SPRINGFIELD, Mass. … The American Hockey League has named Brian Coe, the vice president of operations for the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins, the winner of the league’s Ken McKenzie Award for the 2014-15 season.
Recognizing the important role played by team management in building a successful franchise, the Ken McKenzie Award is presented annually to an AHL team executive who most successfully promotes his or her own club.
Coe has been a member of the Penguins organization since 1996, spending eight seasons in Pittsburgh’s communications department before joining Wilkes-Barre/Scranton’s staff in 2005. During his tenure in Wilkes-Barre, Coe has been responsible for overseeing the team’s game-night operations as well as all communications and digital and social media efforts. Thanks largely to Coe’s leadership, the Penguins were again among the AHL’s leaders in social media engagement in 2014-15, and the team continues to be highly regarded as a league standard for fan experience and digital media excellence.
The AHL’s Ken McKenzie Award, first presented in 1978, honors Ken McKenzie, the founder and long-time publisher of The Hockey News and a 1997 media honoree by the Hockey Hall of Fame as the Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award winner. Mr. McKenzie was also the NHL’s first publicity director and creator of its first media guide.
