Color of Hockey: Dailey hopes to ride coaching journey to professional ranks

William Douglas has been writing The Color of Hockey blog since 2012. Douglas joined NHL.com in 2019 and writes about people of color in the sport. Today, he profiles MacEwan University coach Zack Dailey, who is believed to be the only Black head coach in men’s hockey in U Sports, Canada’s collegiate athletics governing body.

Zack Dailey learned how to play hockey as a kid in Alaska with the methodical approach of the coach he would eventually become.

“I would rent videos of how to play hockey, and I'd practice in the living room,” Dailey said. “The library would call to get their VHS back because it was overdue because I was watching them all the time.

"When I was younger, I was one of the worst players and a lot of it had to do with my skating. So my dad would film me skating on our outdoor rink and anytime we were in the big city where the skating coach was, we would bring our video and have a half-hour meeting with the skating coach.”

It’s easy to see from Dailey’s unique hockey journey how he became coach of MacEwan University in Edmonton. Focus, dedication and determination are adjectives that have followed the 35-year-old from the time he laced up skates on the outdoor rinks in Healy, Alaska, a town of 1,000 people about a two-hour drive southwest of Fairbanks, to his captaincy of Everett of the Western Hockey League and two U Sports championships as a forward with the University of Alberta.

In his third full season behind the bench at MacEwan, Dailey is believed to be the only Black head coach currently among the 35 men’s hockey programs in U Sports, the governing body for Canada’s collegiate athletics.

He was named interim coach at MacEwan in 2022-23 and was promoted the following season. He led the team to the U Sports Canada West conference playoffs in 2024 and guided them to their first conference playoff win Feb. 21, 2025, a 3-2 overtime victory against the University of British Columbia. MacEwan is 6-6-2 so far this season, third in the Canada West conference.

“You can see the leadership and how well he understands the game, and his ability to get through to young players,” said University of Alberta coach Ian Herbers, who Dailey played for from 2010-15. “Every time we play his team, they play hard and they’re very competitive teams. He’s done a fantastic job.”

For Dailey, it all goes back to Healy. He was born in California but was adopted by a family in Alaska and raised in the remote town where he said the closest neighbor lived a mile away.

“Looking back, it was a very unique experience, and it was a cool one,” he said. “It's probably a direct reason why I developed, because there was so much free ice everywhere. The outdoor rink before a certain time was free. Any day where there wasn't school, there was free ice. There's a pond on the house, which, again, is free, and you can use it whenever. I just had so much access to ice to work on getting better.”

When Dailey told his parents, John and Jenasy Dailey, that he wanted to pursue hockey as a career, his father moved with him to Alberta so he could play with and against stiffer competition.

“My dad, mom, they never played hockey, so didn't have a lot of experience and knowledge in it,” he said. “And his biggest thing was, ‘If you want to be a hockey player, you've got to go where they're produced.’ All we knew was the (University of Alaska Fairbanks) Nanooks.

"So he a found a job in Edmonton. It was just him and I, and my mom and brother would come visit once a month. It was like, a pretty big hit on our family and a really big sacrifice to put me in the best position to be a hockey player. It’s something I'm definitely grateful for because I don't think a lot of people would have had done that.”

Dailey flourished in Alberta. He had 93 points (41 goals, 52 assists) in 39 games with Sherwood Park of the Alberta Major Bantam Hockey League in 2003-04 and tied for fourth in the league in scoring.

He went on to play for Everett, where he had 133 points (38 goals, 95 assists) in 330 regular-season games, 13 points (five goals, eight assists) in 43 playoff games and was captain from 2008-10.

“I think just the hard work that my parents instilled in me allowed me to lead people purely on effort,” he said. “I wasn't a huge talker. I just tried to let my effort and my game do the talking.”

He also drew inspiration from Jarome Iginla, who became the NHL’s second Black captain with the Calgary Flames on Oct. 8, 2003, Georges Laraque and other Black players who played in the League.

“I met Georges one time when I was a kid, and that was pretty awesome,” Dailey said. “And Jarome, you hear all the stories about, as a captain, how he treated his teammates and how beloved he was, and how he treated the fans.

“All of that was very inspirational and I think the biggest thing was him not stopping, not letting racism or anything like that affect what his end goal was. That definitely was helpful as a kid when there weren’t a lot of people who look like me doing what I wanted to do. It was pretty cool to see from the outside, those guys doing it at the highest level and being very successful.”

Dailey joined the University of Alberta in 2010-11 after his major junior hockey eligibility expired and won U Sports titles with the Golden Bears in 2013-14 and 2014-15.

“Basically, he was a coach's dream,” Herbers said. “Worked hard, a great teammate, very coachable, wanted to improve, wanted to keep working his way up and try to play pro. Unfortunately, he broke his femur (in 2013-14) in one of our drills in practice. For most guys that would have been the end of their hockey career, but he wanted to stay on the team. With nothing guaranteed or promised, he just worked his tail off that spring, that summer, that fall, didn’t get into games in the preseason or in the first part of the season.

“He was one of our key guys in January to help us keep winning. Just stepped right in like he hadn't broken his femur and could play wing, center, fill in on power play and penalty kill.”

Dailey gravitated to coaching after his collegiate playing days ended and joined MacEwan’s staff as an assistant in 2017. He aspires to coach in the pros someday and is part of an NHL Coaches’ Association mentorship effort to help bring more coaches of color and women into the professional ranks.

“It's been amazing just being able to hear from NHL coaches on topics that there's no chance I would be able to hear about or be able to ask questions to people without this program,” he said. “It's been extremely helpful for me. I'm very appreciative of it. I think they do such a great job. It's pretty cool that NHL coaches are willing to volunteer their time to help a lot of people out.”