Simon Watson (born April 3, 1980) is a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

retired

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey in North America) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an Ice rink, ice skating rink with Ice hockey rink, lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Tw ...

centre Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

. After retiring as a player, he became a coach.

Early life

Watson was born in

Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo (formerly Waterloo County, Ontario, Waterloo County). Waterloo is situated about west-southwest of Toronto, but it is n ...

. He played

junior hockey Junior ice hockey is amateur-level ice hockey for 16 to 20 year-old players. National Junior teams compete annually for the IIHF World Junior Championship. The United States men's national junior ice hockey team are the defending champions from t ...

with the

Waterloo Siskins The Waterloo Siskins are a junior ice hockey team based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. They play in the Western conference of the Greater Ontario Junior Hockey League. History Founded in 1934, the Siskins are one of the longest running Junior tea ...

of the

Mid-Western Junior Hockey League The Mid-Western Junior Hockey League (MWJHL) was a junior ice hockey league in Ontario, Canada, sanctioned by the Ontario Hockey Association from 1973 until 2007. In 2007, the league became a division of the newly formed Greater Ontario Junior ...

and collegiate hockey at

St. Lawrence University St. Lawrence University is a private liberal arts college in the village of Canton in St. Lawrence County, New York. It has roughly 2,100 undergraduate and 100 graduate students. Though St. Lawrence today is nonsectarian, it was founded in 1 ...

Canton, New York Canton is an incorporated Administrative divisions of New York#Town, town in St. Lawrence County, New York, United States. The population was 11,638 at the time of the 2020 census. The town contains two Administrative divisions of New York#Villa ...

Career

Watson played professionally in the

Central Hockey League The Central Hockey League (CHL) was a North American mid-level minor professional ice hockey league which operated from 1992 until 2014. It was founded by Ray Miron and Bill Levins and later sold to Global Entertainment Corporation, which opera ...

(CHL) for the

Lubbock Cotton Kings The Lubbock Cotton Kings were a professional ice hockey team formerly based in Lubbock, Texas as members of the Western Professional Hockey League and the Central Hockey League. The team played home games at City Bank Coliseum. History The Lubb ...

Rocky Mountain Rage The Rocky Mountain Rage were a professional ice hockey team that played in the Central Hockey League between the 2006–07 and 2008–09 seasons. They played their home games at the Broomfield Event Center in Broomfield, Colorado Broomfie ...

, and finally the

Missouri Mavericks Missouri (''see pronunciation'') is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it borders Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas to the south and Oklahoma, Kansas, a ...

. On August 5, 2011, Watson retired as a player and became the Mavericks' assistant director of hockey operations. On May 9, 2013, he was named to the coaching staff of the KC Mavs Elite Midget team. In July 2014, Missouri Mavericks fans voted Watson the second-greatest Mavericks player in a poll of the Top-10 Mavericks players from the first 5 years of the team's existence. On April 18, 2018, he continued his association with the Mavericks and was hired as the head coach and general manager of the recently purchased

Topeka RoadRunners Topeka ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, in northeastern Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2020 cen ...

junior team in the

North American Hockey League The North American Hockey League (NAHL) is one of the top junior hockey leagues in the United States and is in its 50th season of operation in 2024–25. It is the only Tier II junior league sanctioned by USA Hockey, and acts as an alternati ...

Awards and honors

*In July 2014, voted by Missouri Mavericks fans as the second-greatest Mavericks player from the first five years of the team's existence. * CHL Man of the Year (

2010–11 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number, numeral, and glyph. It is the first and smallest positive integer of the infinite sequence of natural numbers. This fundamental property has led to its unique uses in other fields, ranging from science to sp ...

)The Center Of Hockey: CHL Award Winners

References

External links

* * Living people 1980 births Canadian ice hockey centres Lubbock Cotton Kings players Missouri Mavericks players Rocky Mountain Rage players St. Lawrence Saints men's ice hockey players 21st-century Canadian sportsmen {{Canada-icehockey-centre-1980s-stub