Coaching shift in NOJHL West
Three of the six teams in the West Division of the Northern Ontario Jr. Hockey League will have new head coaches in place when the 2016-2017 regular season begins in about five weeks.
Blind River Beavers, Elliot Lake Wildcats and Rayside-Balfour Canadians have all undergone coaching changes since the end of the 2015-2016 campaign.
Blind River and Rayside-Balfour both chose to change their respective coaches from last season to this while in Elliot Lake, the move was necessitated by the advancement of Nathan Hewitt to the Ontario Universities Athletics coaching ranks.
In Blind River, Kyle Brick becomes the latest coach to try to reverse the fortunes of the Beavers, who went winless through the entire 2014-2015 season before missing the playoffs and finishing 11th overall in the 12-team NOJHL in 2015-2016.
Brick brings youth and a winning background to Blind River. He was an assistant coach the past two seasons with the two-time defending NOJHL champion Soo Thunderbirds and is regarded as a good student of the game and an up-and-coming coach bent on changing the losing culture in Blind River.
Under new ownership, Rayside-Balfour went the other way in replacing Jason Young with an older Dave Clancy behind the bench. And while Clancy may be considered old school by some, he is an NOJHL champion from his coaching days with the erstwhile Sudbury Jr. Wolves and is a well-connected individual.
In Elliot Lake, Corey Bricknell faces the task of having to replace the aforementioned Nathan Hewitt as head coach.
All Hewitt did in two seasons in Elliot Lake was to coach a new team to back-to-back, 30-plus victory seasons. Bricknell does have experience on his side from a season as a head coach of the NOJHL’s Iroquois Falls Eskis and multiple years as an assistant in the Ontario Jr. Hockey League and the Ontario Hockey League.
Elsewhere in the NOJHL West, status quo will be pretty-much maintained.
Jordan Smith returns for a fourth season as bench boss of the reigning champion Thunderbirds and will have the added responsibility of being general manager. Smith has retained Ryan Maunu as assistant coach and scored big by adding former NOJHL head coach and OHL assistant coach Zoltan (Toots) Kovacs as associate coach.
In the Michigan Soo, general manager Bruno Bragagnolo returns as co-coach of the Eagles along with his trusted sidekick Jim Capy. There is no coaching duo in the NOJHL with the high-level experience that Bragagnolo and Capy have.
And in Espanola, venerable NOJHL coaching veteran Tommy McCarthy will board the Express for another season back of the bench.
PHOTO: Kyle Brick is new to the Blind River Beavers as head coach.
Randy: Will Dave Clancy still be with the Laurentian Voyageurs?
No.
Will Blind River finish ahead of the Soo for the first time ever?
Just back from holidays, catching up. Oh boy! Big loss for the Wildcats! Don’t know Corey but congrats and all the best.