Boys’ Hockey Notebook: A new Coach Melrose comes to Glens Falls as visitor

Adrien Melrose made his first trip back to Glens Falls as a coach last Wednesday.

His next one is this Wednesday at 5:30 p.m..

“It’s the same old [Glens Falls] Rec Center,” said the first-year CBA boys’ ice hockey coach. “Cold, hard to play in, good teams.”

The Brothers lost to Adirondack, 9-2, but they return this week to take on Queensbury, hoping for a better result.

Melrose, son of former NHL player and coach, and most recently commentator, Barry Melrose, grew up in Glens Falls. His father spent the majority of his final four seasons as a player — 1983-87 — at the then-Glens Falls Civic Center with the Detroit Red Wings AHL affiliate, the Adirondack Red Wings. The older Melrose then went behind the home bench at the Civic Center from 1989-1992, winning the Calder Cup in his final season as coach.

While his dad was finishing his career on the ice, Adrien Melrose was getting started in the Adirondack Youth Hockey Association, playing at the Rec Center. While he joked that the homecoming “wasn’t very welcoming” last week, an AYHA team was on the ice when they first arrived.

“It’s at the point now where most of the youth coaches all went through the program now, and all the dads played hockey together,” Melrose said.

Despite heading up to Northwood School in Lake Placid after his freshman year of high school, he did play for Glens Falls as an eighth-grader and his dad’s u14 bantam team the following year. So, he also ran into some familiar faces on his return.

“Tom Gerard, who I grew up playing with, he was actually coaching his son on the ice,” Melrose said. “We grew up playing together, we’ve been buddies for 20 years and he was out there. So It’s still a small town. Everybody knows everybody. I knew a few other guys on the ice who are coaching. …Yeah, it’s still AYHA.”

After beginning college at Skidmore and playing briefly for the Thoroughbreds, Melrose finished his degree at Castleton University in Vermont. He didn’t play there. He chuckled.

“The dream was over by that point.”

He told his dad he would never coach, but then his first son Cooper, now 10, came along. His dad said, “You can’t complain about anything unless you’re going to volunteer and help,” which stuck with him. Next, he was teaching Cooper to skate and play. Living in Stowe, Vermont, at the time, the opportunity to coach a u10 girls team game came up and he volunteered. He made an adjustment in between periods, one girl…