The Man Behind the Room: Jim Chesnut Retires After Nearly 30 Years in Professional Hockey
PENSACOLA, FLA – After more than a quarter century behind professional hockey benches, Pensacola Ice Flyers Equipment Manager Jim Chesnut is stepping away from the game he committed his life to after 1,600 professional games.
He leaves on the highest note of his career. This spring the SPHL named Chesnut its 2025-26 Equipment Manager of the Year, making him the first three-time winner of the award, an honor voted on by the league’s own equipment managers and athletic trainers.
Chesnut’s road started in 1998-99 with the Topeka Scarecrows of the Central Hockey League and his career ran nearly three decades. Across that span, he worked for 12 different teams in five professional leagues. He reached the American Hockey League, one rung below the NHL, with the Lowell Lock Monsters, spent two seasons in his hometown with the Oklahoma City Blazers, and carried the head equipment manager title at stops in Mississippi, Norfolk, and Jacksonville before settling in with the Ice Flyers.
Ask him which stop shaped him most, and he goes straight to Lowell. It was there he found a mentor in Wally, a longtime AHL and NHL equipment man who passed away a few years ago. “He taught me a lot,” Chesnut said. “I learned so much more about skate steel and balancing skates from Wally. I already knew how to balance skates, but the method he taught me was tremendous. It took my skate work to another level.” His first mentor, years earlier, was Stevie, the equipment man in Tulsa, who taught him the trade from the ground up. “I’m forever grateful to Stevie and Wally for their guidance and friendship for so many years.”
That obsession with skates became the standard Chesnut would never let slide. “I had to be very meticulous with sharpening the players’ skates,” he said. “You can have the best hands in the world on the ice, but if you can’t get up and down the ice, it doesn’t matter.”
Players knew him for more than his edges. Chesnut is a practical joker, a guy who keeps the room loose when it needs it. Down a goal between periods with a quiet locker room, he was the one who would walk in and crack something just to get the boys’ heads back up.
He has the stories to match. His favorite is the morning Oklahoma City head coach Doug Sauder, a cowboy from Saskatchewan, walked a horse into the locker room during a commercial shoot. Sauder, twisting his handlebar mustache, told the room he was just showing the boys his horse. Chesnut looked at him and made the terms clear. “She’s a beauty, but if she makes a mess, you’re the one cleaning it up.” That, he says, is hockey life. There is always something.
The coaches and teammates who stuck with him share a thread. Tom Rowe, his Coach and General Manager in Lowell, showed him how the game was run at the highest levels and helped him earn three NHL exhibition games. Sauder was a character he will never forget. And in Pensacola, head coach Jeremy Gates is the kind of old school hockey man Chesnut connects with, someone who has seen the game change the same way he has.
What he will not miss is easy. “I am definitely not going to miss three or four hours of laundry.” What he will miss is harder to say out loud. “I will miss the camaraderie with the boys,” he said. “It is coming into the office every morning and saying, hey, how you are doing. When you have been doing this as long as I have, that stands out. That I will miss.”
He is not disappearing entirely, and there is unfinished business. Chesnut sits two games short of 1,600 for his professional career, so the Ice Flyers are bringing him back for two games next season to reach the milestone in a Pensacola unifrom. He also plans to be around for training camp to help the next Equipment Manager get to know the ropes in Pensacola. In between, retirement means time with his wife Cindy, trips to see their grandson in Ireland, and a little travel through Europe. After six-to-nine-month seasons for most of his life, he is ready for the quieter stretch.
Asked what he would say to Ice Flyers fans, Chesnut didn’t need long. “If I could only have two words, it would be thank you. They have shown me respect for what I do and the hours I put in. I was not an afterthought here. None of us would be here without the fans.”
He wanted to thank a few people by name: owner Greg Harris, his wife Cindy, the entire front office, the players, and the two mentors who made him, Stevie and Wally.
Ice Flyers owner, Greg Harris, stated, “Jim is a pro among pros. With him, I always knew our players were always taken care of extremely well. I never had to worry about anything with Jim as I always knew he had our players’ backs and the organization’s back. He exemplified what it meant and what it took to be a professional and a class act every day, and for that and many more reasons, I will be forever grateful to have Jim as an Ice Flyer. From the Ice Flyers organization, all the staff, players, fans and supporters who have ever been a part of this organization, we want to wish Jim an extremely relaxing, fulfilling and blessed retirement. Thank you, Jim.”
