Coach Pelino is happy to be home
First-round loss in KHL playoffs had silver lining for well-travelled mentor
Mike Pelino’s favourite Kontinental Hockey League team is Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, the team he guided to a 29-14-5 finish after taking over as head coach 14 games into the season.
Second on his list has to be Jokerit Helsinki, the third seed who knocked No. 6 Yaroslavl out of the playoffs four games to two in the opening round.
Pelino, who is now “feeling 100 per cent better” after recovering from COVID-19 at his home in Millbrook, Ont., believes he would still be in Russia had his team advanced.
“I’m forever saying thank you that we got beat out in the first round, which allowed me to come home. As great as a country I think Russia is, they’re well behind Canada when it comes to hospitals and health care,” said the 60-year-old Welland native, an Olympic gold medallist with the Canadian men’s hockey team in 2002. “If I had gone through what I went through, I think in hindsight it would have been the same. But if it ever would have gotten worse, I think I would have been in a real lot of trouble.”
Pelino and wife Kim began developing symptoms while self-isolating at their home after he flew home from Russia on March 15. He doesn’t know if he picked up the virus in Russia or at JFK International Airport in New York City.
“I had gotten a fever. We’d been coughing,” he recalled.
They contacted Peterborough Public Health, were booked to get tested and were told their results were both positive about three days later.
Despite continuing to feel symptoms, neither Pelino nor his wife were anxiously waiting for the test results.
“We weren’t too anxious about it because we didn’t think we had it. We thought we just had a regular type of flu,” he recalled. “I had jet lag and all that kind of stuff just all adding to it.”
The anxiety began after they received the results.
“We were actually surprised when they said we both got it, and that’s when the concerns started coming in,” Pelino said. “Not because of what we were feeling, but because we were concerned is it going to get worse? Is it going to go to that next step where we have the shortness of breath or need to go to the hospital, and all the stuff about the ventilators and the respirators.
“That was the biggest concern throughout the whole process, is it going to get worse? Fortunately, it never did,” he said.
The Pelinos, their son Dave and Kim Pelino’s mother, Edith Heaton, 85, all got the “green light” from public health after being symptom-free for 72 hours following the two-week monitoring phase.
Alexandra, the Pelino’s daughter, tested negative for the virus.
“We went through it and we’ve all been given the pass-go sign, collect $200,” he said with a chuckle in a phone interview.
“We’re in the recovered stage.” COVID-19 hit Pelino harder than it did his wife. He continued to have the symptoms for another week after hers started subsiding.
“I still have a ‘post-virus cough’ — that’s what they call it — so I’m still coughing a little bit, and I still haven’t gotten all my energy back,” he said.
“But I’m feeling 100 per cent better,” he added.
Pelino, who regularly gets flu shots, compared COVID-19 to cases of flu and colds he has suffered.
“It kicks the crap out of you. It takes the energy right out of you, it zaps you,” he said.
“Basically, I had a fever every day of around 102, 103. With that comes the headaches and the aches and pains. I also had a pretty uncomfortable cough.”
His wife’s symptoms were the same, but to a lesser degree. “Her fever wasn’t as high,” he said. In addition to getting chills, sweating and having trouble sleeping, Pelino didn’t have much of an appetite during his 12 to 14 days of high temperatures.
“I think I lost about 18 pounds. It isn’t the best way to lose weight but I’ll take it, now that it’s over,” he said with a laugh.
Pelino had to “really push” himself to stay hydrated.
“As the eating goes, it wasn’t too concerning,” he said. “We asked public health and they basically said ‘Don’t worry about forcing yourself to eat, but make sure you stay hydrated.’ ”
He took Nyquil, Tylenol, cough medicine, “trying to do anything I could to ease it.”
“Yet, at the same time, they were advising us that, if you have a fever, you have it for a reason and it’s fighting through what you have,” he said.
“If you could keep pushing so you don’t have to try to fix the fever, it’s going to be better in the long run,” Pelino added.
“I suffered a little bit more probably than I would have if I knew there was an end in sight,” the coach said.
Public health, while stopping short of making a 100 per cent guarantee, told the family it’s “very unlikely” they could be hit again.
“They don’t want to never say never just because it’s still an unknown entity, but they’re pretty comfortable that unless the virus morphs or somehow changes we’re pretty immune to getting it again,” Pelino said. “They basically told us we’re bulletproof now. We can’t get it and we can’t give it, but they don’t want to go on record to say that’s a 100 per cent for sure.”
The family was especially pleased that his mother-in-law was declared symptom-free.
“We were really concerned when she tested positive. We’ve been doing everything possible to prevent her from getting it,” Pelino said. “To her credit, she never showed any symptoms. You’d never know she had it.
“She was great all the way through it,” he said.
Pelino and his son have decided to pay it forward now that they have recovered.
They have enrolled in a program in which plasma drawn from people who have recovered from COVID-19 is used to treat people struggling to battle the illness.
Last week, Pelino and wife Kim drove to Welland to see his parents, Lou and Fina Pelino, “just for a couple of hours.”
“I don’t think we got within 10 feet of them, just to make sure everything was good. But it was nice to see them, and we’ll see them again,” he said.
Pelino, who spent 10 years as head coach of the men’s hockey program at Brock University, won’t be returning to Russia any time soon.
Pelino’s decision to put Russia in the rear-view mirror, for the time being, has nothing to do with the pandemic. He came to the conclusion during the season that he wanted to spend more time with his family.
“As much as I’ve enjoyed my seven years in Russia — they’ve been outstanding and it’s been a great experience for me, both hockey-wise and life-wise — I just started thinking that I’ve been gone seven years,” he said. “I’m only home two months a year and I don’t want to look back one day and say, ‘What was I thinking, I could’ve spent more time in Canada.’
“Just let life slow down a little bit and enjoy some of the other things that it has to offer,” he said.
Pelino plans to stay involved in hockey and, if possible, do most of that based out of his home.
“Whether it’s as a consultant or maybe do some scouting, or maybe work with an organization breaking down tape and things like that,” he said.
In seven seasons in the KHL, Pelino won two Gagarin Cups, Russia’s equivalent to the Stanley Cup, in three trips to the finals.
“I’m pretty confident that there will always be an opportunity for me to go back to Russia with the success I’ve had there,” he said.
Pelino also was an assistant coach in the National Hockey League with the Florida Panthers and New York Rangers and served two years in the Ontario Hockey League as head coach of the Peterborough Petes.
He was added to the Welland Sports Wall of Fame in 2013 and into the University of Toronto Hall of Fame the following year.
Pelino’s father, Lou, was inducted into the Welland Hall of Fame in ’17.
“I’m forever saying thank you that we got beat out in the first round, which allowed me to come home.” MIKE PELINO OLYMPIC MEN’S HOCKEY GOLD MEDALLIST