Yardley’s Terrence Wallin once dreamed of playing for the Flyers. Now, he’s rising in the organization’s coaching ranks

Terrence Wallin stood on the home team’s bench at the PPL Center for warmups in early September.

He looked around the arena in Allentown, the home of Lehigh Valley of the American Hockey League, and saw the Flyers logo everywhere. It was on the jerseys that the rookies were wearing as they prepared to play their New York Rangers counterparts. It was on the clothing that fans donned in the crowd.

That’s when it started to sink in for Wallin. In a few short weeks, the 33-year-old would stand on that same bench as the new assistant coach for the Phantoms, playing a key role in the Flyers’ rebuild.

But then he peered across the rink and saw his 2-year-old son. For Terrence, it was an unforgettable moment, but not just because his son, who loves the rink, was there. Little Wes Wallin was wearing a Flyers jersey. Terrence’s Flyers jersey. The same one he wore when he was 4 years old growing up in Yardley.

“The Flyers have always kind of been in the background of who I am as a person growing up here,” Wallin said, sitting at the Flyers Training Center in Voorhees during rookie camp.

“Growing up a Flyers fan, you dream of being a part of it somehow,” he added. “Obviously, when you’re young, you hope it’s as a player, but to get the opportunity to do it now as a coach is something that I don’t take for granted.”

For Terrence Wallin, he is home.

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Chris Barcless’ excitement poured through the phone even via text. The hockey director at the Ice Land Skating Center in Hamilton Township, N.J., was looking forward to speaking about one of his favorite players across his 31 years with the Mercer Chiefs organization.

“I loved coaching him [and] he loved to play,” said Barcless, who is coaching the 2013 and 2014-born players this season for the Chiefs, over the phone. “At a young age, not only was [Wallin] one of the best kids, but he absolutely loved to play. [He was the] first guy on the ice, last guy off the ice type of player, eager to learn, listen, real coachable, worked hard, and we had a lot of success together.”

Raised about 30 miles outside Philly, Wallin’s older brothers, Tim and Chris, played hockey, so it’s no surprise that the youngest of Mike and Alice’s three boys was thrust into it, too. Terrence Wallin joked that he didn’t have much of a choice, but he fell in love with the sport.

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Wallin skated for Pennsbury at a young age before switching to Mercer around the age of 10. He spent his childhood playing hockey all over New Jersey and Pennsylvania, even hitting the ice in Voorhees.

Skilled offensively, he was also known as a responsible 200-foot player. His strong work ethic and never-quit attitude stood out to Barcless, specifically during a championship game for the Atlantic Youth Hockey League. With a minute or two to go, and Mercer up by one, Wallin was one of the team’s two forwards on the ice during a six-on-four.

“For the first minute, they killed the penalty. They’re dead tired, and they can’t breathe. There’s a whistle and the other coach changes lines, puts their second power play on,” Barcless recalls.

“... I’m like, ‘Listen, guys, we got one minute to go. I know you’re tired. If you cannot go for the next minute, I’ll use my timeout, because I’m not changing lines. So if you cannot go, we’ll use the timeout. But I strongly urge you to get back out there and just kill the last minute without calling a timeout so their first power play can’t get back on the ice.’ And they did. ... We ended up winning the championship that day.”

Before moving to Connecticut to play at The Gunnery (now known as the Frederick Gunn School), the forward brought that same mindset to La Salle College High School. Wallin was so committed to his game, he would often go to La Salle’s practices and then, driving in his hockey gear, head to Jersey to skate with Mercer.

Although he played only two years at La Salle, the school competed in the Flyers Cup twice, winning the Class AAA Flyers Cup and the state championship in 2008. A sophomore on a team loaded with upperclassmen, he played a big role in the Explorers’ success as a playmaker, whether on the wing or at center, while skating on the penalty kill and power play.

“He was very skilled, and his hockey IQ was off the charts, and his compete level was high,” said Wally Muehlbronner, his coach at La Salle. “So the three of those things certainly blended together made for a really good hockey player. When he was with me at La Salle, he hadn’t had a growth spurt yet. He’s still not the biggest guy, but back then, he was definitely a little bit smaller. But made up for that with his IQ, his skill level, and his compete level.”

Listed at 6-foot, 204 pounds, Wallin went on to play four years of Division I hockey at UMass-Lowell. Across 138 games, he had 16 goals and 34 assists and helped lead the River Hawks to two Hockey East championships. Named Hockey East’s rookie of the week three times, he scored in UMass-Lowell’s 4-2 loss to Union College and Shayne Gostisbehere in the 2012 NCAA regional final.

Between 2015 and 2020, Wallin played as a pro, skating in the Southern Professional Hockey League, ECHL, and AHL. In September 2018, he was acquired by the Maine Mariners of the ECHL in the franchise’s first-ever trade.

The guy who pulled the trigger on the deal was current Flyers general manager Danny Brière.

The trade began a relationship that has now spanned almost a decade between Brière, Wallin, and the Flyers’ director of player development, Riley Armstrong. In 2018, Brière was the Mariners’ vice president of operations — i.e., general manager — and Armstrong was the head coach.

“He was one of our leaders. He was one of our best players in Maine, and had scored the most goals the year before,” Brière said of Wallin, who tied for the team lead with 23 goals in 2019-20.

But the then-28-year-old Wallin decided he was ready to begin his climb up the coaching ranks.

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“We didn’t want to lose him, and he came to us [to say] that he wanted to get into coaching,” Brière recalled. “So that showed how much he wanted to get into the coaching side of things that he was willing to leave his career when he was one of the best players in the league, in the ECHL at the time, and played some games in [the AHL] ... to get into coaching. So it was a big career move for him, and showed a lot of passion for the coaching side.”

After spending a year working with youth hockey in Maine, he was back with the Mariners as an assistant coach. A year later, he was running the show.

“If you told me way back that he was going to eventually be a coach, I would say I could see that,” Barcless said. “He was a sponge. He listened. He played in all aspects for our teams. ... His IQ was good. He learned the game. I remember when he first started with me, he was all about offense and skill. But for many years, and sticking with it ... he became a really well-rounded hockey player.”

Wallin was behind Maine’s bench for three seasons, leading the squad to its best season in franchise history in his first year (42-27-3). His first two seasons, the Mariners made the postseason, losing in the North Division semifinals, and he finished with a 107-94-15 record.

This past summer, after going through the interview process with new coach John Snowden and Flyers assistant general manager Alyn McCauley, who runs the Phantoms, he was hired as Lehigh Valley’s newest assistant coach. “They came back to me and said they felt Terrence was the guy for the job, so that made my life a lot easier, knowing that it was him ... and obviously I was on board right away,” Brière said.

Heading into Thanksgiving, Wallin certainly has a lot to be thankful for. It probably also helps that the Phantoms have the sixth-best record in the AHL (11-5-1-1) and that he’s coaching the next generation of Flyers stars.

Wallin runs the forwards, including prospects like Alex Bump, Denver Barkey, and Karsen Dorwart, as well as the power play for Snowden, who also made the jump from the ECHL as a head coach to the AHL as an assistant. Wallin runs video with the groups and “is a calming influence” on the bench.

As Muehlbronner said, “I think he gained a lot of wisdom along the way, but it’s his personality and the way he sees the game that I think probably is making him a very effective coach.”

Coaching is obviously in his blood, but so are the Flyers.

“I think there’s an extra passion there with the Flyers organization,” Brière said of Wallin, who listed guys like John LeClair, Jeremy Roenick, Peter Forsberg, Scott Hartnell, and Claude Giroux as his favorite players.

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“He understands it, knows it having grown up with the Flyers in his backyard. So yeah, that’s a big plus.”

Added Snowden: “I do think there’s a sense of pride for him, knowing that this is what he kind of grew up watching and knowing, and now he gets to put himself in the middle of it and really try to help the Phantoms win a championship and develop the best players possible for the Flyers. I would assume, as a kid from the area, that’s a great opportunity and a big moment, and he’s done a really good job at grasping on and taking advantage of it.”

There is a massive thread that ties Wallin to the organization, one that’s been getting thicker and thicker since those days as a 4-year-old wearing the jersey his son Wes sported in September. And he’s looking forward to playing a role in helping the Flyers get back to being a contender.

“They dropped the article that I was the assistant coach, and I got a couple of texts from kids growing up like, ‘Wow, that’s so awesome to see how all your hard work has paid off,’” Wallin said.

And then came those other texts.

“I did get [those] texts like, can you help turn this around?” he added with a chuckle.

“I hope so. And I think that we can, I think there’s a lot of fun prospects in this organization, too.”