Giants get assist with pandemic pressures
The Vancouver Giants' latest game plan comes from John Bablitz.
Bablitz is a registered clinical counsellor and Giants brass had him lead a Zoom call with players and staff earlier this week centred around ways to deal with the dayto-day emotional grind brought about by all that comes with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The biggest thing he said was that everyone is going through their own thing and you often think, `Oh, I shouldn't be complaining,' but it's OK to talk about what's happening for you,” Giants defenceman Alex Kannok Leipert said. “It was good to get that reminder. It's important to talk about things.”
The Western Hockey League has rescheduled its opening night from Oct. 2 to Dec. 4 to Jan. 8 and now to yet to be determined, with word Tuesday that the league is putting everything on hold until the board of governors meets in early January. Even assuming that the COVID-19 case numbers improve and restrictions start to be lifted, it's easy to guess that the league will give a couple of weeks' cushion between the end of the holiday season and having teams reassemble for a training camp. It would be surprising to see game play start before late January.
Kannok Leipert is 20 years old. This is his final year of junior hockey eligibility. He's trying to land a free-agent deal with a pro team after this season. This COVID-19 limbo has him wondering how that might play out.
Giants forward Tristen Nielsen is in the same situation.
“This is our last year to prove ourselves,” said Nielsen, who led the Giants in goals (30) and points (65) last season. “That's the toughest part for me. With the delays, you just don't know what kind of chance you're going to get.”
Nielsen talks openly about being a believer in counselling. He says he found that it worked for him in his bantam and midget days with Calgary's Edge School, and he's continued since with Bob Wilkie, the former NHLer who heads up I Got Mind, a Calgary-based firm that's centred around “promoting mental health in sports and in life,” according to its website.
“As important as physical health is to people, I think mental health is even more important,” Nielsen said.
The Giants have worked with counselling services in the past. They connected last season with Ladner-based Alongside You, which describes itself as a “integrated health agency” on its website. Bablitz is a part of their team of associates and the Giants' plan is to have him available to work with the players moving forward.
Giants general manager Barclay Parneta credited club senior vice-president Dale Saip and trainer Mike Burnstein for sourcing out Alongside You. As for having the group talk with Bablitz about COVID-19, Parneta said: “We
wanted to give the players and the staff coping mechanisms for these uncertain times. I know that I'm having sleepless nights, wondering, `What can I do next? Where is this going?'”
Kannok Leipert, a 2018 sixthround draft pick of the Washington Capitals who didn't sign with the club by last summer's deadline to do so, is at his family's home in Regina. He had been training in the Ladner area and was planning just to go back to Regina for the holidays, but he's waiting to hear now when teams will start up again before coming west.
Kannok Leipert had been in a training group based out of the Planet Ice Delta that included Giants like Seth Bafaro and Bowen Byram as well as former Giants like Kaleb Bulych.
Nielsen is at his family's home in Fort St. John. He had been a part
of a training group in Calgary led by Winnipeg Jets assistant coach Dave Lowry.
“There's been no talk of cancelling the season. The owners and the teams are all saying that they want to make a go of it somehow, and that's what I keep looking at,” said Kannok Leipert, who has 197 career regular-season games in Giants colours. “Hopefully things get better after Christmas. Things just happened to get bad at a crappy time for us.”
The WHL has broken the league down into four divisions, according to region, and teams will play exclusively against teams in their own division in the regular season. Vancouver, the Kelowna Rockets, Prince George Cougars, Kamloops Blazers and Victoria Royals make up the B.C. Division.