Laura Stamm named recipient of 2017 Bob Perani Lifetime Achievement Award
Internationally-renowned power skating coach Laura Stamm has been named the recipient of the 2017 Bob Perani Lifetime Achievement Award. Stamm has been coaching hockey players for more than 45 years. She is recognized as the pioneer of modern power skating in North America. The first woman ever to coach a major league professional hockey player, Stamm showed the hockey world how important skating technique is to a hockey player's success.
Stamm has taught at hockey schools throughout the United States, Canada and Europe since 1973. She has personally trained and certified her own team of instructors who teach her Power Skating System worldwide.
Stamm has worked with college and youth hockey players, U.S. Olympic team members and professional players, including many NHL stars. She has also taught thousands of minor league pro and amateur players how to increase their speed, agility and efficiency on the ice.
Stamm has worked with the Los Angeles Kings, New York Rangers, New York Islanders, and the New Jersey Devils, Hartford Whalers and Atlanta (now Calgary) Flames. Her Power Skating System has been employed by prestigious hockey teams around the world.
A champion athlete in ice dancing and tennis, Stamm majored in physiology at Cornell University and taught high school biology and physics. In 1971, she became a power skating coach at a summer hockey school directed by then-NHL stars Rod Gilbert and Brad Park. She went on to coach rookie New York Islanders star Bob Nystrom. Her enormous success with him led to coaching assignments with other teams in the NHL and WHA, thus beginning her long career in hockey.
The Bob Perani Lifetime Achievement Award is given in honor of the late Bob Perani. Winners of this award are individuals in the hockey industry who live up to Perani’s standard of passion, dedication, commitment, responsibility, hard work and integrity. Perani was a long-time hockey person who played collegiately at St. Lawrence University and later professionally for the Flint Generals. He then founded Perani’s Hockey World and built this business into 24 national stores. Past award winners include Bob Naegele, Jr., Bill McLean, Charlie Gualtieri and Mike Vaughn.
The Bob Perani Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented at the 28th Annual Let’s Play Hockey Expo in St. Paul, Minn., on March 10, 2017.
For more information on the 2017 Let’s Play Hockey Expo, please visit www.letsplayhockey.com