CHAPTER 8: Setting Off in a New Direction (Again)
With new owners having taken over the Kamloops Blazers in a deal that closed late on the afternoon of Oct. 25, 2007, anyone who was the least bit familiar with what had transpired expected change.
Vancouver businessman Tom Gaglardi, now the majority owner of the WHL franchise, had said the first order of business for he and his partners – ex-Blazers players Shane Doan, Jarome Iginla, Mark Recchi and Darryl Sydor – would be to hire a president.
“An old guy who worked for our company for 40 years has a great line," said Gaglardi, who is president of Northland Properties. "He goes, 'I kind of feel like a mosquito at a nudist camp. I kind of know what to do, I just don' t know where to start.'
"That's how I feel. That's exactly how I feel. Every direction I look . . . there is lots to do. There's not any direction I look in that there isn't lots to do.
"But it's going to take some time."
The first thing to happen was a name change.
Since setting out with the intention of buying the franchise, the group had been known as River City Hockey Inc. The Daily News reported that once the deal closed the franchise’s official name would be Kamloops Blazers Hockey Club Inc.
"I didn't see any reason to keep the River City Hockey name,” Gaglardi said. “It is sort of like, who is River City Hockey? We're now the Blazers. We're not someone else."
The name change also spelled the end of the River City Hockey website, which had been in operation since early in the summer.
“There’s no reason to keep the website,” Gaglardi said. “We’re going to put pertinent information on the Blazers’ website. We’ll have one website – which, by the way, we’ll improve.”
At the same time, Gaglardi said he would own 50 per cent of the franchise, with Doan, Iginla, Recchi and Sydor each owning 12.5 per cent.
On Oct. 18, one week after the WHL’s board of governors approved the sale and a week before the deal closed, Gaglardi said there was no frontrunner for the position as Blazers president.
"No," he said. "There are a whole bunch of potentials. I've got some resumes and I'll certainly have people phone and recommend people. My guys have a couple of ideas. So we've got some options.”
Why have a president?
"I believe in a separation of the activities," Gaglardi explained. "So, ultimately, you have a boss in Kamloops . . . that is the president . . . and the hockey operations and business operations reporting to one person. The goal is to have one person, not two."
The president, Gaglardi said, would live and work in Kamloops.
"The business will be run in Kamloops on a day-to-day basis," he said. "Once we get the transaction closed we are going to be pursuing someone to come in and run the business end.”
At the time, Dean Clark, who carried the title of general manager and head coach, was running the Blazers organization. He would continue as the GM/head coach, Gaglardi said.
"When I talk about the president," Gaglardi said, "you still need a GM for the hockey operations. You have a GM, you have a coach – and it could be the same person. We don't have a problem fundamentally with a GM/coach. We have no problem with that.
“We just think that that person ought to be focused on the hockey business and (the business side) is something different than that. That's the model we plan to pursue.
"That leaves us obviously needing a person and that's what we're going to be chasing. Dean's got his role with the hockey club and that won't change."
Thirteen days after the deal closed, things changed.
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On Nov. 7, with the Blazers having fallen 2-1 in a shootout to the visiting Red Deer Rebels the previous night, Gaglardi convened a hastily called news conference in the Blazers’ board room and announced that Clark had been fired. Gaglardi, Doan, Iginla, Recchi and Sydor had owned the team for five games and had fired their first head coach. The Blazers were 6-9-1-1 and had lost four straight games when the axe fell.
Clark, a veteran WHL head coach, was signed through the 2008-09 season, as were assistant coaches Andrew Milne and Shane Zulyniak, who also carries the assistant GM’s title.
"We had an obligation to these players and their families," Gaglardi said. "They trust us to create an environment they can excel in. We take that obligation seriously. That was one of the key things we all discussed. We think that for the sake of these guys, to help them try to reach their potential, we need to make a change in leadership."
Gaglardi didn’t announce an immediate replacement, although it was reported on this blog the night of Clark’s firing – and in The Daily News the next day – that former Blazers defenceman Greg Hawgood would be the head coach. That was confirmed Nov. 8 when the Blazers announced that Hawgood, without any coaching experience at any level of hockey, would be the team’s interim head coach.
Gaglardi said the decision to fire Clark, who was in his fifth season with the organization, actually was made the morning of the game against Red Deer and that it was unanimous.
“We didn't expect to do this," Gaglardi said. "I meant it when I said that this is Dean's team this season."
Gaglardi also said that the Blazers would hire an interim director of hockey operations, who would handle many of what had been the general manager’s duties. The next day, however, Gaglardi said a director of hockey operations wouldn’t be hired and that those duties would be spread throughout the organization.
A few days later, Brian Fortin, a longtime Blazers scout, was named interim director of hockey operations. The Blazers pointed out in a release that he would oversee the scouting department and be the frontman in any trade discussions. In the organization’s structure, Fortin was installed above Gord Loiselle, the veteran director of player personnel who had been hired by Clark over the summer after leaving the Portland Winter Hawks.
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Aside from Gaglardi, only two members of the Blazers organization – Kirk Fraser, the radio voice of the Blazers, and Dennis Coates, the team’s alternate governor – attended the news conference at which Clark’s firing was announced.
Earlier, Radio NL, longtime holder of the Blazers’ broadcast rights, had reported that Coates, a lawyer with the Kamloops firm Mair Jensen Blair, would be named the Blazers’ chief executive officer, something he and Gaglardi vehemently denied.
Coates, who had been vacationing in Italy, said he had "no idea" where that idea came from and that "there is no basis to it at all."
A long-time director with the Kamloops Blazers Sports Society, Coates had served as the society's treasurer for the previous four years. Coates, who specializes in liquor licensing matters, has done work for Northland Properties, the Lower Mainland company of which Gaglardi is president. Northland Properties is the parent company of Sandman Hotels, Inns and Suites, Denny's and Moxie's restaurants, and the Shark Club Bar and Grill. Northland Properties also owns, among other things, a piece of the action in a huge resort development near Revelstoke.
Coates said he was more than willing "to help them with league stuff," adding that "I've got to think my partners wouldn't be too happy if I was going to leave. (The Blazers) need a business guy with a marketing background and that's not me."
Instead, Coates was named alternate governor.
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At the Nov. 7 news conference to announce Clark’s firing, Gaglardi stated that Zulyniak and Milne would be retained and "leaned on heavily, certainly during the transition period for the interim head coach."
That transition period didn’t last too long because the Blazers announced Dec. 13 that Milne had left the organization.
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Clark, meanwhile, was left to wonder what went wrong.
“I don't know," said Clark, the 10th winningest coach in WHL history. "If I had an answer, things would be different. Ultimately, the team didn't play well.
“We had the great preseason and everybody expected things to be better. There were a lot of one-goal games. . . . You score a goal here or there. . . . Confidence is a funny thing."
Asked if he felt relieved, disappointed or frustrated, Clark responded: "All of the above."
Was he surprised?
"No, not at all," he said.
Clark knew the writing was on the wall and had been since his name was linked with an attempt by Mike Priestner, the president of the Edmonton-based Mike Priestner Automotive Group, to purchase the Blazers over the summer. The first offer to purchase made by Priestner included a clause stating that should the bid be successful Clark would be the managing partner.
That clause was removed from a second offer to purchase but, as far as Clark’s future with the organization was concerned, the end was a matter of when not if. A four-game losing streak provided an early opportunity and the new owners took advantage of that.
It was time, they decided, to take the franchise in a new direction.
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Gaglardi stressed that the midseason changes were on an interim basis and that new management and coaching teams would be in place before another season arrived. Hawgood, Gaglardi said, wouldn’t be the head coach in 2008-09.
"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."
Gaglardi said, however, that Hawgood likely would be on the coaching staff.
"I think Greg hopes to be on the staff past this summer and he probably will be," Gaglardi said. "But I 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."
As for Hawgood, who was managing the Ice Box Arena in Kamloops prior to stepping in as the Blazers’ head coach, he said he had long wanted to coach.
"I wanted to (coach) when I retired," said Hawgood, a 39-year-old native of Edmonton whose number (4) has been retired by the Blazers. "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 is the highest-scoring defenceman in WHL history, having put up 473 points in 310 games.
“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 summertime 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."
Some of that toughness disappeared when Milne, 29, departed. During his WHL playing career with the Spokane Chiefs, Swift Current Broncos and Medicine Hat Tigers, Milne had been an enforcer. He also had played for the AJHL’s St. Albert Saints when Clark was their head coach.
“Good morning. Andrew Milne has left the Kamloops Blazers effective immediately. No further comment will be made at this time.”
That was the extent of the press release issued by the Blazers to announce the departure of Milne, who had been immensely popular with the players.
"I'm not making a comment today," Gaglardi said when contacted by The Daily News.
Gaglardi, who refused to call Milne’s departure a firing, added that the position wouldn’t be filled immediately and likely wouldn’t be filled this season.
Milne, who later reached a financial settlement with the club, chose not to comment. Shortly after reaching that settlement, he joined the coaching staff of the AJHL’s Canmore Eagles.
Gaglardi did, however, give Zulyniak a vote of confidence.
"There's no changes with Shane," Gaglardi said. "He's doing a good job."
The coaching staff still included two part-time coaches in Larry Robinson of Kelowna, who handled the goaltenders, and Steve Gainey, who had played for the Blazers and who is the son of Montreal Canadiens’ GM Bob Gainey. Steve serves primarily as an eye in the sky at home games.
Asked if Gainey was in line for a full-time position, Gaglardi responded: "That remains to be seen but that is not part of this move."
Then, on Jan. 2, 2008, Robinson was gone, replaced by former Blazers’ goaltender Steve Passmore, who also is on the coaching staff of the junior B Kamloops Storm, a member of the Kootenay International junior league.
In the same press release that announced Passmore’s signing, Fortin was promoted to general manager. In less than two months, Fortin had gone from being listed among the team’s scouts in the WHL Guide all the way to the general manager’s office.
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Two days after that, there was more change as the club’s three longest-serving players – defenceman Ryan Bender, centre Brock Nixon and defenceman Victor Bartley – were traded. Moments after the Blazers had beaten the visiting Tri-City Americans on Jan. 4, the team was told that Bender and Bartley had been traded to the Regina Pats and that Nixon was being sent to the Calgary Hitmen.
Bender and Nixon, both 20, were in their fifth seasons in Kamloops; both had decided they had seen enough change and uncertainty and they asked to be traded. The 19-year-old Bartley, who was in his fourth season with the Blazers, didn’t ask for a move and was shocked to find out he had been dealt. None of the three had ever played for any team but the Blazers.
In exchange for Bender and Bartley, Kamloops got defencemen Nick Ross, 18, a first-round pick (30th overall) by the Phoenix Coyotes in the NHL’s 2007 draft, and Spencer Fraipont, 19, and a fourth-round pick in the 2008 bantam draft.
For Nixon, the Blazers received centre Devon Kalinski, 17, and a 2008 second-round draft pick.
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When the deal to purchase the franchise was finalized, the Blazers were 5-6-1-0. Five games later, they were 6-9-1-1 and Clark was gone.
In the first eight games under Hawgood, the Blazers went 7-1-0-0. They followed that up by going 3-6-0-0, with the three victories coming against the Portland Winter Hawks, Prince Albert Raiders and Prince George Cougars, mediocre opposition to be sure.
And now, with the season winding down, they are 26-30-2-2. Attendance at home games is down five per cent over last season; in fact, only the abysmal Portland Winter Hawks have experienced a larger decrease.
The Blazers are certain to finish seventh or eighth in the Western Conference, something that will make them a first-round playoff opponent of the Spokane Chiefs, Tri-City Americans or Vancouver Giants.
Kamloops’ previous seven playoff appearances – and nine of the last 10 – all have resulted in first-round exits. There is little to indicate that might change this spring.
But while the team’s play was consistent only with its inconsistencies, one thing is certain – the franchise, under private ownership for the first time in 25 years, is headed in a new direction.
Again.
Which means it once again will be a busy hockey summer in the community once known as Little Montreal.
The winds of change will be blowing.
Again.
Fans can only hope the answers are blowing in the winds.
THE END (for now)
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