Management & Staff

The people who run the Niagara Falls Canucks are, almost without exception, from here. They coach here, work here and raise their families here — and most of them played the game in this city before they ran anything in it.

Directors and officers

Frank Pietrangelo

President, Director of Hockey Operations and Head Coach

Frank was born and raised in Niagara Falls. He played all of his minor hockey in the Niagara Falls Minor Hockey Association and one season of junior hockey with the Canucks, in 1979-80, before moving on to the Brampton Warriors in what is now the Ontario Junior Hockey League for two seasons. He was drafted by the Brantford Alexanders of the Ontario Hockey League in the third round, 34th overall, in 1981, but chose instead to accept a scholarship to play National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I hockey at the University of Minnesota.

He won the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 1991. In game six of the opening round of those playoffs he made “The Save” — a point-blank glove stop on Peter Stastny of the New Jersey Devils, widely regarded as one of the most significant saves in Stanley Cup history. He shut out the Devils in game seven, and Pittsburgh went on to win it all. He was acquired by the Hartford Whalers the following season and played there until 1994, retiring through injury in 1995 before returning to play in Europe until 2001, winning championships with HC Bolzano in Italy and the Manchester Storm in England.

Frank was inducted into the Niagara Falls Sports Wall of Fame in 1998. He returned to Niagara Falls with Kim and their children, Paige, Jessica and Dylan, and began coaching — minor hockey, boys and girls, and varsity at The Hill Academy from 2001 to 2011 — before joining the Canucks as general manager and an assistant coach in 2011-12. He purchased the team in 2014 and has been head coach and director of hockey operations since. He was awarded the Tom Kelly Memorial Trophy as coach of the year in the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League Golden Horseshoe conference in 2016 and 2017.

Away from the team, Frank is a partner in the Niagara Spring Hockey Challenge, Niagara’s premier elite hockey tournament, which has hosted teams from around the world each spring and summer since 2006.

Brandon Boone

Vice-President, General Manager and Director of Community and Minor Hockey Involvement

Brandon was born and raised in Niagara Falls. He played all of his minor hockey in the Niagara Falls Minor Hockey Association and junior hockey with the Canucks and the Thorold Blackhawks in what is now the Greater Ontario Hockey League in the mid to late 1980s, with one preseason appearance for the Newmarket Flyers in what is now the OJHL in 1985. Always the better student, he left for York University after graduating high school in 1987, returning for one final playoff run with the Canucks in 1988 and commuting back for games and practices.

He earned a bilingual Bachelor of Arts from Glendon College in 1990 and a Juris Doctor from Osgoode Hall Law School in 1993, and was called to the bar in 1995 after completing the bar admission course with honours. He has practiced business, real estate and wills and estates law for more than thirty years since, and became a senior partner of Daniel & Partners LLP, one of Niagara’s oldest and largest law firms, in 2005.

Brandon began coaching in 1993-94 and is a High Performance 1 certified coach who has coached at every local level — from the U7 initiation program through house league, B, BB, AA and AAA, to Junior B and Junior C, boys and girls, as both a parent and non-parent coach. He was a director of the Niagara Falls Minor Hockey Association for twelve years and convenor of its U7 program for ten seasons. At the end of the 2015-16 season the Ontario Minor Hockey Association honoured him with its Excellence in Development Award for his work with that initiation program, and he has been an OMHA coach facilitator and instructor since 2015.

Brandon and his wife, Jody, have raised four children — Brielle, Easton, A.J. and Aric. In the spring of 2022, wanting to transition from minor hockey to junior hockey, Brandon approached Frank about buying into the Canucks. It was a short conversation. Within a couple of months he had purchased a half interest. He has since joined the board of the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA), the governing body for most junior and senior hockey in Ontario, as one of two appointed Junior A directors.

Front office

Kim Pietrangelo, second from right, with Frank and Rogers Hometown Hockey hosts Ron MacLean and Tara Slone. Niagara Falls opened the national tour in October, 2017, the first of twenty-four stops across the country that season.

Kim Pietrangelo

Director of Marketing and Branding, Sponsorship, Ticketing and Game Day Operations

Frank’s wife, Kim, has seen the best and worst of minor, junior and professional hockey operations across nearly four decades as a hockey wife and mother. She has been the engine that runs the Canucks off the ice since 2014.

Hockey staff

Carson Johnstone

Assistant Coach

Carson is a Niagara Falls product, and hockey runs in the family. His father, Chris Johnstone, played for the Canucks before a scholarship to the Rochester Institute of Technology, where he scored 114 goals and won an NCAA Division II championship in 1982-83, and went on to coach the Canucks as an assistant, then in the OHL with the Niagara Falls Thunder and the Erie Otters, and with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds. Chris was inducted into the Niagara Falls Sports Wall of Fame in 2022. Carson’s uncles, Jeff and Greg Johnstone, are also part of the Niagara Falls hockey community.

Carson’s own playing career took him through junior hockey in the GOJHL, NCAA Division III, and professional stops in Denmark and the Federal Prospects Hockey League, most recently with the Watertown Wolves.

He moved behind the bench early. In 2022 he was named the first head coach of the Sioux Lookout Bombers, an expansion franchise entering the Superior International Junior Hockey League, and spent four years there. In only his second season he took the Bombers to an SIJHL championship and was named the league’s coach of the year.

Now 32, Carson has come back south to the city he grew up in. With the Canucks he runs the defence and contributes to special teams.

Scott Lisko

Assistant Coach

Scott joined the Canucks in 2026, entering his fortieth season behind a bench. That time is split almost evenly between elite minor hockey in the Ontario Minor Hockey Association’s AAA ranks and the junior leagues of the Ontario Hockey Association.

A Stoney Creek resident, Scott is High Performance 1 certified. He has coached in the Ontario Hockey Association’s junior ranks since 2000 — with the Port Colborne Sailors, where he was head coach in 2003-04, the Chippawa Riverhawks and the Pelham Panthers — and has spent the last ten seasons at the U18 AAA level in Oakville and Burlington, and then two seasons as head coach of the Southern Tier Admirals. He has also scouted in the Ontario Hockey League for the Saginaw Spirit for two seasons, and served as advance scout for the Cornwall Aces of the American Hockey League under Jacques Martin.

Away from the rink, Scott works in automotive production at the Ford assembly complex in Oakville. He is an avid golfer, and enjoys his days on the links almost as much as his winter evenings in the rink.

Anthony Tremonte

Goaltender Coach

Anthony was born and raised in Thorold and played his minor hockey there, then with the Southern Tier Admirals from 2014 to 2016 and the Niagara North Stars in 2016-17. He was drafted by the Kitchener Rangers of the OHL in the fourth round, 72nd overall, in 2017. After a stint with the Fort Erie Meteors he moved to the Thorold Blackhawks, and the Canucks acquired him in 2019, where he was an integral part of the team’s Golden Horseshoe conference championship that season and was named the conference’s goaltender of the month along the way. His playing career finished with the Canucks in 2019-20, cut short by COVID, which also cost him his twenty-year-old season entirely. He has been the team’s goaltender coach ever since, runs his own business, Tremonte Goaltending, and was selected as head goaltender coach for China’s women’s national under-18 team.

Riley Eberhardt

Assistant Goaltender Coach

Riley joined the Canucks in 2026. Born in St. Catharines, he played AAA with the Niagara North Stars and was selected by the Niagara IceDogs in the U18 draft, before junior seasons with the St. Catharines Falcons and the Grimsby Peach Kings — where he shared the Ontario Hockey Association’s Bloomfield Division goaltender award in 2019-20.

He is the founder and head goalie coach of Dialed In Performance, working with more than sixty goaltenders a year through private lessons, team training and development camps, and has been a long-time goalie coach with Ben Vanderklok Goaltending, leading skill sessions, building training plans and mentoring younger coaches. He has also coached with the Niagara North Stars, the Port Colborne Sailors and the Fort Erie International Academy, where he is head goalie coach. His work leans on video analysis and individual performance plans.

Nate Mitton

Director of Performance

Born in Kitchener, Nate played U SPORTS hockey for Ontario Tech and professionally in the ECHL. He has more than fourteen years of hands-on experience in strength and conditioning, and has coached the Brock University men’s hockey team and the Jamaican national men’s team. In 2024 the Florida Panthers hired him as their assistant strength and conditioning coach, and he won the Stanley Cup with the team in 2024-25.

In 2020 Nate and his wife, Danielle, founded House of Greatness, starting out on an outdoor tennis court with minimal equipment and a belief in what was possible. It is now Niagara’s high-performance training facility, working with athletes from age nine through to the professional ranks, alongside adult members, team training and HYROX programming as an official HYROX Training Club. In 2023 he launched The Shooting Lab, an indoor synthetic ice facility, with his business partner Jarrod Maidens.

Medical and training staff

Dr. Drew Girard

Team Physician

Dr. Girard graduated from the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry in 1984 and has practiced family medicine in Niagara Falls since 1986 — close to forty years in the same city. He holds hospital privileges at the Niagara Health System, Niagara site, and remains in good standing with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario.

A junior hockey team needs a doctor who knows the players, knows their families, and can be reached quickly. Dr. Girard has been that for the Canucks, and for several generations of Niagara Falls families besides.

Emily Brooks

Team Therapist and Trainer

Emily graduated from Brock University with a Bachelor of Kinesiology and a Master of Professional Kinesiology, and is a Registered Kinesiologist — a protected title in Ontario requiring registration with the College of Kinesiologists of Ontario. She has been with NEXT Niagara Health since 2023 and works across strength and conditioning, sports performance and rehabilitation.

Her interest in the field began with her own athletic career in figure skating, volleyball and track and field. She travels with the team and is on the bench at home games, which means a Canucks player is seen by a qualified therapist the moment something goes wrong — not days later. Outside the clinic she trains and hikes around the Niagara Region.