After a season of bouncing back and forth, Justin Nachbaur hopes his next stop is a year-long one.
The former Prince Albert Raider spent most of the 2024-25 season with the ECHL’s South Carolina Sting Rays, with the exception of a four-game stint with the AHL’s Hershey Bears. In July, the Bears announced they had signed Nachbaur to an AHL contract, and his goal is to stick with them full-time.
“I’m really excited to be back in Hershey,” Nachbaur said during a phone interview on Friday. “Obviously, my last year I started the season in South Carolina, but when I got called up the guys welcomed me there with open arms. The organization is pretty first class. They treated me better than I really expected, honestly.”
Although it was a brief stint in Hershey last season, the 6’3, 205 pound forward wasted little time leaving his mark. Nachbaur racked up 24 penalty minutes in those four games, including two fighting majors.
The Cross Lake, Man. product played a similar bruising style in South Carolina, where he posted 28 points and 173 penalty minutes in 48 games. He’s looking for similar success in Hershey.
“The American League itself is a pretty tough league to crack,” he said. “The players there are pretty top notch. You have to be on your game every day. You’ve got to bring something to the table and be prepared.”
Nachbaur and the Sting Rays enjoyed a strong regular season. They finished with an ECHL best 109 points, but were upset in the first round of the playoffs by the Orlando Solar Bears. Although the season didn’t end the way he wanted, Nachbaur said it playing in South Carolina was a great experience.
“Charleston is a beautiful city,” he said. “It’s a great place to play in the East Coast Hockey League. We had a great team and a really good year. Unfortunately, we lost in the first round. We had higher expectations than that, but Charleston was a great time. I got a lot of opportunities there and I just ran with it.”
Although he spent the last few seasons in the US, Nachbaur still maintains strong ties in the Prince Albert area. He still keeps in touch with his old Raider billet parents, Trevor and Celena Gunville, and visited Prince Albert a few months ago for his billet brother’s high school graduation.
He spends his off-seasons in Manitoba, and hosted his second annual Justin Nachbaur Dryland Pro Hockey School at the Cross Lake Arena. The camp provides young hockey players with one hour of dryland training each day, and focuses on the importance of good nutrition and healthy eating.
He also keeps in touch with other members of the 2019 Prince Albert Raider WHL championship team. Nachbaur had 31 points in 64 games and added four points in 21 playoff games as the Raiders defeated Vancouver in the WHL final.
“Obviously, it’s one of the best times of my life playing hockey,” Nachbaur said when asked about the 2019 championship run. “It’s something you want to do in your career multiple times. The one time I got is awesome. I can’t imagine the guys winning it back-to-back like that. Winning the championship with the group of guys you’ve been grinding with all season, there’s no better feeling.
“We all try and keep in touch,” he added. “We won a championship together and we’re all going to remember each other forever. I still keep in touch with a majority of the guys, obviously, just reaching out to say, ‘hey how’s it going.’ We were a really tight group there. We still have a group chat. We still talk there some times. We still have a great bond.”
@kerr_jas • jason.kerr@paherald.sk.ca
