2,5,andagame
03-02-2007, 11:08 PM
from the Prairie Post:
(This is the second part of reporter George Bowditch’s conversation with Swift Current Broncos’ board of director’s member Joe Arling. In this interview, Arling has a lot to say about the Broncos, their playoff chances and expectations of the team and the coaching staff):
Joe Arling continues to comment on the question of: The fans keep commenting about Dean Chynoweth’s apparent lack of emotion on the bench. Is that a fair statement?“Dean comes from that pro environment and quite frankly, I have been around this league for a long time and those who have gotten to know Dean here in the community would clearly understand that there isn’t a more passionate man who is coaching the game today, or in a past history of where he has played. He was a captain in the Western Hockey League, captain of a Memorial Cup team and his style of play was passionate and extremely emotional and he is an emotional guy. He has learned to control those emotions on the bench. Comment from the fans? I respect the comments but to correlate more emotion meaning more wins and therefore the players playing better? No, I don’t buy that. They (fans) have their right to offer the comment. That will not be the difference of whether or not Dean is or isn’t the coach or manager in to the future of the team.
”Dean’s managerial expertise has never been questioned as far as recognizing talent and that sort of thing. Should he be more involved in the management duties and switching coaching duties?
Joe Arling: “Dean is our CEO. He is the guy who is the captain of the ship. He has to balance his duties between management and coaching. Coaching is a passion for Dean and he readily admits that. Now as a package there were a number of areas that we had concerns in from the previous administration. First of all right at the top of the list, was community relations - and do you know what? Dean is incredibly approachable and for those who have gotten to know him in this community, he is out there, visible and very, very approachable.For some of the critics, they just picked up the phone and said, ‘Dean, you know I would like to have a coffee with you,’ and he would accommodate them. This is a guy that will sit down and talk with you. He has done a great job in the community. The management component internally in the office and the scouting and the community relations with the players has been exceptional, so those are the parts and some of the things that the fans see and some of it they don’t.The actual hockey operations itself, the on and off ice product takes the remainder of his time. Coaching takes up 20 to 25 per cent of all his duties but the visible part for the fans is the 80 to 95 per cent of it. So that is the easiest thing to criticize and or take a run at. I respect you saying, ‘You know what? Dean’s management skills are not being questioned here, it is whether or not the coaching part of it is there or not.’ I am going to go a little further into this and suggest to you that at the end of the day is this team where the pundits or the experts predicted it to be? We are dead on. Were we overachieving sitting in second place? The Regina Pats quite frankly, dramatically were under- achieving.I look at a team like Brandon as an example; they have 13 19- and 20-year-olds. The Swift Current Broncos have seven. So it is a very mature, older hockey club so you can’t make mistakes against them. We have played very well against them this year. But where I am going with this is Regina and Brandon were expected to be one-two in the league. Everybody else had us battling for fourth or missing the playoffs. So are we slotted where we should be? We are right where we should be. The development of our players we knew was going to take time and that is exactly what is happening. We are having our struggles at a time when all the other teams in our division had their struggles before Christmas including the Regina Pats, including Prince Albert, including Saskatoon. So we are right in the battle, right where we should be.Are we disappointed from where we were? I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you I am happy about it. Certainly we are disappointed and Dean is disappointed, our management is disappointed, but you know what? This is the time when you really measure the true character of your players and you measure the character of your organization, because the most important quality to have is resiliency. You have got to be able to battle back and dig yourself back. The one thing quite frankly that we don’t have is enough years. We have so many young people that have to be put in to critical situations that over and over again there can be a law of diminishing returns, so they have got to dig themselves out of a hole and add on to that as we have referenced. The goaltending in some of those nights has not been where it should be to be successful in our league ... so as a result we have this amplitude that I talked about earlier of the real good games, and then we go to a low here where we get beat at home by four or five goals. Our fans have been spoiled. Am I disappointed on those nights? Incredibly disappointed. But I can say this - that we are on the right track.
”So you are saying that you are going to “stay the course” Joe?
Joe Arling: We are “staying the course”. Dean has a three-year contract and we are “staying the course.”At this point, evaluations will be made at the end of the year on all aspects of the team and the management team itself and that is the community relations, that is the management component of it and it is the coach component of it. Those are some of the decisions that we have to make, but in terms of the development of the team and the development of the players, goodness me, I am going to go back here a couple of years and at the end of the day... I will even go back to Randy’s (Smith) years specifically. I will maybe address the situation of emotion and volatility on the bench. Fans again who have been with us a long time, one of the knocks against Randy, there were two knocks against Randy and quite frankly to Todd (McClelland) to a degree was we were a two-line hockey club. All we ever saw were the top two lines and never any development of our young people.You know what? Dean plays everybody and that is one of the reasons we are going to have success in the big picture when it all gets dusted down to it. Even to our ninth to our eleventh forwards and our fifth and sixth defenceman are going to be able to play impact minutes against the other team’s top lines, so everybody does play indeed and that is why the players like playing for him.Secondly, to the issue of showing more emotion and volatility, and again I am going to Randy and I am not picking on Randy Smith specifically, but as you know he was a very volatile coach and he was very, very emotional. Well, I am going to remind our fans going back three years ago - what did you see running around the ice but Jeremy Williams and Whitey (Ian White) and Tyler Redenbach at times chasing the referee around the ice because they are pissed off about calls and they are emotional and they are all fired up, but at the end of the day there was a law of diminishing return. Our players play the game. You play the way you are coached and from the expectation.Dave (Hunchak) and Dean are both very, very controlled on the bench. You take the calls the referee gives you. You take the bounces in the game and you get ready for the next play and that is for me the strengths there that I see.
(This is the second part of reporter George Bowditch’s conversation with Swift Current Broncos’ board of director’s member Joe Arling. In this interview, Arling has a lot to say about the Broncos, their playoff chances and expectations of the team and the coaching staff):
Joe Arling continues to comment on the question of: The fans keep commenting about Dean Chynoweth’s apparent lack of emotion on the bench. Is that a fair statement?“Dean comes from that pro environment and quite frankly, I have been around this league for a long time and those who have gotten to know Dean here in the community would clearly understand that there isn’t a more passionate man who is coaching the game today, or in a past history of where he has played. He was a captain in the Western Hockey League, captain of a Memorial Cup team and his style of play was passionate and extremely emotional and he is an emotional guy. He has learned to control those emotions on the bench. Comment from the fans? I respect the comments but to correlate more emotion meaning more wins and therefore the players playing better? No, I don’t buy that. They (fans) have their right to offer the comment. That will not be the difference of whether or not Dean is or isn’t the coach or manager in to the future of the team.
”Dean’s managerial expertise has never been questioned as far as recognizing talent and that sort of thing. Should he be more involved in the management duties and switching coaching duties?
Joe Arling: “Dean is our CEO. He is the guy who is the captain of the ship. He has to balance his duties between management and coaching. Coaching is a passion for Dean and he readily admits that. Now as a package there were a number of areas that we had concerns in from the previous administration. First of all right at the top of the list, was community relations - and do you know what? Dean is incredibly approachable and for those who have gotten to know him in this community, he is out there, visible and very, very approachable.For some of the critics, they just picked up the phone and said, ‘Dean, you know I would like to have a coffee with you,’ and he would accommodate them. This is a guy that will sit down and talk with you. He has done a great job in the community. The management component internally in the office and the scouting and the community relations with the players has been exceptional, so those are the parts and some of the things that the fans see and some of it they don’t.The actual hockey operations itself, the on and off ice product takes the remainder of his time. Coaching takes up 20 to 25 per cent of all his duties but the visible part for the fans is the 80 to 95 per cent of it. So that is the easiest thing to criticize and or take a run at. I respect you saying, ‘You know what? Dean’s management skills are not being questioned here, it is whether or not the coaching part of it is there or not.’ I am going to go a little further into this and suggest to you that at the end of the day is this team where the pundits or the experts predicted it to be? We are dead on. Were we overachieving sitting in second place? The Regina Pats quite frankly, dramatically were under- achieving.I look at a team like Brandon as an example; they have 13 19- and 20-year-olds. The Swift Current Broncos have seven. So it is a very mature, older hockey club so you can’t make mistakes against them. We have played very well against them this year. But where I am going with this is Regina and Brandon were expected to be one-two in the league. Everybody else had us battling for fourth or missing the playoffs. So are we slotted where we should be? We are right where we should be. The development of our players we knew was going to take time and that is exactly what is happening. We are having our struggles at a time when all the other teams in our division had their struggles before Christmas including the Regina Pats, including Prince Albert, including Saskatoon. So we are right in the battle, right where we should be.Are we disappointed from where we were? I wouldn’t be sitting here telling you I am happy about it. Certainly we are disappointed and Dean is disappointed, our management is disappointed, but you know what? This is the time when you really measure the true character of your players and you measure the character of your organization, because the most important quality to have is resiliency. You have got to be able to battle back and dig yourself back. The one thing quite frankly that we don’t have is enough years. We have so many young people that have to be put in to critical situations that over and over again there can be a law of diminishing returns, so they have got to dig themselves out of a hole and add on to that as we have referenced. The goaltending in some of those nights has not been where it should be to be successful in our league ... so as a result we have this amplitude that I talked about earlier of the real good games, and then we go to a low here where we get beat at home by four or five goals. Our fans have been spoiled. Am I disappointed on those nights? Incredibly disappointed. But I can say this - that we are on the right track.
”So you are saying that you are going to “stay the course” Joe?
Joe Arling: We are “staying the course”. Dean has a three-year contract and we are “staying the course.”At this point, evaluations will be made at the end of the year on all aspects of the team and the management team itself and that is the community relations, that is the management component of it and it is the coach component of it. Those are some of the decisions that we have to make, but in terms of the development of the team and the development of the players, goodness me, I am going to go back here a couple of years and at the end of the day... I will even go back to Randy’s (Smith) years specifically. I will maybe address the situation of emotion and volatility on the bench. Fans again who have been with us a long time, one of the knocks against Randy, there were two knocks against Randy and quite frankly to Todd (McClelland) to a degree was we were a two-line hockey club. All we ever saw were the top two lines and never any development of our young people.You know what? Dean plays everybody and that is one of the reasons we are going to have success in the big picture when it all gets dusted down to it. Even to our ninth to our eleventh forwards and our fifth and sixth defenceman are going to be able to play impact minutes against the other team’s top lines, so everybody does play indeed and that is why the players like playing for him.Secondly, to the issue of showing more emotion and volatility, and again I am going to Randy and I am not picking on Randy Smith specifically, but as you know he was a very volatile coach and he was very, very emotional. Well, I am going to remind our fans going back three years ago - what did you see running around the ice but Jeremy Williams and Whitey (Ian White) and Tyler Redenbach at times chasing the referee around the ice because they are pissed off about calls and they are emotional and they are all fired up, but at the end of the day there was a law of diminishing return. Our players play the game. You play the way you are coached and from the expectation.Dave (Hunchak) and Dean are both very, very controlled on the bench. You take the calls the referee gives you. You take the bounces in the game and you get ready for the next play and that is for me the strengths there that I see.