Hawgood takes Blazers to Spokane

From The Daily News of Friday, Nov. 9, 2007. . . .

Greg Hawgood, a former Kamloops Blazers all-star defenceman, will serve as
the WHL team’s head coach for the remainder of this season.
Tom Gaglardi, the team’s majority owner, said Thursday that new management
and coaching teams will be put in place over the summer.
Gaglardi said Hawgood won’t be the head coach “past this summer.”
“Only because we’re going to put new leadership into place this summer,”
Gaglardi said. “I am not going to make any coaching commitments past
summertime. Ultimately the decision on a head coach and assistant coach will
fall on the GM. That’s the way I believe in running an organization.”
As reported in Thursday’s Daily News, the Blazers have officially named
Hawgood as their interim head coach. They also have traded defenceman Keaton
Ellerby to t he Moose Jaw Warriors.
Hawgood will be behind the bench tonight for the first time as interim head
coach when the Blazers meet the Chiefs in Spokane. And the plan is for him
to stay in that position through the end of this season.
“I think Greg hopes to be on the staff past this summer and he probably will
be,” Gaglardi said. “ButI don’t know . . . it’s all up in the air. It will
depend who the new GM is and who the new GM brings in for a coach and who he
wants for his assistants.”
Gaglardi and his partners — ex-Blazers players Shane Doan, Jarome Iginla,
Mark Recchi and Darryl Sydor — fired Dean Clark, the club’s general manager
and head coach, on Wednesday afternoon.
At the time, Gaglardi said the team would be putting an interim head coach
in place and also would hire an interim director of hockey operations. By
Thursday, part of that plan had changed.
“It’s highly doubtful that will be someone from the outside,” Gaglardi said
of a director of hockey operations. “It will be a reshuffling . . . it’s a
bit of a work in progress. I think we’re going to be able to fill that role
internally with the reassignment of duties.”
Gaglardi reiterated that replacing Clark and hiring Hawgood “is not a
planned move.”
“There’s no doubt our plan was to let Dean run the club this season,”
Gaglardi said, “and evaluate him and his staff in the summerime and decide
if that was something we wanted to stay with or not.
“But our guys have a lot of confidence in Greg, that he’ll bring something .
. . maybe that old toughness that the Blazers need.”
Hawgood watched his team skate Thursday before the bus left for Spokane. Two
days earlier, he was managing the Ice Box Arena.
“I wanted to (coach) when I retired,” said Hawgood, a 39-year-old native of
Edmonton. “There’s a lot of good people out there so it’s not the easiest
thing to get your foot in the door. I wasn’t really thinking about it but I
kind of had it in the back of my mind and this opportunity came up.”
Hawgood played five years of junior here, one under Bill Laforge with the
Junior Oilers and four under Ken Hitchcock with the Blazers. Hawgood is the
highest-scoring defenceman in WHL history, with 473 points in 310 games.
With the Blazers, he said, he recognizes a “need to right the wrong.”
“I’m not going to say I’m a genius and that I can come in and and look at it
for five mintues and turn it around.
“I think I’ve got exceptional people surrounding me who I’m going to rely on
a lot for the first little while. I’m not going to overwhelm the kids with a
lot of change, just get them playing better.”
He said he has watched the team “a few times” this season, and he was in the
stands taking notes Tuesday as they dropped a 2-1 shootout decision to the
Red Deer Rebels.
“I found a lot of the kids were playing maybe not to lose the game instead
of playing to win,” Hawgood said. “But I don’t have an opinion on any of the
kids so it’s a fresh start for them.”
Ellerby, meanwhile, will be getting a fresh start in Moose Jaw.
In return for Ellerby, 19, and a conditional bantam draft pick, the Blazers
received right-winger Brady Calla, 19, and a conditional draft pick.
The 6-foot-0, 195-pound Calla is expected to be in the lineup Saturday
against the visiting Chilliwack Bruins.
The trade, Gaglardi said, “was initiated by Moose Jaw.”
“Moose Jaw really wanted Keaton and that’s been known to us for a week or
more,” he added. “There were different scenarios. But nothing was acceptable
to us until Moose Jaw offered Calla.
“That combined with this whole evaluation . . . Keaton is special to our
ownership group because he is Shane’s first cousin . . . but we determined
that the best thing for Keaton was a fresh start with a new set of
teammates.”
While Ellerby was picked by the Florida Panthers with the 10th selection in
the NHL’s 2007 entry draft, Calla was a third-round selection, 73rd overall,
by the Panthers in 2006.
p p p
Meanwhile, a source familiar with Hockey Canada has told The Daily News that
Ellerby will be invited to the national junior team’s training camp. That
camp will open in Calgary with a practice on Dec. 10. The camp will feature
three games against CIS teams, with the final cuts coming Dec. 14.
The world junior tournament will be played in Pardubice and Liberec, Czech
Republic, from Dec. 26 through Jan. 5.
JUST NOTES: LW Travis Dunstall suffered a sprained ankle in practice
Thursday and won’t play this weekend. . . . D Victor Bartley, who has missed
two games with a knee injury, also is doubtful, as is D Jordan Rowley, who
suffered a first-degree shoulder separation against Red Deer. . . . Gaglardi
doesn’t plan to be in Spokane tonight but hopes to be back in Kamloops on
Saturday to watch the Blazers play the Chilliwack Bruins. He definitely will
watch them play the host Vancouver Giants on Sunday.