There is more to new Chiefs coach than record shows

In the interests of expediting the questioning at tonight’s Spokane Chiefs fan forum, here’s one that the restless natives won’t have to ask:

General manager Tim Speltz was resolute in his intention to hire someone with head coaching experience to fill that job with the Chiefs, but couldn’t he have insisted on a few victories in the resume, too?

Bill Peters, the new coach who is actually an old hand with the Chiefs, was 17-59-8 the past three years at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta).

That’s not a typo.

I’m not sure what the opera goers at the Spokane Arena would have done to Al Conroy if he’d brought home such a report card as Chiefs coach, but I think I saw a lion do it to a zebra on Animal Planet.

But as with most raw numbers, there are extenuating factors in Peters’ record – to say nothing of eyewitness testimony that suggests his return to the organization is both reasonable and potentially rewarding, if not exactly outside-the-box thinking by management and ownership.

Peters assisted both the revered Mike Babcock and the disregarded Perry Ganchar with the Chiefs, and applied for the head position when Ganchar departed. But Speltz said he “wasn’t comfortable with Bill’s hockey foundation” at the time since virtually all of his experience had been in the Spokane organization, that there wasn’t much of it and, of course, that he hadn’t been a head coach.

So Speltz hired a guy who’d been an assistant for all of a year. You know the rest.

Maybe outside-the-box isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

In any case, Peters got the hint and hustled himself the job at Lethbridge, which was open for a reason.

It’s a lousy job.

That’s an uncharitable way to put it, but not necessarily inaccurate. The Pronghorns play in Canada West, sort of the American League East of college hockey up there – with Lethbridge playing the Tampa Bay part and the universities of Alberta and Saskatchewan as the Yankees and Red Sox.

“This is what everybody has to understand,” said Speltz. “There is just no opportunity for Lethbridge to recruit. They’re going to get what’s left at the end of the day – the kids from the Lethbridge area who want to go to U of L and hopefully can play hockey. All the high-profile players will typically go to U of A and the ones from Saskatchewan will go to U of S.”

A number of those players are Western Hockey League alums – Chiefs alums, in fact. Joff Kehler and Tim Krymusa, among others, led Alberta to this year’s national championship; Saskatchewan, the runner-up, had Mason Wallin and Chris Barr.

“U of A,” said Speltz, “had more former WHL players in the stands most nights than Bill had on the ice.”

There are a number of issues – Lethbridge’s 7,000 enrollment is about one-fifth that of the University of Alberta. There are fewer academic offerings and less financial aid available, and the alumni networking and support at the bigger schools simply swamps the Pronghorns’ program.

“It’s a frustrating situation,” acknowledged Peters, who took pains to praise the administration for trying to combat the inequities. “The most frustrating aspect is recruiting, because there is no letter of intent. In Canada, you recruit 12 months out of the year and you don’t know you’re getting a guy on Sept. 10 until you see the whites of his eyes.

“I can tell you stories of guys who have been practicing with one team and wind up playing for another in the same league – it happened at U of S with a goalie, Aaron Baker, who went to Calgary. These are true stories – but it’s a great league and the caliber of play is unbelievable.”

Which, alas, was reflected in Peters’ record. But not, the ex-Chiefs say, in his reputation.

“The impressive thing to me,” said Kehler, “was that it didn’t matter if it was the first shift and the score was tied 0-0 or the last shift and they were down three goals, Pete’s team worked hard.

“You couldn’t take a shift off against them. In the end, they’d come up short in the talent or skill department, but only if you matched their effort because that never stopped.”

The endorsement of a two-year captain and other trusted alums had great sway with Speltz, though just how glitzy the actual candidate pool was remains his secret. But Peters is nothing if not forthright, and there does seem to be a quality about him that might have a better chance of gaining some purchase in the dressing room than whatever Conroy, for reasons unknown, couldn’t sell.

“If they need a fire under them,” Peters said, “it’ll be lit.

“There’s no free ice out there. If you’re not willing to pay the price and get in those greasy, dirty areas, if you’re a perimeter player, your chances of having success in a Chiefs uniform isn’t very good.”

There’s another change on the way, one with possibly bigger implications. Today the Chiefs are expected to announce the addition of Chris Moulton, recently of the Calgary Hitmen, to head up their scouting operation. Ray Dudra, the team’s director of player personnel, has asked to cut back on his involvement so Speltz called it “a matter of timing and not necessity.”

True, but not altogether accurate.

Continuity is always welcome, but there is no sports organization that can’t do without new perspectives and approaches from time to time – and, in fact, that’s what Speltz tried to add in hiring Ganchar five years ago. It just didn’t happen to be the right match.

When pressed on the possibility of organizational stagnation, managing partner Bobby Brett insists that “my passion is there, and, without question, the passion and work ethic of Tim is there.”

Nonetheless, “we haven’t put the type of product or had the kind of success on the ice any of us want,” Brett admitted.

Some of it has been that the Chiefs’ ability to land and develop top-end players – the NHL-draftable kind – has lagged too far behind the rest of the WHL.

So it’s not as if questions don’t remain, new coach or not. Bill Peters doesn’t mind hearing them – even from the stands.

“That’s part of the job,” he said. “They should be restless. We don’t want to be mediocre.”