WELLESLEY — The Boston Fleet is primed to look a lot different when it docks along the Merrimack River for its third season at the Tsongas Center in Lowell.

Not only did an expansion draft dismantle a sizeable portion of its roster — including Hilary Knight, the captain and face of the franchise — but Boston will also feature a new bench boss in the Professional Women’s Hockey League.

In a press conference Wednesday at the Boston Sports Institute, the Fleet announced Kris Sparre as the organization’s second head coach in team history.

Courtney Kessel, who coached the Fleet the last two seasons while amassing a 17-10-8-19 record, has been hired to be the head coach of Princeton’s women’s hockey team.

After leading Boston to a Walter Cup Finals appearance in 2024 — and falling to the Minnesota Frost in the winner-take-all fifth game that put the national hockey spotlight on the Tsongas Center — the Fleet skidded to a 9-6-5-10 record to miss the playoffs.

Sparre’s first season behind the bench will certainly present a handful of challenges, as the former American Hockey League assistant coach will attempt to guide Boston back to playoff contention while developing an extremely young roster.

Sparre comes to Boston after spending three years as an AHL assistant with the San Diego Gulls, an affiliate of the Anaheim Ducks. The Mississauga, Ontario native also has coaching experience with the Flint Firebirds of the Ontario Hockey League as an associate coach, as well as spending two seasons as an assistant coach with Red Bull Salzburg in Austria. His coaching career began in 2016 as an assistant in the OHL with the Niagara IceDogs.

In 2021-22, Sparre had a hand in the Firebirds’ 42-21-1-4 season – a franchise record – that landed them in the Western Conference Finals for the first time. It’s that track record of balancing development with winning that stood out to Fleet general manager Danielle Marmer in the interview process.

“There is a need to balance player development and winning now,” Marmer said. “I’ve talked about this a lot in the last two years – is these players come into this league and have to figure out how to perform right away, but you have to win every game and you have to be playing your best hockey by the end of the season.”

This especially bodes well for the situation the Fleet finds itself in. Boston’s 2025-26 roster features just eight players from the 2024 season that had them one win shy of capturing the league title. Boston looks to anchor the future of its franchise around Aerin Frankel, Megan Keller and Alina Müller — the three players Boston initially protected in the expansion process.

“I see this as a similar opportunity,” Sparre said. “We have a lot of youth coming into this team, and we also have some great veteran leadership with Megan Keller, we have an outstanding goalie — one of the best in the league — so for us, it’s going to be that nice blend. But we also understand if we want to win, we’re going to have to get our youth up to speed immediately.”

Kris Sparre is excited to be named the second head coach in Boston Fleet history. He’ll take over a young team. (Fleet courtesy photo)

Marmer said she isn’t concerned with Sparre not having any women’s coaching experience.

“I maybe would have felt differently had I not spent a year with the Bruins,” said Marmer, who was a player development and scouting assistant with the NHL team for a season. “And having that opportunity working with the men and the way that those coaches and that development staff is working with athletes and those players and developing them, I thought it was actually a really neat opportunity to bring somebody over who’s experienced that — the development piece of it.”

Between talking with coaches and players he’s worked with, Marmer said it has become apparent that Sparre is an “elite communicator,” something Sparre also said was a top strength of his.

“He’s really clear in his expectations,” Marmer said. “For me, I always say a great leader tells you what direction we’re going, how we’re going to get there and what’s my role in that, which he sort of alluded to and is what he cares about in how he communicates with players.”

Sparre said he hasn’t had the chance to meet with any of the players since his hiring and didn’t have an answer just yet for areas of Boston’s game he’d like to improve upon from last season as he continues to analyze the group.

“I’m starting to sort of dig into the players and start watching some film and seeing the things that I like that the team did last year and things that I think we can improve on,” he said.

But Sparre did make one promise.

“When you watch the way the Boston Fleet play this year, it’s going to be a very, very aggressive style of hockey and a suffocating style of hockey,” Sparre said.

The team will also play games at the Agganis Center in Boston.