West coming home to roost with Eagles
Back in his minor sports playing days growing up in Prince George, Surrey Eagles head coach Brandon West probably had more success as a soccer defender than he did trying to stop pucks as a hockey goaltender.
When he was 16, playing on a team coached by his dad Graham and Gaetano Mauro, West went to the U-17 provincial B soccer championship and came home with a gold medal.
In hockey, he never won a provincial title and West admits he never really liked playing goal, so after an injury, he jumped at the opportunity to finish out his playing career as a junior B defenceman. Unbeknownst to West, that would set the stage for future employment as a career coach in arguably the best junior A hockey league in Canada.
Hired last May after three seasons as head coach of the Salmon Arm Silverbacks, the 33-year-old took on an Eagles team that had missed the playoffs the previous three seasons. Now, after guiding them to a 26-22-8-2 record and a third-place finish, West and the Eagles are set to begin a second-round playoff series against his hometown Spruce Kings.
The best-of-seven Mainland Division final series starts Friday night at Rolling Mix Concrete Arena and West knows at least two Prince George people who will be in the building, his parents Graham and Kathy, won’t be cheering for the Spruce Kings to advance.
“I know I’m excited but we’re focused on getting things ready here – my family’s probably more excited than I am, I know they’re pretty amped-up up there and we have a lot of followers who will be coming to Prince George too,” said West.
A graduate of College Heights secondary school in 2001, West got his feet wet as a hockey coach with Glenrosa Middle School Academy in West Kelowna in 2009. The following season he served one year as assistant coach for the major midget Okanagan Rockets, taking on the head coaching role for one season. That led to an associate position in the BCHL with the West Kelowna Warriors under Darren Yopyk and later Rylan Ferster and after one season West followed Troy Mick to Salmon Arm in August 2012. He served two years as an assistant coach with the Silverbacks before he took over behind the bench in 2014. He was fired in his third season as Silverbacks head coach in November 2016, having compiled a 91-83-20-8 record.
West is part of a new wave of young BCHL head coaches which includes 32-year-old Spruce Kings head coach Adam Maglio.
“Adam’s a great coach and he’s done an unbelievable job up there and we’ve been taught by great people,” said West, who served as an assistant coach with Team Pacific at the World Under-17 Hockey championship.
“I owe a lot to Troy Mick and Rylan Ferster for the amount they’ve helped me – they are two of the hardest-working guys that I’ve been around and it’s those kind of people showing you the ropes. I know (Kings general manager) Mike Hawes works real hard up in Prince George and I’m sure where Adam’s come from too, that’s what’s ingrained in coaching these days.”
The hours are long, the demands of the job are constant, and as West knows all too well, coaches are hired to be fired, but he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We’re very fortunate to be in the position we’re in,” West said. “You have to be on your toes all the time because if you’re not making your team better, chances are you’re not going to have a job very long.
“For me, this is a dream job. I get to have fun every day and that’s in my personality, I like to have fun. This isn’t a job, we get to go coach hockey and we enjoy it every day and it’s such a great league. You’re facing world-class talent and world-class coaches and you can’t take many days off in this job.”
West is also listed as the Eagles director of player personnel, working with general manager Blaine Neufeld and assistant coach Linden Saip, but West says his secondary title is somewhat redundant. Player recruitment just comes with the job. The team had just seven returning players when West took over.
“We have a tight group here that we built in the summertime,” he said. “Anybody that’s a part of our program has to be a good teammate and that’s where we started the season from,” said West. “We’ve pushed the guys in the right direction here to obviously be in the situation we’re in now and there’s a lot of excitement.”
The Eagles finished 12 points behind the first-place Spruce Kings and Surrey went on to win a six-game game series against the secondplace Langley Rivermen. Aside from goaltender Mario Cavaliere, 20, who came in a January trade from the Georgetown Raiders in Ontario, the Eagles have very little playoff experience.
“If you look at years past, we have some guys who haven’t been to the postseason before and those guys can’t stop smiling, they’re enjoying every minute of it,” said West. “We have a ton of character here, people who want to be a part of something greater than themselves and I think that word character is probably the word that defines us most.”
“This is an exciting time for both organizations. Obviously them winning the division was huge for the whole community and for us, just to make playoffs. Our 20-year-olds that have been in this program the last two years who haven’t played in playoffs before. We’re enjoying every moment of this.”