John Blanchette: It’s Speltz’s time along with Chiefs
In addition to the on-ice thrills manufactured by the Spokane Chiefs in the Western Hockey League playoffs, they’ve also managed to displace their owner in time.
Bobby Brett was puzzled the other day when general manager Tim Speltz didn’t return to Spokane after the Chiefs won the Western Conference finals in Kennewick but instead flew to Calgary for the WHL’s awards ceremony and bantam draft.
“When’s the draft?” Brett asked.
“Thursday,” Speltz told him.
“I always remember it being later,” Brett said.
“Bobby,” Speltz pointed out, “that’s because we haven’t been playing later.”
Yes, in the previous four years, the Chiefs’ season conveniently ended in March, allowing Speltz a month to digest scouting data for the annual teenage crapshoot. You’ll forgive Brett, in the giddy high of having a new banner to hoist at the Arena, for spacing out the recent lows that stretched out the landmarks on the calendar.
But we should not forget that it was Speltz who took the bullets for those busts – both from the bleachers and this inky outpost on the frontier of reason. And with the Chiefs opening the WHL’s champion- ship series tonight against Lethbridge, it’s time he gets a few bouquets for finding the fix.
“No one took those tough years harder than Tim,” Brett said. “I’m a Speltz believer. As a man, he’s honest, up front and accountable. He took the responsibility for our failures.
“Now he’s owed some credit.”
Speltz, however, figures what he’s owed, he also owes. Credit is shared with his talent bird dogs, the coach he handpicked and, naturally, with the players whose mission has been unmistakable – and hasty.
“I thought we’d take a step and that our best team would be next year,” Speltz laughed, “but Chris Bruton told me at the end of last year how good we were going to be this year.”
The Chiefs, as with every successful junior club, are an alchemist’s triumph. High draft picks cannot be wasted. Trades are weighed for long-term risk and instant reward. Import players must pan out. Rocks must be turned over to find the undrafted and discarded with unappreciated ability or will. And it all must be turned over to a coach who can apply the proper touch.
It is not that Speltz was unfamiliar with the formula – a Memorial Cup and two other trips to the WHL finals were achieved under his watch. But when the clock struck 2000, an odd thing happened.
The Chiefs misplaced their identity.
“Some of it was when (coach) Mike Babcock left,” theorized Brett. “He had a little bite, a little edge to him, and our team had that, too.”
Neither Perry Ganchar, who succeeded Babcock, nor the unfairly demonized Al Conroy had that edge. More to the point, they didn’t have the players. The Chiefs got small, the skill level dropped and the character and leadership prized by the organization splintered into selfishness or, worse, indifference. After reaching the West finals in 2001, the Chiefs’ playoff stays grew shorter until missing the postseason completely in 2005 and 2006.
“It’s a fine line how that gets away from you,” Brett said.
The ticket-paying public doesn’t want to hear about fine-line solutions, however.
The perception – or suggestion – was that there was a complacency in the organization starting at the top, a disinclination to change outside of a coaching churn every couple of years. The reality, both Speltz and Brett insist, was different. Changes were being made – a transition to a new personnel director in Chris Moulton, some rollover in scouts, a move toward more size. Surely it didn’t hurt that the plummet in the standings resulted in higher draft picks – nor that the next coach, Bill Peters, signed off on jettisoning soured veterans and investing in younger leaders, meaning longer growing pains.
“It’s easy to make excuses,” Speltz said. “But it wasn’t working. There wasn’t one thing you could put a finger on, but I’m a firm believer that if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
Likewise, it’s impossible to identify an obvious U-turn, other than Peters’ hiring, possibly. The David Rutherford trade in 2006 has been revealed to be a clear steal. So have the listings of goalie Dustin Tokarski and forward Judd Blackwater. And Speltz’s backbone in drafting defenseman Jared Cowen two years ago when his family initially balked at Spokane was a defining moment.
“That took courage,” Brett said. “Tim could have gone the easy way and not taken him or traded him. But he led the charge to get Jared and his parents here, recruiting him like we do all players and being confident it would work out.
“He’s not a knee-jerk guy. He doesn’t think he knows it all. He knew there wasn’t going to be a quick fix to what was wrong, but he wasn’t afraid to change what was broken. We’ve had a lot of great years here, but I think this has been the most satisfying because of the way we’ve turned things around.”
Speltz doesn’t bother to parse any Chiefs success. Playing later is gratification enough.