Bench boss firings raise perception of BCHL instability
The good news for the BCHL at least is that the Powell River Kings’ firing of coach Kent Lewis doesn’t look quite so odd now.
The Kings cutting ties with Lewis with 11 games left in the regular season and a seventh-place standing in the 17-team loop turned heads, especially considering it was his 18th season as their bench boss. It’s been passed on the surprise scale, though, by the Trail Smoke Eaters firing coach Cam Keith days after losing in the league semifinals to the eventual BCHL champion Wenatchee Wild.
It was usurped once again Thursday as the Chilliwack Chiefs, who host the RBC Cup national Junior A championship tournament beginning May 12 at Prospera Centre, announced that assistant Brian Maloney would be running their bench for the event after parting ways with head coach Jason Tatarnic.
It poses the question: if you’re the parent of a hotshot 15-year-old player and you’re trying to decide between the BCHL and the WHL routes, are you concerned about what’s happening in the BCHL right now? Do you worry that the coach who connects with your kid and recruits him to a Junior A team isn’t going to be there by the time the season ends?
We’ll never hear the full story about any of those decisions. That’s the way it works. Tatarnic hadn’t returned text messages as of Friday morning,
Chilliwack president Glen Ringdal explained it Friday morning this way: “So many factors came into it. Here’s our order: what’s best for the 23 players fighting for the RBC, what’s best for the club overall, what’s best for our community and finally, what’s best for the people who pay the bills.
“The timing made it extremely difficult yet that much more imperative. You feel bad. You never like to see things like that happen to good people. Jason did a lot of good things for us.”
Separately, the moves aren’t an issue for the league. Collectively, they have to be a concern.
The WHL is in no better spot with potential players and their families right now. There are problems there, too. The league has brought on retired RCMP deputy commissioner Craig Callens to look into critical comments made by former players Tyler Maxwell and James McEwan before Oregon’s Senate Committee on Workforce in February. Maxwell, for example, testified that he played seven games with a cracked patella after Everett Silvertips medical staff refused him X-rays initially.
As well, there were 44 trades made in the WHL from when the league reconvened after the Christmas break until the Jan. 10 trade deadline. That’s a lot of young people having their lives turned upside down.
To that end, WHL commissioner Ron Robison said during a visit to the Langley Events Centre for a Vancouver Giants playoff game against the Victoria Royals that the league was bringing in rules not allowing teams to trade 15and 16-year-old players under any circumstances beginning this offseason.
“I think it’s a very positive step toward making sure that those players can commit to those programs in our league without any concern about being traded. We want them to commit to those organizations and we want them to develop within those organizations and hopefully continue in those organizations for their entire career.”
As for the Chiefs, Maloney is a former forward with the team — he had 40 goals and 115 points in 1998-99 for longtime coach Harvey Smyl. Maloney went on to play at Michigan State with the likes of John-Michael Liles, Duncan Keith, Shawn Horcoff and David Booth before stints in minor pro and in Europe.
The Chiefs have been idle since March 11, when they lost Game 7 of their opening-round series to the Prince George Spruce Kings. Chilliwack didn’t have your typical national tournament host regular season, coming in 12th overall in the BCHL in league play, with a 26-26-3-3 record.
It would be quite a story if Maloney can lead them on a run at the RBC. Even if that happens, though, the league can’t overlook some of the perceptions this season created for them.