By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
For the first time in WHL history, a son is following in his father’s
footsteps as a head coach.
The Memorial Cup-champion Spokane Chiefs announced Friday that Hardy Sauter, 37, has been promoted to head coach, replacing Bill Peters, who left last week to become head coach of the Rockford, Ill., IceHogs, the AHL affiliate of the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks.
Sauter, who signed a three-year contract, is the son of Mike Sauter, a
former WHL defenceman who spent one full season (1976-77) and parts of two others (1975-76 and 1979-80) as head coach of the then-Lethbridge Broncos.
Hardy Sauter, a native of Maryfield, Sask., also is the nephew of Doug
Sauter, who was a WHL goaltender, assistant coach, head coach and general manager. He put up 417 coaching victories, the seventh-highest total in WHL history, over 11 seasons split between the Calgary Wranglers, Medicine Hat Tigers, Regina Pats and Brandon Wheat Kings.
“I had never really thought of that,” Hardy said of the father-son
connection, “but I am extremely proud of the fact that the people in Spokane think I’m capable of continuing to coach this hockey team.”
Sauter, who joined the Chiefs as an assistant coach last summer, played two WHL seasons as a defenceman with the Wheat Kings and one with the Chiefs. He went on to a 10-year professional career that included nine seasons with the Central league’s Oklahoma City Blazers, where his Uncle Doug has carved out a lengthy career as GM and head coach. Hardy got his first taste of coaching there as a player/coach. He twice was the CHL’s defenceman of the year, nine times was an all-star and, when he left, he held all of the league’s offensive records for defencemen.
Before joining the Chiefs, Sauter spent two seasons as GM/head coach of the SJHL’s Nipawin Hawks, who went 74-29-6-4 under his guidance.
Sauter said that he spoke with Chiefs’ general manager Speltz and Brandon GM Kelly McCrimmon before deciding to pursue a junior A job.
“They kind of gave me the direction to go to (junior A) and then up and up and up,” Sauter said. “Obviously, the advice was good because here I am.”
Of course, he’s “here” a little quicker than he had planned.
“I was told by just about everyone, two, maybe three years and then you’ll be lucky to get a shot depending on how the coach shuffles go,” Sauter said.
To get a head-coaching position this quick, he added, was “a very, very
pleasant surprise.”
Sauter takes over a team that will go into the season as the defending Memorial Cup champions. The pressure, he said, doesn’t concern him.
“I think that’s partly because I was a part of it,” he said of the championship season. “I think it would have been tough to come in here as a newcomer and have expectations put on your shoulders. But because I was part of it and because I’m familiar with lots of the players who should be back I think that gives us a little bit of a head start.
“And I am extremely positive. We have a good group of guys coming back . . . or potentially coming back. I expect them to come with the right attitude and play hard and all the good things you want your players’ attitudes to be.”
While Mike and Hardy Sauter are the first father-son pair to become WHL head coaches, there have been at least seven brother combinations — Cory and Shaun Clouston, Eddie and Walter (Ollie) Dorohoy, Fred and Sandy Hucul, Brad and Kelly McCrimmon, Doug and Mike Sauter, and Brent, Brian and Duane Sutter.
Hardy Sauter is the first former Chiefs player to be named the club’s head
coach.
Sauter said he has received about a dozen resumes from potential assistant coaches and that he hopes to have that narrowed to one or two candidates by Wednesday.
JUST NOTES: With Sauter’s hiring, all 22 WHL teams again have head coaches in place. . . . F Dalibar Bortnak, one of the Kamloops Blazers’ selections in the CHL’s 2008 import draft, was on the training camp roster of the Slovkian team that will play in the Ivan Hlinka Memorial tournament that opens Tuesday in Piestany, Slovakia, and Breclav, Czech Republic. D Michal Siska, the Blazers’ other selection, doesn’t appear on the Slovakian roster.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
