Wild Alumnus Powlowski is Right at Home in Rochester
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
You can always go home.
Three-year Wenatchee Wild forward David Powlowski knows that about as well as anybody – after growing up on the rinks of Rochester, New York, he’s helping to bring one of the North American Hockey League’s newest teams online as an assistant coach for the Rochester Jr. Americans. The first season for the “Junior Amerks” is right around the corner, with the team’s first players to be drafted June 14 and the organization set to play its first NAHL game in September.
“I grew a crazy love for the game here,” said Powlowski. “I fell in love with the game even more out there (in Wenatchee), living in one of the best places in North America to play junior hockey. To come back to Rochester to be the assistant coach for a North American Hockey League team, everything’s kind of coming full-circle for me.
Powlowski’s first experience on the ice was in a Monroe County Youth Hockey mites uniform before playing for Greece Arcadia High School and AAA programs in nearby Buffalo. By 2012, he had a high school diploma and a new on-ice home in the Pacific Northwest.
“I honestly didn’t know much about [Wenatchee], other than the fact that there was a junior hockey team. When I got there, I fell in love with the city and the people there,” said Powlowski. “In simple terms, I went out to Wenatchee because I got tendered by the Wenatchee Wild. When I got there, I realized it was a great decision – Mike and Michelle Auvil brought me in as billet parents for three years, and it was an unbelievable experience, and I still stay in touch with them. Bliss (Littler) and Clarky ran a top-notch organization out there, and it was something great to be a part of.”
To say he received a “warm” welcome to Wenatchee in 2012 might be understating it – Powlowski moved into town in the midst of wildfires that burned more than 460 square miles of north-central Washington by the end of October. The Wild stayed hot all season, reaching the NAHL’s Robertson Cup national championship game for the second time in five years, with Powlowski posting 15 points in 19 games that first year. A 24-point season followed in 2013-14, and he became the team’s last “Iron Man” in the NAHL in 2014-15, with appearances in all 60 games and 34 points during his final regular season in junior hockey.
His college home was Nazareth College, an NCAA Division III program in his hometown of Rochester in the midst of a building process, having just hit the ice for the first time in 2012 and coming off of its first winning season in program history. Upon returning home to play for the Golden Flyers, he became one of the program’s first true stars, leading the team in scoring his junior and senior seasons, topping out with 25 points in his final year of college hockey.
For a brief time, hockey and school weren’t the only thing on Powlowski’s plate at Nazareth – after playing lacrosse and hockey in high school, he found himself honing his swing on the golf course, playing two years on the school’s varsity golf team.
“I’d always been a golfer,” said Powlowski. “I never played it competitively, but once I got to Nazareth, a couple of the boys on the hockey team were on the golf team. They’d leave school to play nine for practice, and that was appealing to me. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, was trying to compete with those guys who were there for golf. Here I was, just trying to hang on, but I did learn a couple of things around the course.”
Four years and a Biomedical Sciences degree later, it was off to the pros. After signing a contract to open the season in the ECHL with the Idaho Steelheads and playing in a preseason game with the Southern Professional Hockey League’s Pensacola Ice Flyers, his first official appearances in professional hockey came in the Federal Prospects Hockey League. A 10-game run with the Columbus RiverDragons and the Watertown Wolves gave way to a call back to the SPHL with the Macon Mayhem. A 28-game stint in the SPHL that included 12 points gave way to the COVID shutdowns of March 2020.
Powlowski wasn’t short on support – he credits parents Frank and Cathy, and sister Megan, for pushing him forward and encouraging him, and his old teammates with Wenatchee and Nazareth were never far from his mind either. In that moment, though, he knew what the next move had to be.
“It took me a minute to find a good fit for me, and a good spot,” said Powlowski. “I’m grateful for that, because I got to meet so many cool teammates and see so many cool cities, where I have so many connections now. For a kid like me, who wasn’t up to par, playing pro hockey and playing in front of fans and good people – and to get paid – was fun. You think it’s going to end because you get hurt or you’re not good enough and you hit a wall, and you decide to end it. For me, COVID ended it.”
His degree was put right to use during the pandemic, putting in time as an EMT before working as an inpatient pharmacy technician at the University of Rochester’s Strong Hospital and, ultimately, in medical sales for WorkFit Medical. While working in the medical field, though, he got his first experience in coaching the sport. Naturally, it came in the exact same youth hockey program where Powlowski himself had come up.
“I wanted to stay involved somehow, and I’d always coached camps and lessons. I was always around the rink, even after I was done playing,” said Powlowski. “Just being around the rink, I was offered a head coaching gig for a nine-year-old team, and I said ‘Sure.’ I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but those nine-year-old kids, they just wanted to come to the rink every day and have fun and get better at hockey. I fell in love with coaching that way, so those little guys inspired me.”
That first coaching opportunity led to others – former RPI forward Matt Garver had a spot tagged for him on the Rochester Coalition AAA coaching staff. Even Andy Rice, Powlowski’s strength coach, had a spring coaching gig lined up for him.
The next call after that came from longtime Rochester American and one-time NHL draft pick Francois Methot. The former German pro was taking over a brand-new team in the same junior league where Powlowski had competed a decade before. The workload has been a varied one for Powlowski and Methot. With the NAHL draft just a few weeks away, scouting and recruiting are the latest tasks. Once they know exactly what – and who – they have to work with, the task will turn to developing a system and style for those players to play.
They’ll have some high-level help with that, though – joining them on the Jr. Americans’ hockey operations staff are brothers Brian and Stephen Gionta, with more than 1,300 NHL games between them, and Hobey Baker Award runner-up Chris Collins.
“That’s something that hopefully I’ll learn a lot from, so that I can keep moving forward with my coaching career,” said Powlowski. “I’m honored that Francois and Brian brought me along, and they’ve been great so far. I’m just looking forward to learning a lot from them.”
