Sauter out in front of pack

Tim Speltz, the general manager of the Spokane Chiefs, has told Jessica Brown of the Spokane Spokesman-Review that Hardy Sauter is the leading candidate to replace Bill Peters as the WHL team's head coach. Sauter could become the third member of his family to be a WHL head coach -- he is Mike Sauter's son and Doug Sauter's nephew. . . . From Brown's story in Saturday's Spokesman-Review:

"General manager Tim Speltz made it clear on Friday morning that assistant coach Hardy Sauter is the leading candidate for the position. Sauter, who was a Chiefs defenseman in the early 1990s, served as Peters' assistant coach last season and re-signed with the team this summer after the Chiefs won the Memorial Cup in Kitchener, Ontario, at the end of May.

"We felt when we hired Hardy Sauter as an assistant coach that he was definitely a head coaching candidate," Speltz said. "I was thrilled when Hardy agreed to come back for another year because if he would have told me that he was going to actively pursue a head-coaching job and that he wanted to be available for that I wouldn't have been surprised. I think when I look at it, if Bill would have told us at the end of the Memorial Cup run that I'm going to put my resume out and actively try to find a job that Hardy would have been our No. 1 candidate. The fact that it's happened this late doesn't change anything.

"When I look at our team, I like our team, the steps that we've taken as an organization, especially last year, and Hardy was a big part of that. I'd like to have some consistency and continuity for our players in moving forward."