By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
It was early in the summer of 1992 and Don Hay had decided to walk away from
coaching.
He didn’t, of course, and on Friday the Kamloops native, now the head coach
of the WHL’s Vancouver Giants, will walk into the B.C. Hockey Hall of Fame
as one of five new inductees.
“I am excited. It’s quite an honour,” Hay, 54, says. “You look at the people
you’re going in with and some of the people who have been inducted . . . it
really starts to sink in.
“It’s going to be an interesting day. So many people helped me along the
way. I grew up in B.C., and to get this honour sure says a lot about the
people you worked with and worked for.”
Hay, former NHLers Cliff Ronning and Steve Yzerman, and builders Larry Lund
and Allan Matthews will be feted by a capacity crowd at the Lakeside Resort
and Casino in Penticton. Hay, who coached Ronning with the NHL’s Phoenix
Coyotes in 1996-97, will be introduced by former Blazers head coach Ken
Hitchcock, who now is head coach of the NHL’s Columbus Blue Jackets.
“In 1992, I kind of walked away,” Hay says with a chuckle. “We won the
Memorial Cup and I thought to myself, ‘My kids are 11 and 12 years old and
it’s time to spend more time with them.’ ”
As far as Hay was concerned, his coaching days were done. He had spent
1991-92 working under head coach Tom Renney, and the Blazers had won their
first Memorial Cup. Renney had just signed a new contract with the Blazers,
so it was time, Hay felt, to get on with his life. After all, he was an
employee of the Kamloops Fire Department and, yes, there was his wife,
Vicki, and three young children — Darrell and twins Angela and Ashly.
“I thought seven years as an assistant . . . I didn’t want to go anywhere to
be a head coach,” Hay says. “We won the Memorial Cup . . . that was kind of
the icing on the cake.”
Sometimes, however, the finger of fate isn’t so fickle.
“And then, lo and behold,” Hay recalls, “about July 15, Tom gets an offer
from Team Canada.”
Dave King, Hockey Canada’s head coach, had signed with the NHL’s Calgary
Flames.
“That was always Tom’s dream job,” Hay says. “(General manager Bob Brown)
came to me and asked me if I wanted to try being the head coach.”
That position wasn’t totally unfamiliar to Hay, who had filled in for
Hitchcock and Renney when they had worked with the national junior team.
Which didn’t mean Hay jumped at the opportunity to coach his hometown team.
“My biggest decision was: Was I going to leave the fire department,” he
says, adding that there also was the matter of salary. “When I first took
the Blazers job in 1992-93, I took a pay cut. I was making $42,000 with the
fire department and I had to go to $34,000 with the Blazers as head coach.
“I had to ask my wife: Just let me try this for one more year.”
Which is what he had done a few years earlier when Hitchcock, then the
Blazers’ head coach, first approached him.
Hay, whose junior playing career included stints with the Kamloops Rockets,
Calgary Centennials and New Westminster Bruins, had done a three-year tour
of duty in the minor pro ranks before deciding it was time to stop chasing
the dream.
After playing 1976-77 with the North American league’s Philadelphia
Firebirds, he did just that. While playing, he had spent his summers working
for the City of Kamloops, either in parks and rec or public works. So he
returned to that, which led him to the fire department in 1979.
He also joined the senior Kamloops Cowboys, which is where he got his start
in the coaching game.
“We played with Williams Lake, Quesnel, Prince George and the North Shore
Hurricanes,” Hay remembers. “That’s where I got into coaching. I was a
player and the coach didn’t show up one day and I took over coaching. I was
a player-coach and that got me into coaching.”
He also helped John Soberlak in the local midget program “and that’s how I
got to know Hitch.”
One day Hay’s phone rang. It was Hitchcock, inviting him to lunch. It seems
the Blazers were doing some shuffling of responsibilities — Bob LaBrier is
listed in the WHL’s 1985-86 Guide as assistant coach, scout, office manager
and public relations manager — and were in need of an assistant coach.
Hay said he and Hitchcock, who was preparing for his second season as head
coach, “didn’t know each other at all” until they met for lunch. About the
time dessert arrived, Hitchcock offered Hay the assistant coach’s position.
“I went home and I said to my wife, ‘Just let me try this for one year and
see how it works,’ ” Hay says. “I’ve been at it ever since.
“I’ve got a pretty understanding wife — we’ve been together 34 years — and I
owe a lot to Hitch.”
The next year, Bob Brown, who was the club’s head scout, was brought into
the office “to kind of curtail Hitch’s phone bills,” a laughing Hay says.
Hay would spend five years coaching with Hitchcock and two with Renney.
After getting the OK from Vicki and taking over from Renney, Hay guided the
Blazers to Memorial Cup titles in 1994 and 1995. Little did he know that the
1995 title would be the organization’s last taste of glory.
“Yeah,” he says, “a lot of things happened that summer.”
Shortly after the Blazers won the 1995 championship, in then-Riverside
Coliseum, Hay flew to Calgary and met with New York Islanders general
manager Don Maloney, who was in the market for a head coach.
Hay returned to Kamloops and reported to work on the morning of June 5, two
days after meeting with Maloney.
“I went in on the Monday and I went in a little bit later than normal,” Hay
says. It wasn’t long before trainer Spike Wallace appeared.
“I went into my office . . . and Spike came in there and he was crying. I
said, ‘What’s wrong Spike.’
“He said, ‘Didn’t you hear? They just let Bob go.'
“I said, ‘You’re sh------ me. Right?’
“ We’d just won the Memorial Cup and that’s kind of the last thing I thought
would be happening. It came as a complete shock to everybody.”
He pauses.
“It was a real shock . . . that day,” he continues. “It was a shock . . .
that’s all you could say. I thought everything was fine and would keep on
going. Going to Calgary to interview with the Islanders general manager was
quite a thing for me, and then to come back and walk into that . . .”
Hay wouldn’t coach another game with the Blazers. He later interviewed with
Calgary GM Doug Risebrough and joined the Flames as an assistant coach.
After one season there, he had a one-season stint as head coach in Phoenix.
Later would come a season as an assistant with the Anaheim Mighty Ducks and
one season as the Flames' head coach.
“I went to the NHL,” Hay now says. “I thought the NHL was going to be run
like the Blazers and it wasn’t.”
Still, you can bet he wants another shot at it.
“Yeah, I’d like to go back one day,” he says. “I’d like to go back.”
Which doesn’t mean he isn’t happy with the Giants.
“I’m really happy where I’m at right now,” he adds. “I work with good people
and it’s a good organization. I’m close to my family . . . I always believe
that if you’re happy where you’re at that’s very important. We were happy to
have the opportunity to come back to Vancouver and get back to B.C., and get
closer to our daughters here in Kamloops, and granddaughter now. It’s good.
The Giants have really treated me well.”
And he has treated the Giants well through four seasons. They won the 2007
Memorial Cup in front of their hometown fans, giving him his fourth such
title — the first three came with the Blazers, two as head coach.
He also spent two seasons with the WHL’s Tri-City Americans annd did three
seasons as head coach of the AHL’s Utah Grizzlies, where he coached his son,
Darrell, in 2003-04.
Darrell just signed a new deal with the ECHL’s Idaho Steelheads, this one as
player-coach.
“He was thinking about going to Europe,” Dad says, “but they offered him the
assistant coaching spot.”
Does Dad see his son following in his footsteps?
“That’s a good question,” Don offers. “It’ll be interesting to talk to him
after this season.”
Don says Darrell’s biggest challenge, at least in the beginning, will
involve having “to stop thinking as a player and start thinking as a coach
and about what’s best for everybody, not just what’s best for yourself.
“As a coach, I’ve always told my assistant coaches . . . when they tell me,
‘Hey, they don’t get it, they can’t figure it out,’ I say, ‘Well, you better
tell them again. If you tell them 100 times, you better tell them 101 times.
Because that’s your job.'
“You can’t just say, ‘Why can’t they figure it out?’ or ‘Those guys are
stupid.’ I mean, that’s part of coaching. That’s the challenge of coaching.
“To me, coaching isn’t about wins and losses; it’s about the process you go
through to build a team. You’re going to have good days and you’re going to
have bad days. The bad days are the most challenging because they make you
think about how you’re going to get out of this, how you’re playing and what
the solution is.
“That’s the challenge of coaching; not to go out and win five or six games
in a row. It’s the challenge of forming a team.”
And that, in a nutshell, is Hay’s coaching philosophy.
Does it work?
The answer will be on display in Penticton on Friday night.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
