FEATURE: A Step Up into the AHL for Logan Nijhoff

The 2023-24 season marks the second full professional campaign for 22-year-old Logan Nijhoff. The young forward battled through training camp and the preseason to earn a spot on Rockford’s opening night roster, and has already played in four games this season with the Hogs after spending much of the 2022-23 schedule in the ECHL.

On Oct. 27 against the Iowa Wild, Nijhoff was rewarded for his hard work with his first AHL goal. “It was definitely very exciting,” remembered Nijhoff. “We lost the faceoff, but me and Bads [Brandon Baddock] were able to get on the forecheck pretty quick, and they just kind of sent it up the wall, and then [Isaak] Phillips threw it on net, and I happened to get my stick on it, so it definitely felt good.”

After the milestone goal, it was easy for Nijhoff to reflect on how far he had come in his career after growing up in Comox, a small coastal town in British Colombia. Immediately after the game, the rookie made sure to call his parents to share the moment with them and to thank them.

“We called after the game just to reflect back on coming from a small town and leaving home so early. To be able to score a goal in the second-best league in the world is pretty special. I can’t thank my family and everyone who supported me enough.

“There’s lots of ice, but in the summers, especially in Comox, they take it out. We were always traveling quite a bit. We’d only practice twice a week, and I’d do power skating on Mondays, and then every weekend my parents sacrificed a lot and drove me down island upwards of three hours every weekend.”

The 22-year-old has been driven down a path to professional hockey since he was 14 and he first moved away from Comox for hockey. When he was 15, he got his first taste of high-level junior hockey with the Regina Pats in the Western Hockey League, a team that would come to have a transformative effect on his hockey career.

“When I was 15, I got called up for playoffs and got to play one game in the first round and one game in the third round, so that was definitely very exciting.”

Regina would be Nijhoff’s junior team for the next five seasons after that. In total, the British Colombian would skate in 237 regular season games with the Pats and become captain of the club.

“I love Regina, and I love everything about it: the people, the coaches, the management staff, the teammates I’ve met. It’s definitely a place I hold very close to my heart, and in some sense it kind of feels like home growing up there being 15 to 20 [years old]. Those are kind of crucial years in someone’s development. I developed a lot of special relationships there.”

Nijhoff’s relationship with the Regina community runs deeper than his time with the team as a player. Two years ago, he made the decision to live in Regina full time to improve his training regimen in the offseason.

“Two summers ago I made the change to living there in the summer full time. I’m fortunate enough to have a really good connection with my old billets. They were kind enough to open their arms again to me during the summer. There’s an extremely good professional group there called Next Level Hockey Consulting, so I’m able to skate with a large group of professionals there and have a 4-on-4 league and just have more opportunities for hockey in the offseason in my hometown of Comox. The rinks [in Comox] take the ice out all summer, so it’s about an hour and half drive for me to get ice during the summer on the island. It’s definitely something I’ve talked to my parents about, and it’s something I kind of feel like I need to do to continue to progress.”

Along with working on his own game in the offseason, Nijhoff found the time to give back to the next wave of Regina Pats players.

“Even before I came to camp in Rockford, I was there participating in training camp and got to coach a couple games in their [Regina Pats] camp. I got to coach their Blue & White game, their final exhibition game. They asked me to hop behind the bench, and that was pretty special.”

He even helped coach some of his billet family members in their youth hockey practices.

“A couple times I just went out to their practices and just helped them out. [They were] probably nine and 12 at the time. Pretty young guys which is fun. They’re so cute at that age, and they just chase the puck around. It’s definitely fun to help the community when you can.”

As a player in Regina, Nijhoff was one of the top five scorers on the team for each of his last three seasons with the Pats. In two of those campaigns, in 2020-21 and 2021-22, he played alongside future number one overall draft pick of the Chicago Blackhawks Connor Bedard.

“Being able to get a player of that caliber definitely helped the Regina Pats enormously. I think the friendship we developed is really special. I was fortunate enough, two summers ago, to go and live with him for a couple weeks in Vancouver. He taught me just as much as maybe I could’ve taught him. He’s an extremely special guy, and to be able to maintain a friendship with him is really special.”

Bedard’s intense work ethic and breathtaking ability was evident to Nijhoff and the rest of the Pats almost immediately.

“When he was 15, our first practice we’re supposed to do a drill where you pass it off the far pad of the goalie, and he came in just inside the blueline and ripped it short side bar down. Couple days later, he was beating our 20-year-old defensemen pretty easily.”

After a stable junior career in which he played for one team for five straight years, Nijhoff has had to adjust to the more tumultuous and unpredictable world of professional hockey. Last season, he played for three different teams. Nijhoff saw 16 games worth of action with the San Diego Gulls in the AHL, he posted 10 points (6G, 4A) in 25 ECHL games with the Tulsa Oilers, and he pitched in six points (2G, 4A) in 18 contests with Rockford’s ECHL affiliate Indy Fuel.

Last season, Nijhoff was added on to one of the biggest moves at the NHL’s trade deadline in early March. On Mar. 2, the Rockford IceHogs acquired Rocco Grimaldi, the sixth-leading scorer in the AHL, and Nijhoff in exchange for future considerations from San Diego. As part of the exchange, Dylan Sikura’s NHL contract was traded from the Chicago Blackhawks to the Anaheim Ducks. The trade took place in two separate transactions as NHL and AHL players cannot be traded in the same deal.

The trade came as a surprise to Nijhoff, who was playing in the ECHL with the Oilers at the time.

“It was actually a pretty crazy week, how it all happened,” Nijhoff recounted. “I was in Kalamazoo, had just got out of the shower, and I was going to go for dinner with some of the guys when I got a call from a Texas number. It was a two-minute call basically saying you’ve been traded, thank you for everything.”

As is the case in professional sports and especially in the AHL, there wasn’t time for the shock of the trade to take hold. Nijhoff’s travel itinerary awaited, and it sounded like something out of Planes, Trains, & Automobiles.

“I played Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Tulsa, and then bussed Monday night to Cincinnati. I played Wednesday in Cincinnati, and then Thursday bussed to Kalamazoo, and then got traded that evening. I had to rent a car and drive to Indy, play Friday in Indy [with the ECHL’s Indy Fuel], Saturday back in Cincinnati. And then Sunday I flew to Texas and then went Texas to Tulsa, Tulsa to Arizona, Arizona to San Diego for a night to get my things, and then back the following day to Pheonix.”

He played six games in nine days with two different teams, and on top of trying to make an impression on his new coaching staff, had to move his things 2,000 miles across the country. As is the life of a pro hockey player.

Nijhoff continues to fight to make an impact with the IceHogs this season. The forward brings a physical and straight-line approach to the ice when he’s in the lineup and appears ready to embrace the next step in his pro hockey career.