Giants regaining sense of connection
Push for unity began with head coach hiring former teammate as assistant
Two hours after accepting the Vancouver Giants’ offer to become head coach, Michael Dyck was on the phone to his former junior teammate Jamie Heward, asking if he’d be part of the WHL squad’s staff.
And you could say Dyck was showing some patience then regarding the issue.
“He told me he was going to give me 10 days to think about it — and he called me in two,” Heward, Vancouver’s associate coach, explained earlier this week, with Dyck sitting nearby, nodding and chuckling. “He first told me to take some time because he was going away on a family trip to Mexico they had planned and he’d call when he got back from that. Instead, he called me from the beach, while he was watching video of last year’s team.”
Dyck, 50, and Heward, 47, who were defencemen with the Regina Pats in 1987-88 and again in 1988-89, have the Giants on pace to claim their first B.C. Division title since 2009-10.
Heading into Wednesday’s visit to Kamloops to face the Blazers, Vancouver fashioned a 31-12-2-1 record, which had them 15 points ahead of the second-place Victoria Royals with 22 games left in the regular season.
Dyck called Heward initially from Calgary airport, while waiting to transfer planes and fly back to his Lethbridge home after meeting with Giants officials and agreeing to accept the job.
The pair had remained in contact since junior — “We didn’t talk a lot, but we talked enough,” according to Heward — and Dyck knew he wanted someone he trusted and someone who had a recent connection to the league as his main assistant.
Heward was coming off a season where he had been an assistant with the league champion Swift Current Broncos. Head coach Manny Viveiros had taken an assistant’s job with the Edmonton Oilers following the campaign, and a mass staff exodus followed.
It’s funny. There’s an argument that part of what made the Giants so successful a dozen years ago is they had chemistry in their hockey operations. Craig Bonner was the assistant GM and the assistant coach at the time. Scott Bonner, who was the GM, is his brother. Don Hay, who was head coach, had been Craig’s coach when he played in junior. There’s also an argument the Giants haven’t replicated that connection until maybe now.
When Glen Hanlon parted ways with the Giants in the summer after two years as GM, Vancouver hired Tri-City Americans assistant GM Barclay Parneta to replace him. Parneta had been a scout with the Giants years ago, and Dyck was with the club as an assistant coach.
Parneta wanted someone at the helm he had a tie with. He fired Jason McKee, brought in Dyck and Dyck followed suit with Heward.
“If you’re asking the players to play as a unit, and you aren’t working as a unit as the leadership group, it’s not going to work,” said Dyck. “They’re not stupid. They can see right through it. It’s critical.”
Part of the reason Dyck wanted someone with recent WHL experience is he had not
worked in the league on a fulltime basis since guiding the Lethbridge Hurricanes in 2008-09. Lethbridge general manager Roy Stasiuk announced after the season the team would not renew Dyck’s contract, and the Hurricanes fired Stasiuk days after that.
Dyck, who left his assistant’s spot with Vancouver to become the head man with Lethbridge early in the 200506 season, had directed the Hurricanes to the 2007-08 league championship series.
There was plenty of speculation there was friction between Stasiuk and Dyck.
“We had chemistry with the majority of the group,” he said. “That was awesome. But any time I had to go upstairs, it became a job. And when you’re doing something like this where you’re working with people daily, it can’t work that way.”
That was awesome. But any time I had to go upstairs, it became a job”
Michael Dyck