New head coach retires Blazers' lounge act

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
Veteran players walking into the Kamloops Blazers’ dressing room at Interior Savings Centre are going to realize in a hurry that it’s a new dawn.
That’s because the players’ lounge is gone.
The room in which the WHL team’s players used to watch a little TV, catch some R and R, and chat about whatever it is that teenage boys chat about now belongs to the head coach.
“The players have enough room,” Barry Smith, the Blazers’ new head coach, said Tuesday afternoon from behind the desk in his new office. He was smiling when he said it but it was of THOSE smiles.
Some of this, you can bet, is out of necessity. After all, Dean Clark, the previous head coach, also was the general manager and he had a room in the team’s office upstairs at Interior Savings Centre, space that now belongs to GM Craig Bonner. The office in the dressing room area was shared by the assistant coaches, as it now is by assistants Scott Ferguson and Geoff Smith.
You can bet, however, that there also is something of a message in turning a lounge into the head coach’s office.
Smith has been delivering part of that message this week during the Blazers’ hockey school, what with Ferguson, Geoff Smith and a few veteran players in the roles of instructors.
“It was good to have hockey school this week,” Barry Smith said. “I think I’ve gotten across to my assistants and some of the players who are working here what I expect and how I expect it to be run, and the guys got to get a feel for what my drills are, how I want them run, what we’ll be doing.”
And make no mistake about it . . . things will be done Smith’s way.
He and Bonner have taken over a team that was in a state of disarray when the 2007-08 season ended. You may recall that the Blazers lost 18 of their last 19 games, including being swept from the first round of the playoffs by the Tri-City Americans.
“This year,” Smith said, “it’s going to be different.”
And, of course, the difference starts with the lounge that used to be.
And it will continue in training camp, which opens Aug. 22. Unlike recent years, there won’t be a rookie camp and a main camp. Rather, all players will be on the ice every day. They may not be on the ice together, but they’ll be in camp together — there won’t be any separation of youth and experience.
“We’ll see the young kids the first two or three days,” Smith said, “and we’ll get a good chance to see who will move on. They’ll play four or five games . . . we want to see them play. We’ll give them a little bit of a teaching base but we want to see them play.
“The veteran guys . . . we’ll start right into systems play with them. There’ll be some evaluation drills that we want to see. The first couple of days they’re not going to scrimmage; it’ll be more teaching the systems . . . teaching the systems, teaching hard work and evaluation drills.”
During camp, Smith, who spent the last nine years in the Vancouver Canucks organization, said the first thing he will be looking for in players is “skill and skating ability.”
“We need a good skating team — it doesn’t have to be a great skating team, just a good skating team — for the system I’m going to play,” he said.
That system?
“Puck pressure team play . . . offensively and defensively . . . up and down the ice,” he replied.
Players and any fans who are in attendance during camp can also expect to see a lot of Smith.
“Oh yeah . . . oh yeah,” he replied when asked if he would be on the ice. “I want to be the voice right from the beginning. There will be times when I will watch part of a game from upstairs then come down to the bench. I think you learn a lot from being on the bench, (seeing) how guys react, who the leaders are, who’s saying what things, what they say.
“But I’ll be on the ice every day. I like to run the practice. I want to make sure everyone knows just what my expectations are.”
And when he isn’t on the ice, chances are the players will be able to find Smith in his office.
You know . . . the room that used to be the players’ lounge.
Yes, things have changed in Blazerville.
BLAZER BITS: F Michal Siska, the 30th pick in the CHL’s 2008 import draft, arrived in Kamloops last night. Siska, 18, had 18 points, including 15 assists, with Zvolen of Slovakia’s under-20 league last season. . . . C Dalibor Bortnak, the Blazers’ other import selection, is playing with Slovakia at the under-18 Ivan Hlinka Memorial tournament and will report to Kamloops upon its conclusion.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca