Bonner puts Blazers' game plan in motion

While the Kamloops Blazers haven’t given up on this season — of course, would a team admit it even if it did? — circumstances would seem to indicate that they are a lead-pipe cinch to make the WHL playoffs.
That, however, may happen only because the Seattle Thunderbirds and Prince George Cougars don’t have the horses to make a move.
The Blazers go into a Wednesday date with the visiting Portland Winterhawks in seventh place in the Western Conference. Kamloops is three points ahead of the Kelowna Rockets who, when healthy, almost certainly will begin a climb up the standings.
The Blazers are nine points ahead of the Thunderbirds, who are a whole lot younger today than they were in September. The Cougars, meanwhile, are well back in 10th place.
In Kamloops, though, hockey fans continue to grate at the realization that their favourite team has become a regular inhabitant of the 10-team conference’s lower echelon. The Blazers, over time, have become caught up in the cycle of fighting to make the playoffs, no matter the long-term consequences.
The Blazers’ playoff ineptitude has been well-chronicled. Suffice to say that since reaching the WHL’s championship final in the spring of 1999, the Blazers have been first-round playoff victims nine times. They have a 5-36 record in those nine postseason appearances. In one other season (2005-06), the Blazers didn’t make the playoffs, the only time that has happened in franchise history.
It was with an eye toward breaking that cycle that the Blazers’ ownership group and general manager Craig Bonner made the decisions that have moved 10 experienced players out of the team’s dressing room over the past couple of months.
The latest move came Sunday when right-wingers Jimmy Bubnick and Tyler Shattock, who was the team captain, and defenceman Zak Stebner were dealt to the Calgary Hitmen for centre Chase Schaber and defenceman Austin Madaisky.
Bubnick, Shattock and Stebner follow Cole Grbavac, Curtis Kulchar, Justin Leclerc, Brett Lyon, Giffen Nyren, John Stampohar and Shayne Wiebe out the door.
While it may not look like it on the surface, these actually are watershed days for this franchise.
Fans of the Blazers should be pleased with what has gone on over the last couple of months, if only because the organization appears to have a plan involving its on-ice program, something that has been lacking for a while now.
The present ownership group is well into its third season in control of this franchise. Until recently, however, it was evident that there really wasn’t a game plan. There was far too much emphasis placed simply on making the playoffs. The focus, instead, should have been on building a program that would be competitive season after season. Get into the top four on a regular basis and you will compete for championships.
That hasn’t been happening in Kamloops.
These owners — majority owner Tom Gaglardi, along with NHLers Shane Doan, Jarome Iginla, Mark Recchi and Darryl Sydor, the latter four all ex-Blazers — took control in October 2007. Less than a month later, the decision was made to fire Dean Clark, the general manager and head coach who had guided the team in 2006-07 to its first 40-victory season since 1998-99. Hired to replace Clark was the ill-prepared Greg Hawgood, who didn’t have any coaching experience at the time. Clark and Hawgood turned out to be just two of five head coaches who would stand behind the Blazers’ bench over the next two-plus years. That includes Guy Charron, who is signed only through the end of this season.
In early January 2008, the owners chose to trade away the team’s three best players — defencemen Victor Bartley and Ryan Bender, and forward Brock Nixon — all of whom were seen as Clark loyalists. The ownership can’t be faulted for trading those players had it been done in a well-researched attempt to rebuild the franchise. It wasn’t. And the ownership can be faulted for not using the trading away of those assets as the foundation for rebuilding the franchise on the ice. Unfortunately, things were in a shambles off the ice and an opportunity was lost.
Since then, the Blazers have wandered around the WHL like a thirsty man in the desert, turning here, turning there, but never finding their way out of the quagmire.
However, it now appears that Craig Bonner, in his second season as the Blazers’ general manager, and the ownership group all are on the same page. Finally.
Bonner has won championships in the WHL and on the national stage, as a player and as a coach. He knows what it takes to win. He knows what kind of players a team needs in order to compete with the best. He knows the dedication, the sacrifices, the grit, the blood and the sweat that is needed to play this game at that level.
Bonner spent last season observing, not liking a lot of what he was seeing, but being patient.
He started this season in pretty much the same mode. But by the time the team went 1-5 on a late-October East Division swing, he had seen enough.
He made a coaching change and decided right then and there that the time had come. There would be no more sitting around and watching. He had seen enough. So he started making player changes.
By the time the trade deadline arrived, the Blazers were in seventh place. They had just won two in a row for the first time since the first week of November.
No matter.
Bonner recognized that this was a seventh- or eighth-place hockey team with Bubnick, Shattock and Stebner. It could just as easily finish there without them. And Bonner’s mandate is not to ice a seventh- or eight-place team.
Which is why he traded the three veterans, getting in exchange forward Chase Schaber, 18, who is by all accounts oozing character and leadership, and defenceman Austin Madaisky, 17, who, as the scouts say, has tremendous upside.
Already on the roster are the likes of young forwards Brendan Ranford, Colin Smith, CJ Lipon, Dylan Willick and Jordan DePape, the latter the reigning MJHL rookie of the year who was acquired from the Brandon Wheat Kings for Wiebe, and defencemen Tyler Hansen and Brandon Underwood.
The Blazers also have some prime prospects outside the WHL, players like defenceman Brady Gaudet and forward Logan McVeigh, their top two selections in the 2009 bantam draft. They have three goaltending prospects — Josh Thorimbert, 17, John Keeney, 16, and Troy Trombley, 15 — all of whom they quite like.
So there is hope.
But now the pressure is on Matt Recchi, the director of player personnel, and his scouting staff.
In essence, Bonner has put his plan into action.
It now is up to the scouting staff to make the right decisions come Draft Day.
Done properly, this plan will get the Blazers back into the upper echelon of the Western Conference.
After all, it has been done before. Rick Carriere, who then was running the Medicine Hat Tigers, finished fifth in the Central Division for five straight seasons. But some astute trades and some better drafting paid off on the ice and at the gate.
Bonner can only hope his plans works out as well.