Junior hockey: Cam Robichaud leaves Thunder to become New Hampshire Mountain Kings head coach

Cam Robichaud is leaving the Twin City Thunder organization and is returning to the North American Hockey League.

Twin City Thunder assistant coach and director of player personnel Cam Robichaud looks down the bench during a junior hockey game in October at Norway Savings Bank Arena in Auburn. Robichaud is leading the Thunder to become the head coach of the New Hampshire Mountain Kings. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

The Auburn native has been named as the first coach of the expansion New Hampshire Mountain Kings, who are based in Hooksett, New Hampshire. The league awarded the franchise to the New Hampshire Hockey Club, LLC on March 16, and the Mountain Kings will join the Tier II NAHL next season.

“I feel really fortunate that I am getting a second opportunity to help build an expansion team,” Robichaud said. “Like anything in life that you do, you reflect on, take the good, and you look at areas that you can improve upon.

“In the North American league, you don’t fully understand until you have been a part of it. I have been fortunate to be a part of it and gained experience and understand what the league is about.”

Robichaud said his experience of helping build the Maine Nordiques’ inaugural team in 2019-20 as an associate head coach was a reason why the Mountain Kings targeted him to lead the organization.

Prior to the announcement, Robichaud was a co-owner of the Thunder and assistant coach for the organization’s National Collegiate Development Conference team. He informed fellow co-owner and the head coach of the NCDC team, Dan Hodge, of his decision last week. Hodge has since bought Robichaud’s stake in the Thunder and is now the sole owner of the organization.

The partnership between Robichaud and Hodge began in the fall of 2020 when the Nordiques organization let Robichaud go early in the 2020-21 season when Robichaud was the head coach of the Maine Nordiques Academy 16U team.

It didn’t take long for Robichaud to join the Thunder — all of one day — as an assistant coach. He became a co-owner in the summer of 2021, after former St. Dominic Academy graduate Ben Gray, who co-founded the Thunder with Hodge, sold his stake in the team.

“We really feel we built a strong culture the past three seasons and we were fortunate to see some success,” Robichaud said. “We were fortunate to see some success in those three seasons. We made the final four two of the three seasons — one being the COVID year (2020-2021) and a little bit different than a normal season. At the end of the day, we were able to make the final four two of our three seasons together.”

This season, the Thunder won a play-in game, then took down the top-seeded Northern Cyclones in the NCDC North semifinals before falling in the NCDC North Final to the South Shore Kings in a two-game sweep March 24–25.

Hodge said he is grateful for the contributions Robichaud made to the Thunder.

“He has a great mind for the game; he understands the flow of it,” Hodge said. “He ran the forwards and made a lot of line changes. Hey, two out of three years when he was here, we went to the semifinals. That says something about the man. He’s a great coach. We are going to miss him and we are going to keep an eye on him to see how it’s going for him.”

Hodge said it’s a little too early on if he will replace Robichaud with another assistant coach, but he expects to make a decision in the coming weeks.

Hodge did say that he isn’t looking to add a second owner, after both Gray and Robichaud sold their stakes back to him.

“I am going to keep this; this is why I moved up here (from Massachusetts) and it’s why I moved my family,” Hodge said. “I am excited about it and I am moving forward.”

In March 2022, Robichaud announced the Saints Academy, which included 15U and 16U teams, in partnership with St. Dom’s, but the project hit some hurdles and never got off the ground

“The building that we would be converting to dorms, by the time we got approval from the state fire marshals, it was too late to do the build-out, and we wouldn’t have proper living arrangements for the student-athletes,” Robichaud said. “We had our plans drawn up from the architect, and we were ready to roll, but it was a timing matter.

“The market — even in that short period of time from last year to this year — with the development of new academies in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the market has significantly changed as far as competition and slowed the opportunity to continue the Saints Academy for this year.”

Robichaud said that he has heard talk about other hockey academies starting in Maine, but said he will not be involved.

Since he has young family, Robichaud will still live in the Auburn-Lewiston area and make the two-hour drive to Hooksett to coach the Mountain Kings.

He also will continue operate the Lewiston-based PucDevelopment hockey training facility with Caleb Labrie, an assistant coach with the Thunder, which does most of its business during the offseason.

Robichaud already has a connection with the Mountain Kings’ leadership group. He and general manager Clint Edinger worked together 13 years ago with the Bishop Brady High School (Concord, New Hampshire) boys hockey team, then both moved on to the New Hampshire Jr. Monarchs organization, where Robichaud worked for four seasons before joining the Tier III L-A Fighting Spirit in 2015-16. The Fighting Spirit became the L/A Nordiques in the 2017-18 season. Robichaud was named the head coach and guided the team to the NA3HL Fraser Cup Final in 2018-19 before moving to the Tier II Maine Nordiques.

With the additions of the Mountain Kings and the Rochester Jr. Americans, the NAHL East Division, which includes the Maine Nordiques, will have nine teams.

Robichaud is looking forward to battling the Nordiques and returning to The Colisee.

“It will be a very interesting dynamic,” Robichaud said. “I have spent a lot of time in that building. I poured my heart into that program and that facility. I have some close friends that are there (Maine Nordiques general manager) Eric Soltys, (head coach Matt Pinchevsky) and (assistant coach) Ryan Shelley. It will be fun playing against them.

“It will be weird standing on the (visiting) bench, I don’t know if I ever stood on that side before. It will be a different viewpoint in the arena.”

The last time he was on the visiting bench at The Colisee was during his senior season at Edward Little in 2006-07 when St. Dom’s played its home games in Lewiston.