Charron era set to begin in Kamloops

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
It has been a few years since Guy Charron stood behind a hockey team’s bench as its head coach.
Charron, into his fifth day as the Kamloops Blazers’ head coach, will run the WHL team’s bench tonight as it entertains the Kootenay Ice at Interior Savings Centre.
Butterflies?
“Oh, yeah . . . I’m anxious,” Charron said with a chuckle prior to Thursday’s practice. “It’ll probably be like when you play. The adrenaline is running. Maybe after the first couple of rotations, things will calm down.”
Charron last ran his own bench on April 8, 2001, when he was the interim head coach of the NHL’s Mighty Ducks of Anaheim. On that occasion, the Ducks lost 4-1 to the visiting San Jose Sharks, completing Charron’s 14-26-7-2 run as a replacement for the fired Craig Hartsburg.
By the time the 2001-02 season arrived, Bryan Murray was the Ducks’ head coach and Charron was back to being an assistant coach, a role he filled for 12 NHL seasons with five teams.
It’s because of that experience that the 60-year-old Charron has spent a lot of his first days in Kamloops working to forge a relationship with assistant coaches Scott Ferguson and Geoff Smith.
“I have great support. I can’t say enough about those two guys,” Charron said. “They’ve been very helpful.
“I’ve been an assistant coach for many years. As an assistant coach, you want to feel that you’re part of something. I try to do everything I can for them to be part of this. . . . Right now, we’re working by committee.”
And you can bet they’ll be coaching by committee tonight, too, at least in part because Charron doesn’t yet know everything he wants to know about his personnel, including names.
“I’m a personable guy and when I see someone I like to be able to call them by name,” he said. “I’ll have my card and I’ll be looking at my card before I call the names.”
Charron also is anxious to see his charges in game action, which is completely different from the controlled atmosphere of practice. Like everyone else, he wants to see how the team reacts to the changes that occurred this week, including the departures of veterans Justin Leclerc, Giffen Nyren and Brett Lyon, and the arrivals of Kurtis Mucha and Ryan Funk.
“Right now, everything is rosy,” he said. “The quicker we find a way to stabilize the team and be successful will dictate how the rest of the way goes. . . . It’s a matter of getting everybody on board and believing in each other and performing to the best of their ability.
“The success will dictate how all this goes.”
And that success will depend on the players buying into Charron’s philosophy, which stems from the nine years he spent working with Dave King — five with the Canadian national team and four with the Calgary Flames.
“We as the Olympic team were always faced with the greater challenge in terms of opposition,” Charron explained. “We had to put a strong emphasis on thinking defence first.”
They did that at the 1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary, where Canada finished fourth. Charron used that same defence-first philosophy as head coach of Canada’s entry in the 1990 World Junior Championship in Helsinki, Finland.
“The players bought in,” Charron said. Yes, Canada, including former Blazers star winger Dave Chyzowski, won the gold medal in Finland.
With the Blazers, Charron said, “If we can generate success through good defence that’s half our battle.”
Good defence, he stated, is “commitment to do the little things.”
Then he added: “Especially in your own zone. You don’t want people ad-libbing. You don’t take chances in your own zone. You stop. You start. You block shots. You support the puck carrier. You do the little things like that.”
Charron also pointed the finger squarely at the Blazers “skilled players.”
“When a team has struggled defensively . . . this team has a good crop of forwards but they aren’t committed to play defensively,” he said. “You don’t give up 4.6 goals a game and expect to win games even though you think you have a good offence.
“I would put more pressure right now on our skilled players to produce defensively . . . to be committed to defence.”
JUST NOTES: Game time tonight is 7 o’clock. . . . Mucha will make his Blazers debut as he will start tonight against the Ice. . . . The Blazers meet the Bruins in Chilliwack on Saturday, then return home to face the Edmonton Oil Kings on Wednesday. You’re right. The Oil Kings were just here Nov. 6. . . . While the Oil Kings make their second appearance here in less than a month, the Ice will be here for the second time in four years. The Ice last played in Kamloops on Nov. 24, 2007, when it beat the Blazers, 3-2. The Ice lost 4-1 to the Blazers here on Oct. 12, 2005. . . . Leclerc, the ex-Blazers goaltender who cleared WHL waivers on Wednesday, expects to practise for a few days with the TRU WolfPack while he contemplates his immediate future.

gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
gdrinnan.blogspot.com


The coaching fraternity being the small community that it is, it really isn’t a surprise that Guy Charron, the new head coach of the Kamloops Blazers, has ties to a number of WHL head coaches.
Charron was hired by Craig Hartsburg, who was then Anaheim’s head coach, and ultimately replaced him on an interim basis in 2000-01. Hartsburg now is into his first season as head coach of the Everett Silvertips.
Charron, with the Calgary Flames in the early-1990s, got to know Willie Desjardins, the GM/head coach of the Medicine Hat Tigers, who was then on the coaching staff at the U of Calgary.
While with Anaheim, Charron coached against Vancouver Giants head coach Don Hay, who was the Flames’ head coach in 2000-01, and Mike Johnston, the GM/head coach of the Portland Winterhawks, who was on the Vancouver Canucks’ staff.
Curtis Hunt, the Regina Pats’ head coach, was an assistant coach with Charron, who was the head coach of the IHL’s Grand Rapids Griffins about 10 years ago.
Charron, then with the Montreal Canadiens, coached against Lorne Molleken, the GM/head coach of the Saskatoon Blades, who was an assistant with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2003-04. They since have met on occasion in no small part because both men are married to women from Regina.
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Hartsburg and Hunt will renew acquaintances Friday night in Everett. And who would have thought a year ago that that would happen?
A year ago, Hartsburg was the head coach of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators and Hunt was one of his assistants. Hunt also worked under Hunt with Canada’s national junior team as it won gold at the 2007 and 2008 World Junior Championship.
The run in Ottawa ended during last season when Hartsburg was fired and Hunt ended up as head coach of the AHL’s Binghamton Senators. He replaced former Kootenay Ice head coach Cory Clouston, who took over in Ottawa.
“I have the advantage because I know what (Hartsburg) does but he doesn’t know what we do,” a chuckling Hunt told the Regina Leader-Post’s Greg Harder. “I have it circled (on the calendar). I want to beat him. I’m sure we’ll have an opportunity to shoot the breeze a little bit before business kicks in. I’d go through the wall for Hartsy. He’s a good person, he’s a good coach and I’m excited to match up against him.”