Kristi Oiring (holding the blue jersey) was selected to coach a team of athletes from the U.S. and Slovakia during the 2023 Maccabiah Games. (submitted photo/Kristi Oiring)

By Nick Nielsen

Aiden Oiring's Mom

Family ties: Coach Kristi Oiring shares experience coaching hockey in Israel

Mar 26, 2025 | 3:00 PM

While fans of the Prince Albert Raiders have seen Aiden Oiring develop his game into one of the most exciting and reliable players on the team, fans may not know that his mom has developed her abilities as a coach, thanks to some help from the WHL Club.

While Kristi Oiring follows her son around to as many games as she can, she is also a coach in her own right and has even coached on the national stage. After watching Aiden play in a tournament, Kristi was recommended to coach Team Alberta at the 2023 Maccabi Games for a team formed from a group of 14 to 17-year-olds, mostly boys.

“Two of the boys from Calgary that [Aiden] attended the tournaments with were also from Calgary. We have known their family since the boys were little. When the Alberta team was looking for a coach, the Mother of that family recommended me, and Team Alberta reached out.”

The Maccabi Games (called Maccabiah Games outside of Canada) are hosted in Israel and are sometimes referred to as the ‘Jewish Olympics’. With over 10,000 athletes competing, they are the third largest sporting event in the world, behind the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup.

While Oiring was expecting to coach Alberta, eventually, they found that Alberta didn’t have enough players for a team and merged with the delegation from B.C., who already had a coach. After already having gone through the interview and screening process, however, a team out of Philadelphia reached out to Kristi in need of a coach, and she accepted.

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This isn’t the first time Kristi has coached either. The only time she would have coached her son Aiden, though, was during a Mighty Mites program, but she also stepped into a coaching role a number of times during a hockey program that she worked for to help with Aiden’s hockey training.

“During the full-time year, my role was technically on the financial side, however, I was called on many times when the assigned coach was not able to attend to fill in. This was generally with the younger age groups (2008-2010), however, it’s very cool to see many of those kids in the WHL now.”

Nowadays, Kristi doesn’t talk hockey much with her son, she is just happy to attend as many games as she can to support her son.

“Since entering the WHL, we had the deal that we do not talk about hockey. There are all kinds of people sending him texts all the time with their opinions, etcetera. In this case, I just get to be his mom. Every game day I send him a text of a Bitmoji saying “Don’t Suck”. After a not so great game it’s just a couple of words to let him know that I’m proud of him no matter what.”

That Philadelphia team included athletes from Atlanta, Washington, and Slovakia. Having never coached a team comprised of players she’d never met before, Kristi reached out to the Prince Albert Raiders coaching staff for advice on how to approach it.

“This was shortly after Coach [Jeff] Truitt had coached the U17 Team Canada. I had never coached a team that was short term, never met, and had to bring them together quickly to help them to be successful. I took a shot in the dark and asked if he would be willing to chat with me. He amazingly spent an hour on the phone with me, gave me some great ideas, and also affirmed some of the ideas that I already had.”

During the tournament, Kristi’s team would win their first game 5-1 over Detroit, then lost to Montreal 4-1 in their second game. Then, after a strategy change that brought some of their biggest forwards back to defence to protect their own net, they would score the first two goals before running out of gas for a tie 2-2 against JTeam.

During their trip to the rink for one of their games, Oiring and her Team Philadelphia were caught in the middle of government protests. (Submitted photo/Kristi Oiring)

While getting ready for their final round-robin game, Kristi was put in the unique situation of explaining protests in Israel to the kids she was coaching when their bus was stopped.

“Next day was our final round robin game. Our bus got slowed down a bit by the protests against the government, so I had to go to some Social Studies to explain what was going on to the players.”

From there, Kristi’s Team Philadelphia would get a 5-2 win over the combined Team Vancouver/Calgary she was originally supposed to work with, and another 8-0 win against the same team. A tough loss to JTeam 5-2 would drop Kristi’s Team Philadelphia in the bronze medal final, and Kristi was upset with how down on each other her team got during the loss. As a result, it was time for a team meeting before the bronze medal final against Team Israel.

“By the end of the meeting, one of the 17’s got them all holding hands and doing some kind of hand slapping game, played a game of telephone, got them all laughing. Totally filled my heart.”

Ultimately, her team would lose in the bronze medal final in a hard-fought 1-0 effort.

“I ended my pregame speech from my heart. I told them that they should go out there and win or lose as a team, I told them how proud I was of them for how far they came over the week, that they truly did improve every game. But to keep in mind that winning a medal is a thing that will go on a shelf or a box, but the team that we created will last forever inside.”

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nick.nielsen@pattisonmedia.com