with,” he said. “Life’s too short. I’m looking forward to getting back to my roots.”
