{"id":147688,"date":"2025-08-15T11:31:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-15T11:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/147688\/"},"modified":"2025-08-15T11:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-15T11:31:13","slug":"ryan-papaioannou-named-new-head-coach-of-the-wheeling-nailers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/147688\/","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Papaioannou named new head coach of the Wheeling Nailers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Penguins have announced that Ryan Papaioannou has been named the new head coach of the Wheeling Nailers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Papaioannou will be the 21st coach in Nailers history and comes to Pittsburgh after spending the last 17 seasons in the Alberta Junior Hockey League.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Papaioannou, 41, joined the Brooks Bandits organization in 2008 and was the team\u2019s general manager and coach for 16 seasons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">During his time with the Bandits, Papaioannou led the team to nine league championships and during his 17 years with the organization, more than 150 players went on to play for NCAA programs, including Cale Maker.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Assistant coach Mitch Giguere and goaltending coach Karel Popper are expected to be part of Papaioannou\u2019s coaching staff with the Nailers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The Penguins say the Nailers\u2019 full coaching staff will be announced prior to the start of the team\u2019s training camp this fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Penguins have announced that Ryan Papaioannou has been named the new head coach of the Wheeling Nailers.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":147689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[834,293,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-147688","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-general","9":"tag-nhl","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115032561100260358","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}