Ryan Warsofsky of the San Jose Sharks is the youngest head coach in the NHL, at 37 years old.Jeff Chiu/The Associated Press
LeBron James sits in a chair after a win. A reporter asks a question that elicits an incredulous reaction from the Los Angeles Lakers forward.
“I’m older than who?”
It turns out the coach of the Utah Jazz, his opponent on this night, is younger than him. Will Hardy is 37. James turned 40 on Dec. 30.
“I’m older than the head coach? Ugh. Wow. My goodness. That’s crazy.”
It’s not that far-fetched any more. Plenty of teams across the NHL, NBA and its feeder circuits are tapping into young talent and their skillsets. Joe Mazzulla, head coach of the NBA champion Boston Celtics, is the same age as Hardy: 37. He’s the youngest coach to win in the NBA Finals since 1969. Mark Daigneault, head coach of the Oklahoma City Thunder, with the best record in the league this season, turns 40 this week.
New technology, video scouting and health-and-wellness tactics are available to the biggest stars in sports, but you will not necessarily see new coaching systems installed by younger coaches. Like many other businesses, it’s the people-to-people connections that are important.
Dr. Ryan Clutterbuck, an assistant professor of sports management at Brock University, whose research is focused, in part, on coach education, says whether coaches are older or younger is less important than their abilities to cultivate winning environments, connect with players and offer meaningful rewards.
The youngest coach in the NHL is Ryan Warsofsky of the San Jose Sharks, who is also 37, and his coaching philosophy is all about relationships.
Warsofsky climbed the coaching ladder quickly. At 28, he was the youngest active coach in the ECHL before helping lead the Charlotte Checkers, as an assistant coach, to a Calder Cup victory in his first season in the AHL. He also won the Calder Cup in 2022, as head coach of the Chicago Wolves, before becoming an assistant with San Jose in 2022.
He’s tapped into some older coaching mentors and their methods, but as a millennial – like some of those on his team – Warsofsky has been able to cultivate a process that works with his younger group.
“Relationships take time. I do that daily with our players,” Warsofsky said in an interview. “They’re going through things that you don’t really know about off the ice – maybe with their parents, their wives. You let them open up to you at times. In this business, it’s hard. It’s every day. It’s quick. You really need to be able to build those relationships throughout the season.”
Although the rebuilding Sharks have struggled in 2024-25, Warsofsky says he knows how players of his generation think, and how he can care for them.
“They want to be loved. I know it’s a word that grown men don’t use often but it’s true, they want to feel the love and know you care about them as a person more than a player, and I feel like that’s how you get the most out of them. They want to know the ‘why.’ Everyone that’s coming up right now, they want to know, ‘why are we playing this system? Why are we doing this?’ You have to be prepared for ‘the why.’”
David Carle, 35, has led Team USA to back-to-back gold medals at the World Junior Hockey Championship, a first for the program – with Canada off the podium both times.
Carle was a student assistant at the University of Denver from 2008-2012, after being diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and being forced to retire from playing. He was named the head coach at Denver at just 28 years old, and he won the NCAA Championship in both 2022 and 2024 – becoming the youngest coach in history to win two national titles.
He quickly got onto the radar of Team USA, according to John Vanbiesbrouck, the assistant executive director of hockey operations for USA Hockey. “We’re a college-bound country, so we evaluated on who’s on the top end of college hockey and who’s winning and why they’re winning,” Vanbiesbrouck says, “and you try to drill into that.”
Vanbiesbrouck calls Carle a “mature soul” with good insights who is a strong talent evaluator.
The thing that stands out, Vanbiesbrouck says, is how Carle has been able to be willing to not only manage a team his way but also do things with what is available to him – such as sport science and Team USA’s installed load-management system.
“When you can adopt to your surroundings and quickly make decisions accordingly, and you just get along with people, assessing what you have available and, at the end of the day, you’re making the decisions with facts and figures and things that aren’t just necessarily about your emotions, I think (Carle) is just really in tune with that.”
People love winners, of course, no matter their age.