Troy, thank you so much for joining us and doing this. It's great to have you. Your job as general manager of the Firebirds in some ways might be even more complex than an NHL general manager because you're managing players coming up into the organization, players going up to the NHL. Then you're also helping guys who maybe never lived on their own before in their lives. Talk us through all the different facets of your job.
Yeah, there's a lot to it obviously. We get a lot of the young prospects coming up from the draft. And the draft picks that we have are really good, young, talented people; but they're young boys and, for us it's development of their hockey skills, it's development of their strength, their conditioning, all that stuff. But you're also teaching them to be adults and teaching them to be winners. It's complex but it's a lot of fun. I call them “proud dad moments” when you get to see these players really blossoming [in pro players].
You’ve been with the Kraken – and the Firebirds – since the beginning. In addition to building the roster, you had to build a whole facility and manage all of the logistics of the organization. Talk us through that. Did you face any challenges?
Building the facility was a lot of fun. Bringing that sort of sports and entertainment to an area that never had it before was very exciting. It brought such a buzz and then for the team to have such success in year one, two and even three, it's been quite a journey.
As for challenges, you're bringing hockey to a market that never really had it before. You've got to educate some fans and then of course we've got some fans who know hockey very well and sometimes (they) want to challenge you on how well they know it [laughs], but overall, it's just been a booming success.
The makeup of the team changed as we talked about going into last year. When you go from a veteran heavy roster to a more prospect heavy roster, what are the challenges there and how do you manage the change in the identity and the goals are for the team?
Yeah, the first year, we had such a veteran heavy roster. We were an expansion team with no real prospects yet [except a couple], so we were really trying to build the team. We went out and tried to get some players in free agency and I thought we did a good job with that. We didn't know what was really going to happen, but the team really, really gelled in the middle part of the season. We went on to have great playoff success and were one goal away from winning the championship. That success continued the next year with the championship run that fell short and then, in this past year, the team got to the second round of playoffs before losing to the eventual champions [Abbotsford Canucks}.
The roster has really transitioned now to a younger team that's full with Kraken prospects and very good prospects. We've drafted very well over the years. Now we’ve really shifted our focus from “just” trying to win and develop a team identity in our Valley to now really focusing on the development of these players. We're bringing in skills coaches and skating coaches and focusing more on the gym and time before practice and after practice. That's what we do down there. We take great pride in developing these young players to be future Kraken.
Another shift that happened going into last season was a new head coach in Derek Laxdal. Talk about what he's brought to the team and how important he's been in continuing this legacy of success.
Derek has a great resume. He's coached at every level. He's had success at every level. He's won championships. He comes in, he brings that pedigree. And these kids immediately respect him. He's done a really good job. One of his specialties that is something that really attracted us to him as a coach is that he's very good with the details with these young players.
Our players come from junior hockey and the Swedish Hockey League where they were each the star on their team and they're playing first unit power play and 30 minutes a night and everything's great and dandy. Then they come to us and there's fifteen players like that and they all have to find a way to separate themselves. So now they've got to learn a little bit more about defensive responsibilities playing against older, stronger men, and winning battles in corners and around the net. That’s something that Derek's very good at - not only teaching these skills but getting through to these young players. It’s a great part of his identity as a coach. He’s done a great job.
We keep talking about this shift in the team’s makeup. A veteran heavy roster has two championship runs including two appearances in the Final…then to make it back to the playoffs with such a younger player base, how significant and rewarding was that?
Well, it's really rewarding. I mean, being able to go on those runs the first few years was special. Coming up short really hurts, of course; but to be able to go back to the playoffs with a much younger team the next year was special. We realized that in those first two years that we really created a winning culture down in Coachella Valley. You think of hockey and you think, “ok, we always want to win.” You always want to win that shift; you always want to win that puck battle. You want to win your game; you want to win a string of games and go on a streak. But it's also important to develop a winning culture and develop players that really don’t just want to win, they expect to win every night and then to have that in their identity as they become Kraken from being Firebirds is important.
You talk about that winning culture, when you played you were a member of your team's leadership groups. When you look for leaders in your team, what are you looking for and how do you nurture leadership?
Well, leadership comes in a lot of ways. I think it comes by committee. There are different types of leaders. You get your loud, boisterous leaders. You've got your quiet leaders that just command respect in the room. You've got the leaders that go and prove it on the ice, and we've had great leadership over the years. Our captain, Max McCormick, is just an incredible, incredible leader. He does it all in a lot of ways. You've also got a guy like Gustav Olofsson who is more of a quiet leader but is very well respected in the room. And John Hayden is just a man amongst boys who leads in so many ways as well. I think leadership is just so important. It comes in different ways and ways you wouldn't expect sometimes but we've been very lucky to have great leaders in Coachella. We hope to continue to have that and develop new leaders that will really rub off on some of these young kids coming up.
The game is constantly changing. How have you seen it evolve since your playing days?
[Laughs], the game has certainly evolved. I think the biggest thing that's changed in our game is the speed and the skill, right? All these young players have skating coaches, skills coaches…they're trained from such a young age now to really go and develop their talents, you see it on the ice and it's great. It makes our game so much more exciting! But It is still the same game. There's still a puck. There are still two nets and the ice is cold, so it's different in a lot of ways, but in a lot of ways it's still the same.
You mentioned earlier having “proud dad moments.” Are there proud dad moments that have stood out to you in this early tenure with the Firebirds?
There always are the proud dad moments just like you'd see with your own child. You teach them something and then you see them do it on their own, right? It's the same with these players. You get to show them on the ice or on video something they've struggled with, and then finally something just clicks. I don't know what it is sometimes, but you see it happen on the ice and you just want to just say ‘thank you.’ It feels good and you feel rewarded yourself. You just feel great that this young player is taking a step in his career.
I remember my very first year showing Ryker Evans something. I wasn't a defenseman when I played and defense is not even my specialty nor is the power play, but I showed him something that I thought lacked in his game and I specifically told him, ‘maybe don't try this in a game. Try it maybe in practice a few times.’ Sure enough, he went right out there in a game and tried it, did it, and pulled it off. I think they scored on that play, and it was one of those proud dad moments where you go, ‘wow, that was really cool.’
So, he owes all his success as a quarterback to you.
Yes, all of it, all of it. [Laughs]
I've had the pleasure to attend a game in Coachella. It's so much fun. Talk about the connection the organization has with the community that is even deeper than just welcoming them in and teaching them hockey.
The community supports us so well and the seats are filled every single night. We feel like we have to give back and we want to give back to the community. Being able to go do school visits and reading initiatives…things like that are very important to us and the players want to do them. The players want to be a part of the community. And when they go out, the people they see are always talking about the Firebirds, so the team really wants to give back.
One of the fun things about teams and organizations is that they develop traditions. Rumor has it there's a Firebirds tradition involving push-ups. Do you care to explain?
Oh, I'd love to explain, absolutely. It started as more of a fitness challenge. All of us coaches and managers, we're all former players. And [Kraken goaltending coach] Colin Zulianello and I just got into having to do a certain amount of push-ups in a month or something like that.
So once we started scoring goals, we’d get down, do 30 push-ups, and that's really stuck around. It's a blessing and a curse when we score a lot of goals in a game. I think in Calgary we had six goals in a period once and it was difficult getting through it, but it's been a lot of fun. I'm a big believer that the game is fun. You have to have fun and that's part of it. The push-ups have been one of those fun traditions.
This transcript has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity
