Blazers make adjustment to change

From The Daily News of Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007 . . .

The shock waves from last week’s happenings all but dissipated, the Kamloops
Blazers held their first full workout under interim head coach Greg Hawgood
on Tuesday at Interior Savings Centre.
“Ideally, you’d like to come in and have a week to prep a team,” Hawgood
said after practice, “but in a scenario like we were in, we got thrown to
the wolves right away and responded really well.
“So maybe that was the best thing.”
Hawgood took over from the fired Dean Clark on Wednesday, left Thursday with
the Blazers for Spokane, watched from the bench as the WHL team played
Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and stopped to catch his breath Monday.
“I’m like a little kid. I’m learning a lot of new things every day,” said
Hawgood, a former Blazers star who is the WHL’s career leader in assists and
points by a defenceman. “It’s exciting.”
The Blazers beat the Chiefs on Friday and then dumped the visiting
Chilliwack Bruins on Saturday, before falling to the Giants in Vancouver on
Sunday.
Tonight, Kamloops (8-10-1-1) plays host to the hard-charging Kelowna Rockets
(11-7-1-1), who have won their last six games and have at least a point in
each of their last seven outings. Game time at The ATM is 7 o’clock.
“The guys responded maybe even better than I could have anticipated,”
Hawgood said. “They played two unbelievable playoff-type games to get the
first two wins. Unfortunately, with the schedule and a few different things,
we didn’t have the best first period in Vancouver.
“But there were a huge amount of positives to take out of there, that we can
use to build on.”
The players, for the most part, seem to be over the fact that Clark, who
joined the organization in May 2003, is no longer part of their team.
“The initial shock was over the next day,” said right-winger Brock Nixon,
the team’s leading scorer. “Once you hear about it, there is disbelief. But
with the timing being right in the heart of our schedule, there isn’t a lot
of time to do a lot of things.
“The more time you take to dwell on things, the worse things get. You think
it’s helping by hanging on to what Dean left here . . . it’s tough to move
on but the faster you do . . . you can think about it after the season’s
over; you can go over it then.”
With assistant coaches Shane Zulyniak, Andrew Milne and Steve Gainey still
in place and on the ice Monday, Nixon doesn’t expect a whole lot to change.
“Just because there’s someone new giving us instructdions doesn’t mean it
has changed who we are or what we’re about,” explained the 20-year-old
native of Russell, Man. “The things Dean instilled in us . . . if it’s
hockey it’s how you need to play the game. There will certainly be some
things that will be changed but the basics of the game are still the same.”
The thing Nixon wants to do is recapture the excitement and enthusiasm that
was there when the Blazers went 6-1 in the exhibition season.
“It’s hard to even think back to that,” he said. “The way things have been
going it seems like that was years ago. It’s been a battle. It’s been tough.
There have been days when it hasn’t been too much fun just because of the
struggles we’ve had.
“The weekend was the first time where we actually strung any kind of effort
together for more than a period, more than a game.”
Defenceman Ryan Bender, the Blazers’ captain, is, like Nixon, in his fifth
season here. They have seen a lot of water pass under the bridge in that
time.
“It’s been a tough five years . . . lot of stuff going on,” Bender said.
“(Clark) had been here for five years and has given me and (Nixon) a lot of
opportunities. It’s definitely tough to see a guy like that go.
“But you have to try and stay positive with all the guys. You do have 16-
and 17-year-olds and they’re young and don’t really know a lot about what’s
going on. You try to help them out, that’s all you can really do.”
And even with a new head coach, Bender said, “Nothing really changes. You
just try to do the same things . . . come to the game and be ready to play.”
Hawgood, with nothing in the way of coaching experience, admitted that the
weekend was quite an experience.
“It was different,” he said. “At certain points there was a little bit of
frustration where I wished I could jump over the boards myself. But I just
have to get used to that and I have to learn how to control my yelling so
that I will have a voice by the end of the season. I got pretty excited.”
JUST NOTES: Kamloops C Jimmy Bubnick, a 16-year-old freshman from Saskatoon,
is one of 16 WHLers named to Team Western for the under-17 World Hockey
Challenge. That tournament will be played in London, Ont., Dec. 29 to Jan.
4. . . . The Team Pacific roster, which encompasses Alberta and B.C., should be released sometime this week.