I have written a book entitled A Hero’s Journey: Beyond Little Norway and Olympia Sports Camp. The basic premise of the book is that we are all heroes of our own journey. I am now taking the lessons of “a hero’s journey” from philosopher Joseph Campbell and applying them to local Burlington heroes. The term “hero” calls to mind anyone who has gone through a journey to make a life for themselves and uses their skills, experience, and talents to impact others and ultimately make the world a better place.
People like Kris Sparre.
The new, and first-ever, head coach of the Hamilton team in the Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) has had a professional hockey journey as a player and coach that has taken him from Mississauga and Barrie, Ontario, to Iserlohn and Dusseldorf, Germany, then to San Diego and Boston. He was close to home when he helped with the Niagara Ice Dogs for three years before another global posting called. Leaving the known for the unknown is a huge part of any hero’s journey. The risk, the self-belief. All these international experiences bring Kris to an arena that is 20 minutes from his home in Burlington.
Now that’s a journey.
The definition of serendipity is to find valuable things through luck or without looking for them. No one reaches the height of success just by being lucky, but a few of the turning points in Kris’ journey came from casual conversations during which other opportunities came his way. Let’s just say that the personality and passion that Kris has for others attracts opportunity and advancement.
Kris’ journey to where he is today started simply by having an older brother.
“Watching what Daniel went through on his way through to junior and the pros taught me a lot. His path became my path. He is my hero.”
Daniel Sparre followed the typical minor hockey journey from house league and eventually to play at the AAA level in Mississauga. Kris, three years Daniel’s junior, had a path to follow. Both undersized and blessed with speed, smarts, and tenacity, Kris had the perfect role model living in the same house. One humorous family memory is that one year Kris got an award at the hockey banquet for scoring 99 goals and 0 assists! The teasing continues to this day.
The first serendipitous moment occurred when Kris was 13. His father took him and Daniel to watch the Streetsville Derby junior team at tryouts. Daniel was 16 and at the time 5’5” and 140 lbs. The GM of the Derbys, Stan Kalapaca, came to the three of them in the stands and asked if Daniel wanted to come the next day to attend a tryout. Remember that junior players could be as old as 20, so Daniel would be in against older and stronger players. Daniel went the next day, and at the end of the tryout, Daniel was offered a contract.
“Daniel was offered a contract, and I went home to the basement to pump iron,” was Kris’ response. The 13-year-old saw the path was possible.
The best part of that story was that the 16-year-old Daniel, who watched the first tryout from the bleachers, scored 30 goals in his second year as a Derby. Daniel went on to play with Victoriaville and Halifax of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) before embarking on his professional career. He was in the New York Rangers farm system, playing in the AHL and the ECHL, keeping his face and name on the NHL scouting list, before heading to Europe for what turned into an 11-year career.
Kris had a good role model to follow.
Kris’ journey was not without disappointment, though. He was cut by Oshawa, Kingston, and Halifax before Barrie Colts General Manager Marty Williamson took a chance on him. In Barrie, Kris had three good years, his best being 2007, when he scored 51 points in 68 games. In his last year of junior hockey, he joined the Mississauga St. Michael’s Majors as an overage player and scored 22 goals in 56 games.
His head on straight and feet firmly on the ground, Kris ventured on his own professional hockey quest, starting with two years in the ECHL in South Carolina and Boise, Idaho, before following Daniel to Germany. He played in Germany from 2009 to 2016.
But we have to back up to the second serendipitous moment that brought so much to the Sparre brothers. While playing in Germany, a local fan asked Daniel if Sparre was a German name. When he said yes, the man said Daniel should pursue a German passport. Since his grandfather was born in Germany, a passport was a possibility that Daniel had never really thought about before then. They got all their grandfather’s papers, went to the German consulate, where they paid $200 for the passports that would give them years of a well-paid hockey career.
What is the importance of the passport? In the European sports club system, each team is allowed only a limited number of import players. They want their teams to have a local flavour even though in most cases, it’s the quality of import players you have that dictates success. To have a German passport is to be counted as a “local.” For someone who has professional experience in North America to not count as an import is golden. Both Daniel and Kris had outstanding careers, Kris playing 8 years and Daniel playing 11 years.
“Playing in Europe was culture shock for a 21-year-old, but it was so unreal to experience the life and be surrounded by such rabid hockey fans. We drew 15,000 every game and the lifestyle was awesome, as in Europe your salary includes accommodations and car.”
Kris played in the top German league for the Iserlohn Roosters, of Deutsche Eishockey, as well as Liga, ERC Ingolstadt, Eisbaren Berlin, and Dusseldorfer EG and then some teams in the second division before retiring in 2016.
How did the decision to retire come about? Kris was coming off what he called a terrible year with injury issues, and even though at 30 years old he had two years left on his contract, he was feeling like he was being told that maybe life needed to go in a different direction. Here is when yet another casual conversation ended up taking the journey on a new path.
How about two life pivot points happening at the same time? That’s serendipity. Kris was engaged to marry Stephanie Fazakas, and it was at his bachelor event that good friend Billy Burke, whose family owned the Niagara Ice Dogs of the Ontario Hockey League, discussed the possibility of Kris joining the staff in St Catharines. Kris had a decision to make: either be an old player in Europe or be a young coach on a team 45 minutes from home. He chose home.
Kris stayed as an assistant coach with the Ice Dogs for three years when another key decision came along, which would change the now-married young couple’s lives and Kris’ trajectory. The Ice Dogs offered him another three-year deal, but he had an interesting offer from the Red Bull Salzburg club. Stephanie had a great job with Bell Media and the family was comfortable, but Kris was looking for a chance to learn — and grow.
Mark Bell, Kris’ good friend, mentor, and former teammate in Berlin, who was now with the NHL’s Utah Mammoth, gave Kris a line he’ll always remember and echoes a strong part of Joseph Campbell’s philosophy of the Hero’s Journey: “There is no room for growth in your comfort zone.”
Kris saw Niagara as being in the comfort zone while Red Bull Salzburg was in the growth zone. Kris followed that advice. Stephanie left her job to support Kris, and the couple moved to Austria for two years.
“Steph has been a rock star through all of this. She believed in me and supported my journey. She followed me for seven years in Europe with several moves around Germany and gave up a lot of her own goals for my goals. Her role in my professional career has increased even more when kids came along. None of this happens without Steph,” Kris said of his wife.
They returned to the Ontario Hockey League with the Flint Firebirds for one year before joining the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks as an assistant coach with their farm team, the San Diego Gulls. He was in San Diego for three seasons, during which the family had grown with the birth of children Dawson and Quinn, but there was an itch.
“I was in my tenth year of professional coaching, but it was always as an assistant. I wanted to prove that I was head coach ready. I knew I was.”
That too would take a leap of faith when Kris left the Gulls to become the head coach of the PWHL’s (Professional Women’s Hockey League) Boston Fleet.
“I was blown away with the trajectory of the league and the opportunity to be a head coach cinched the deal,” Kris said.
Was it a big deal switching from the AHL to the PWHL and coaching women?
“I never spent much time comparing men and women. If a player is willing to work and buy into our culture of being a hard team to play against, then I’m ready to work with them. We had great leadership in Boston, lots with Olympic experience, and it was a great run. We had a great group of people, and that led to a great culture of collaborative effort that brought about winning,” Kris said.
Kris had a great year in Boston. He got his team to play hard, and that brought a lot of winning, the biggest one-year improvement in league history. For his efforts, Kris earned 2025 PWHL Coach of the Year honours. But perhaps his biggest professional decision was looming.
In 2025, the PWHL granted an expansion team to Hamilton. Kris had another year on his contract with the Fleet but was allowed permission to discuss the coaching position of the new team. It would be a tough decision to leave a successful team built with great relationships in Boston, but the other side of the coin was that the new team’s arena was like going home. He thought of Stephanie and all she had done over the years, and now there was a chance to make for a more “normal” lifestyle for the young family. Hamilton General Manager Meghan Duggan hired Kris to be the team’s first head coach as she saw that his values-based leadership fit perfectly with her belief in how to develop the franchise from the ground up. She was also very impressed with his history of player development.
Yes, it was a new challenge, great to start a franchise from the ground up, but in many ways, it has a lot to do with family. A quote from The Hockey News’ interview with Kris:
“Some things are bigger than hockey, and getting a chance to go home and be close to my family and just provide them with a little bit more support locally, friends and family nearby that can help out with the kids. I’ve made some tough decisions in my hockey career as a player, as a pro for 10 years, and I was a coach for 10 years…this was hands down the hardest decision I ever had to make.”
With the PWHL about to launch in Hamilton this season, Head Coach Kris Sparre’s philosophy is one that many players love to play under, and Hamilton fans will love to watch: “A lot of coaches say that some ideals are non-negotiable, but I think if everyone is going to be on the same page, then everything is negotiable. We’ll talk over things as a group.”
“That’s how you build commitment. That’s how you build culture. We are all in this together. I’m excited to work with Meghan Duggan as our visions are aligned,” Kris continued. “I’m also excited to work with the roster of players we have built through the draft and free agency. We feel we have the right people who are highly skilled but also are of high character. We will be gritty team to play against. Yes, that’s a reflection of the City of Hamilton, but also it’s a must that every team [that] comes to play us they know they are in for a tough night.”
From his early days of watching and learning from his brother, Kris Sparre has always believed in himself, and that has taken him on a journey around the world, gathering knowledge and experiences that he now brings home to share with the Hamilton community as it too embarks on this PWHL journey. We wish him well on this next stage of his journey.
