The Thunderbirds have kind of been a mess for a while. There's been rough patch after rough patch. But this week they made a huge improvement in their staffing by promoting assistant coach John Coffino to head coach.

Coffino has a solid background, is known to be loyal and inventive, and the players last year spoke very highly of him. Additionally, I've yet to find a single guy in the D with a bad thing to say about Coffino. This was a homerun hire. The RBI? They also added Garrett and Darvin Ham.

This is going to be a highly competitive year in the D-League. Almost all the teams made upgrades somewhere and Erie is going to be a tough expansion franchise.I'm looking forward to seeing what John does with his first year in charge. His first word on what he wants to improve, same with the Toros?

"Defense."

Of course.