Column

From The Daily News of Thursday, Oct. 18, 2007. . . .

The WHL exhibition season, in which they went 6-1-0-0, is so far behind the Kamloops Blazers that they no longer can see it in their rearview mirror.
Unfortunately for the players, however, the memories are fresh and the expectations brought on by that preseason run — and by last season’s 40 victories — continue to linger.
Coming out of that exhibition schedule, one in which they outscored their opposition 28-13, the Blazers were expected to be one of the Western Conference’s most competitive teams. The Blazers, ’twas said, would be right there with the Vancouver Giants and Seattle Thunderbirds and Spokane Chiefs.
This Kamloops outfit was a veteran club with great depth on defence and forwards who could, and would, score.
The question, it seemed, was in goal, where Justin Leclerc, who had been acquired from the Lethbridge Hurricanes, would get a long look. Leclerc had been a hotshot 16-year-old but faltered last season. Now 18, the Blazers were hoping he could recapture the magic.
And he had done just that, until injuring an ankle in Tuesday’s 3-1 loss to the Tri-City Americans in Kennewick, Wash.
That loss dropped the Blazers’ record below .500. After going 1-2-1-0 on a four-game U.S. Division swing, they are 4-5-1-0 and looking at a Friday bus ride into Alberta for games Saturday (Red Deer Rebels) and Sunday (Calgary Hitmen). It’s safe to say the Blazers, if they don’t get serious, are looking at coming home to face the Kelowna Rockets and Vancouver Giants with a 4-7-1-0 mark.
This regular season has been kind of sour pretty much since the first puck dropped. You may recall that the Blazers showed an unsettling inability to score and lost 2-1 to the visiting Chilliwack Bruins that night. That game, in which the Blazers scored their goal in the last second of the third period, turned out to be an omen.
The Blazers couldn’t score that night. And other than a 5-4 victory over the Winter Hawks in Portland on Sunday, they haven’t scored since. Take away the two games against the hapless Winter Hawks, who are 1-8-0-0, and the Blazers have 15 goals in eight games. Suddenly, and with apologies to Jimmy Breslin, this is the gang that can’t shoot straight.
Right-winger Tyler Shattock, who had six goals and a wide smile in the preseason, hasn’t scored in 10 regular-season games. Centre C.J. Stretch, whose game is finesse more than anything, has five points and has taken eight minor penalties, resulting in seven opposition power plays. Centre Jimmy Bubnick, seen as one of the country’s top 16-year-olds, doesn’t have a point in his rookie season.
And it sounds as though management’s patience is wearing thin.
Dean Clark, the general manager and head coach, has gotten more and more frustrated as the season has progressed. After Sunday’s victory, which wrapped up a three-game weekend that also included a 3-2 overtime loss to the Silvertips in Everett and a 2-1 setback in Seattle, Clark talked of how his club was having an identity crisis.
Too many players, he said, don’t understand their roles. Virtually every player, he said, seemed to feel he should be playing on the power play.
After Tuesday’s loss to the Americans, Clark talked of a lack of resilience, an inability to score the game’s first goal and the ineffectiveness of veteran players.
“It’s the three- and four-year guys,” he said. “The game is simple and you should know what to do. It’s the same coaching staff. There’s nothing different. The expectations are the same. We haven’t changed a lot, systems-wise.”
He also spoke of the team’s inability to make the transition from defence to offence, something that, considering the experience on the back end, was supposed to be a strength.
“The biggest thing for me,” Clark said, “is that we’ve got all these forwards who can skate but we don’t do a good enough job of putting the puck up into the neutral zone and letting them use their speed to attack and do some things.
“Our guys would rather hang onto it for too long, get it knocked off their stick and now we’re back in our zone. Now it’s a turnover and we’re racing back to recover and now it’s a fire drill.”
Asked what might be done to change things up, Clark talked about perhaps having to make a trade or two.
“We’ve got to look at moving guys, I would think,” he said. “I don’t know how else. . . we’re 10 games in. We’ve only got 62 left . . . if we can’t figure it out by now . . .”
Prior to Tuesday, Clark wasn’t one to talk publicly in this fashion. He has always talked as though he had faith in his players, as though he believed in their abilities and hockey acumen.
But the landscape here is changing and you wonder if the players understand that. If so, there should be some desperation in their play.
In a matter of days, this team no longer will be owned by a non-profit society and run by a volunteer board of directors.
In a matter of days, this team will be privately owned, meaning it will be all about maximizing profits. The bottom line will matter more than who is on the first, second, third and fourth lines.
What that means is that while this franchise is in its 27th season, the comfort zone will never have been smaller.
You just wonder, who will be first to learn that lesson the hard way?

Gregg Drinnan is sports editor of The Daily News. He is at gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca.