Dubuque Fighting Saints announce coaching staff changes before training camp

The Dubuque Fighting Saints put their coaching structure back in the spotlight with a July 23 staff announcement, a late-summer move that arrives before training camp and the preseason ramp-up. In the USHL, that kind of change reaches far beyond titles on a website. It can alter how a team practices, how the penalty kill is taught, how the power play is organized and which young players are pushed into bigger roles.

That timing matters for Dubuque because the club is already deep into its preparation for the 2025-26 season. Staff pages and roster planning show an organization building toward camp with the usual junior-hockey churn, where the roster turns over quickly and the coaching staff has to establish language, structure and habits almost immediately. A new or reshuffled bench can change practice tempo on day one and reset expectations in the defensive zone before the first exhibition shift is even played.

The July move also fits a recent stretch of coaching turnover in Dubuque. On June 19, 2024, the Saints announced that Kirk MacDonald was leaving the club to take over the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins. Two days later, on June 21, 2024, Dubuque tabbed Evan Dixon as head coach. The team had also been active on the staff side in 2023, announcing a coaching staff addition on July 20, naming Jared Bussard as development coach on July 28 and later bringing in Brett Boeing as Saint4Life volunteer assistant coach on Nov. 24.

MacDonald’s run in Dubuque had already carried weight in the organization’s modern history. The Saints’ hockey operations page says he was named the sixth head coach in the organization’s Tier I history on June 13, 2022, a marker that underscores how much of the franchise’s recent identity has been built through coaching decisions as much as player recruiting. That history makes the latest July adjustment more than administrative housekeeping. It is another step in a bench structure that has shifted repeatedly while the organization tries to line up development, special teams and day-to-day teaching.

For a club that has to prepare players for NCAA hockey and, for a few, the professional game, those details shape what Dubuque looks like on the ice. The next version of the Saints will be judged not only by who is on the roster, but by how the new coaching arrangement handles the blue line, the power play and the development of the next wave of players arriving for camp.