New Nashua North-Souhegan hockey coach Ashton Rome gives instructions on the ice during a recent practice at Conway Arena. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Think of how many bus rides Ashton Rome has taken throughout his 19-year professional hockey career in the minor leagues both in North America and abroad.

So four years after he retired as player, what would make him want to take even more as a high school coach?

“These,” he said with a smile, “will be a lot shorter than all the others.”

Rome, bitten by the coaching bug just a few years ago, is the new head man for the Nashua High School North-Souhegan co-op. Being a former pro athlete, he’s probably one of the first Nashua coaches to have his own Wickipedia page.

“Right,” the Nesbitt, Manitoba, Canada native chuckled. “I went right from juniors to pro.”

Rome was originally drafted by the Boston Bruins, the 108thrd pick overall, in 2004.

He stayed in juniors, however, with three different teams, and was available in the draft again two years later, chosen as the 143rd pick overall by the San Jose Sharks and signed, starting out with the AHL’s Worcester (Mass.) Sharks. He’s got a career 45 goals, with 43 assists for 88 points, and 264 penalty minutes. He was a physical player, moving around on the lines depending on the team he was with.

“Physical and shoot the puck, that was my game,” Rome said.

He spent three seasons with the Sharks and then you’d need a road map to follow his minor league career: Phoenix, Tornto, Idaho, Hershey (Pa.), Portland (Maine), Greenville (S.C.), and also five years in Europe, Germany to be exact. The journey ended, fittingly enough, with the Manchester Monarchs, when the Monarchs were in the ECHL. In Manchester, he played for then-Monarchs assistant coach and Nashua native Jeff Giuliano, now an assistant at UNH. Giuliano, like Rome, had an extensive playing career that included time with the L.A. Kings and also in Europe.

But Rome’s travels never took him to the National Hockey League.

“Obviously, it’s every kid’s dream, who goes up playing hockey, to make it to the NHL,” Rome said. “I played for quite a while, so obviously that was my dream. But after a certain amount of time, obviously, you just keep playing for the love of the game.

“I gave up on that dream when I went over to Europe and I was playing because I loved it and could make a pretty good living doing it. So I continued doing it.”

And, he said he had his most fun his final couple of years in Manchester. He actually returned to where it all began, in Worcester, as a free agent in 2017, when that city had also switched to the ECHL (the Railers) but then was dealt back to Manchester. At the end of that season, he called it quits.

“It was just a great group of guys, and two unbelievable coaches (Guliano and head coach Rich Seely), who weren’t players long before that,” Rome said of his two full seasons with the Monarchs.

Rome stayed in the region as he met his wife Mackenzie, a Methuen, Mass. native, in Worcester back in 2007. He got into coaching one of his three kids at the youth level, and he ended up coaching some of the older age groups, including juniors with the Hudson Cyclones, one of their U18 teams. He didn’t want to do it in the minors and, well, have to take those long bus rides again.

But high school? That appealed to him, and this is his first high school job.

“I wanted to get into a high school program, and that kind of age group,” he said. “I wasn’t really sure how to get into it. I saw they needed a coach in Nashua, so I inquired, and that’s how I ended up there.”

Nashua Athletic Director Lisa Gingras feels Rome is a perfect fit – vast playing experience as a professional along with some years of coaching.

“He has only a lot of experience as a player but he’s been coaching some elite (junior) teams,” she said. “So he has the coaching knowledge.”

There were a few candidates, but Gingras felt Rome’s “experience and expertise was above (the field). Once he applied and we interviewed him, it was kind of a no-brainer.”

Rome has had a lot of coaches over the years, and knew the good ones from the bad ones. But there was a lot to discover about doing it himself – and what his role should be.

“Be able to relate to the players and know the reason you’re here is to help them develop and move on to wherever they want to move onto,” he said. “They’re there just to have fun, but you try to teach them some discipline and a work ethic, in a friendly way.

“I’ve had all kinds of coaches that were unapproachable, and coaches that were approachable,” Rome said. “I find the best coaches are the ones who are there, and there to help you get better.”

Rome also has learned what young players are like these days.

“Everybody’s a little different,” he said. “Some kids are more into it than others. Some kids are students of the game, where you can see that when they go home that’s what they think about; they’re researching hockey and all the different things.

“And some kids, they do it for fun. You kind of have to adjust, depending on which kid it is. Some you might have to guide a little more than others, and some are pretty quick to take a teaching moment and they just kind of run with it where some you might have to remind them a few times.”

What style of coach has Rome tried to make himself into? The approachable kind, for sure.

“I want to know what the players are thinking,” he said, “and I don’t want them second guessing how I’m viewing them as players or their work ethic.

“I want the kids – my philosophy is the kids have to work hard. I don’t care about skill or anything like that. So the work ethic is number one, and if a skilled player is willing to work, that’s a bonus. I just want the guys to go out to work hard. Mistakes are part of the game, and that’s how people are going to learn. I’m not the guy who’s gonna bench a kid for making one mistake; if they make it and they’re working hard, that’s part of the game.”

That;s why Rome loved playing for Guliano, whom, ironically, he also played against.

“He was one of the best coaches I’ve played for,” he said. “He never forgot what it was like to be a player, and he coached that way, too.”

Rome believes in the famous theory that defense wins championship, so his teams will work from the net out.

“If you’re disiplined in defense, the goals will come, so we’ll work from there out,: he said, “and see how it goes.”

Of course, it’s well known that the North-Souhegan co-op has lacked stability; Rome will be the program’s sixth coach in just eight seasons. For his first high school job, he has to mesh players from two different schools that really are a different dynamic.

“Usually your team, they’re all from one school, everybody knows each other and everybody grew up with each other,” Rome said. “But in this case, most of the kids know each other, realatively close. New Hampshire hockey’s not like a big world; these kids have probably played together on different teams.

“But then there’s kids who don’t play outside of their high school. I view hockey teams as one big family. I told them I don’t care what school you go to. But when you’re in the dressing room, you’re a family. Treat it like you’re home, treat everybody like they’re your brother and sister, and we’ll be fine.”

Rome said he was aware of the seemingly revolving door of coaches. But he says it’s a three-month season, not year-round.

“I’m just going to have fun with it, and try to help the kids as much as I can,” he said. “And just try to improve the program.”

And for Rrome, it’s fun. He’s enjoyed his first few years of coaching.

“If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t keep doing it,” he said. “It’s fun, it’s something I want to continue doing until my kids are the high school age or juniors.”

Yet leaving the sport as a player wasn’t easy.

“It’s like anything, at first it was definitely tough,” Rome said. “But I knew it was time to move on, and I really didn’t miss it that much.”

He may have missed the game, but he didn’t miss the constant moving around the country – or to another country. Summers are supposed to be fun, but for Rome, they were stressful, not knowing where he would be in the fall.

“It’s 13 years of moving and moving your family around, every summer not knowing what kind of contract you’re going to have, stuff like that,” he said. “It was a stressful summer pretty much every summer.”

Thus when he retired in 2018 it was more of a relief.

“At first, I don’t think I really missed it at all,” he said. “It was time to move on, time to start a career, time to stay in one place. But as time goes on, obviously I miss it a little bit more, the comaraderie in the dressing room and the battle on the ice.”

To fill that, he had played in men’s leagues, but doesn’t anymore. His big on-ice competition comes in the annual CHaD Police-Fire game, because Rome is a Salem firefighter.

Being a firefighter was also something he had always been interested in since his junior days in Canda, for an interesting reason.

“In Canada, they push hockey players to become police or firemen,” he said, “because it’s a team environment, to do something that was still that team mentality. So it was kind of a natural thing, just working with a big group of people, something with a common goal. It was like being in a locker room, so it was an easy transition.”

Rome has been a firefighter since 2019. And loves it.

“It’s kind of the best job in the world,” he said. “I enjoy going to work every day. It’s easy to do what we do (in providing help).”

The season opened this past Wednesday, and the Saber-Titans were scheduled to be at Pinkerton this weekend.They make their debut at Conway Arena during the annual holiday tournament hosted by Hollis Brookline-Derryfield the week after Christmas. His feelings leading up to the opener were mixed.

“Excited and nervous,” Rome said, knowing that he’s unfamiliar with a lot of the opposition. “We’ll work as hard as we can. .. definitely excited. …The first week was getting to know everybody, being out on the ice, getting into hockey shape. And try to work with the kids, get them in shape so they’re ready to play the full game.”

“It’s hockey. I’ve been doing it a long time.”

Including those bus rides.