PWHL Detroit, according to sources, has their first head coach lined up. Josh Sciba looks poised to take over as PWHL Detroit's inaugural head coach.
Multiple sources confirm that it’s all but a done deal for Josh Sciba to be hired as the head coach of PWHL Detroit.
Sciba has a plethora of women’s hockey coaching experience including as an assistant for the New York Sirens the last two seasons, and winning Olympic and World Championship gold with Team USA. Sciba has been touted by USA head coach John Wroblewski for his impact on the fine details of USA’s systems, in particular their power play.
His experience in the PWHL and with Team USA were icing on the cake for Sciba, who joined the PWHL with eight seasons of head coaching experience in the NCAA with Union. He also was the head coach at Niagara University before the women's program there ceased operations.
Sciba hails from Westland, Michigan, part of Metro Detroit. He graduated from Ann Arbor Huron High School and played for Honeybaked 'AAA', the Compuware Ambassadors in the NAHL, and at the USNTDP in Michigan before joining Notre Dame for his collegiate hockey career. He spent one season in the ECHL before embarking on his coaching career the following year in 2008. Sciba, a self proclaimed die-had Detroit Red Wings fan is set to come home and share the same venue, Little Caesars Arena as those Red Wings as bench boss for PWHL Detroit.
Prior to Union College, Sciba was an assistant at Colgate, and worked at Niagara University as an assistant and for one season, head coach.
PWHL Detroit will be guided by hockey legend Manon Rheaume who was hired as the team's inaugural general manager. Rheaume spent the last decade guiding the Little Caesars girls program, which has now graduated dozens of NCAA players, along with PWHL players and Olympians. She also worked in the hockey operations department with the NHL's Los Angeles Kings.
Detroit was a market of priority to get hirings underway given the city will host the PWHL Awards on June 16 and PWHL Draft on June 17, and was the first team announced in what became a four-team PWHL expansion to Detroit, Hamilton, Las Vegas, and San Jose.