After announcing his retirement earlier this year, longtime NHL winger Pat Maroon is making his first foray into coaching as an assistant with the USHL’s Muskegon Lumberjacks, the team announced Friday.

Maroon, 37, jumps behind the bench just a few months after his final NHL game and does so into the United States’ top junior environment – a league he never played in himself despite spending his early development south of the border. The St. Louis native played Tier II juniors in the U.S. for the NAHL’s Texarkana and St. Louis Bandits, where his immense offensive success and physicality made him a sixth-round pick by the Flyers in 2007, before jumping to the OHL with the London Knights.

He’ll now help oversee a Lumberjacks roster that already has a few notable names locked in

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