Oil Kings rookie GM excited to start season
Hill says his focus now is ‘to do what I can every day to make the team better’
To Kirt Hill, the Edmonton Oil Kings’ season opener against the Red Deer Rebels on Friday (7 p.m.) at Rogers Place will be his Christmas morning.
The Oil Kings rookie general manager has been extremely busy since hired this summer to oversee the Western Hockey League team. Hill brought in head coach Brad Lauer, assistant Luke Pierce, hired a new head scout in Jamie Porter, and made a number of player transactions.
On Wednesday, Hill acquired goaltender Dylan Myskiw from the Brandon Wheat Kings for a fifthround pick in the 2019 WHL Bantam Draft, a move necessitated by the injury in practice to projected starter Todd Scott.
“I’m really excited,” Hill said. “Friday is something that I looked forward to when I took the position. It’s something you mark on your calendar.
“It’s actually going to feel surreal because you’re going to go, ‘OK, we’re really doing this now.’ I’m probably going to take it all in for a little bit, but then when we get down to it, I’m sure emotions will be running quite high. But I’m really looking forward to it.”
Hill, 30, joined the Oil Kings after spending last season on the Chicago Blackhawks’ scouting staff.
Prior to that, he worked in the WHL office as manager of player development and recruitment as well as director of hockey operations. The Winnipeg product played in the WHL with the Kelowna Rockets and Regina Pats before spending a season with the Lincoln Stars of the USHL and then moving on to play at the University of Waterloo.
Hill inherited a young team from former general manager Randy Hansch, which had undergone a complete rebuild the previous two seasons and finished out of the playoffs. The rebuild ended up costing Hansch and head coach Steve Hamilton their jobs.
Hill’s job is to expedite the rebuild and get the Oil Kings back into championship contention. The club has not advanced beyond the first round of the playoffs since winning the Memorial Cup in 2014.
“My focus right now is to do what I can every day to make the team better here,” Hill said. “I think for myself, patience is important and
When we get down to it, I’m sure emotions will be running quite high. But I’m really looking forward to it.
understanding that we have a lot of really good young players and just to be patient with those guys and put them in the right situation at the right time.
“I think part of the challenge too, is with our older group that we have here, to help rejuvenating their careers. They maybe haven’t had the best years the last couple of years. Some of our 19 or 18-year-old players that maybe didn’t have the best years last year, let’s get them back to where they think they should be and help them have good seasons.”
Throughout training camp, Hill and his new coaching staff have been trying to familiar themselves with their players. The young talent had, at times, been pressed into overwhelming situations the past two seasons.
This year’s team should be better for the experience and expectations have been raised.
“I think with myself, I knew them a little bit about some of the players with my time at the league,” Hill said. “Brad was coming in completely fresh and Luke knew some of the guys from his time in Kootenay. But we were doing a lot of observing of the group and trying to understand who were the leadership guys and guy’s personalities on the ice and off the ice.”
Having been busy putting the team together, Hill is not sure how he will handle the daily emotional grind of watching the Oil Kings play. His managerial style is moulded by the influences through his time in the WHL. As the youngest general manager in the league, there will be plenty of scrutiny on Hill.
“I obviously look up to Bruce Hamilton in Kelowna a lot because that’s where I first played,” Hill said. “Kelly McCrimmon is not in the league anymore, but he was someone that I looked up to, being from Winnipeg and growing up a Wheat Kings fan.
“(Commissioner) Ron (Robison) and (vice-president) Rick (Doerksen) at the WHL office, they don’t run teams, but they run the league and they were pretty important through my development. My time in Chicago too, getting to spend some time with (GM) Stan Bowman and a lot of time with their head scout Mark Kelley and the guy I worked directly with in Western Canada was Darrell May who used to be the general manager of Chilliwack when they were in the Western League. Those guys taught me so much too and they helped me learn in a short amount of time when I was there for a year.”