Blazers’ majority owner Gaglardi offers season review, talks of changing WHL-NCAA landscape

MH: What are your general thoughts on the season?

TG: It’s a little difficult right now to assess it because we had a pretty rough first round. I think we have to give it a bit of time. I really haven’t talked to our guys on the ground there. We’re very disappointed. We certainly knew that we were the underdog in the series, but we just didn’t really get it done, so that’s disappointing. Overall, a good season. We were far more competitive this year than we have been the last couple, made a lot of progress and won considerably more games.

And, we have a very exciting team to watch. I mean, we had maybe the top-scoring line in the league, finished well in the standings. The B.C. Division was pretty competitive, maybe the toughest, deepest division in the league. We’re happy with that. We would have liked to have given Kelowna some more trouble. But give them credit. They were as good as they’ve been all year, their goalie was strong and their best players were their best players. The sorts of things we needed to do to disrupt those things – get to the goalie, disrupt their best players – we just weren’t able to do that for whatever reason. So, very disappointed with the ending, but we’ve got things to be hopeful for moving forward.

MH: Looking forward, there’s so much up in the air with this team. It’s sort of a different era we’ve moved into. With Behm, Lafreniere, Hurlbert, Evaschesen, we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen with them. What are your thoughts on this new order of things that we’re dealing with now?

TG: I think it’s just going to be an interesting time for the league. I think we’re going to get access to players who maybe we weren’t seeing before, i.e., J.P. Hurlbert. In the old regime, he probably doesn’t come to Kamloops. And he did. And he had an outstanding time. He considers Kamloops a second home. And I don’t think the organization could have done a much better job in terms of giving him the opportunity. And he took it. Let’s face it, J.P. Hurlbert had a hell of a season. He stepped in and took it. His draft stock is sky high as a consequence of that.

Back to the new world we’re in now. Are these kids going to come in at 16, 17, and then they’re going to leave at 18 to go to NCAA now that they’re eligible? We will see. My personal views are that the NCAA is not really a league for 18-year-olds. I don’t think it’s the best place to be to develop at 18. If I were advising these guys, it would be easy for me to suggest that you should play in your draft year, get drafted, play as an 18 in the Western Hockey League, play the 68-game schedule versus the 30-game schedule. I don’t see many 18-year-olds playing in the NCAA. They’re just not going to get a chance to develop the same way playing against guys in their early 20s who are basically men. It’s a little bit like the American Hockey League. It’s a tough world for 19-, 20-year-old kids. They typically don’t do well. And sending an 18-year-old kid to the NCAA, which gets older and older all the time, I think is a tough place to be. But, when you’re dealing with someone like J.P., whose family has long connections with Michigan and his dream is to play there, you know he wants to get there. And you understand that. For me, it’s pretty easy to see the best development path. But we’ll see. I think we’re so early in the game that we don’t really know what this looks like. We’re going to have to see what happens to 18-year-olds that go to the NCAA. Do they have success? Do they belong there that young? We’ll see.

And it’s going to work out. I’m more positive on it. A lot of people are worried and I’m generally positive that there’s going to be some trial and error here and we’ll see where things land.

COMPLETE GAGLARDI INTERVIEW

MH: Next season, you’re essentially in Year 4 of a rebuild and you would be, in a normal development pathway, poised to take a huge step. You’d expect your team to take a step. Hopefully, you do get a couple of these guys back or more, but if you don’t, there’s potential for four of your best players to leave. And that affects the results of the club. My question is do you have to have leniency or more leniency with general managers? It’s a new era. Or, is it kind of on them for not seeing it?

TG: Well, I guess you have to assess the job that’s been done given the new environment, but I think our staff has a had a pretty good year. We’ll see what happens. For me, I’m more interested in – where is our scoring going to come from? Are we drafting? How’s our program working? And we feel good about our young players. Quite possibly, we’ll be younger next year. So, yeah, I don’t know what to say to you. I think we’ve got one of the best staffs in the league. There’s no question about it. And I know from looking around other clubs, there’s a lot of clubs that aren’t in the place we’re at. It’s just tough to build a staff. We have so much history and knowledge in the league.

We’re disappointed in what happened in the playoffs. Certainly, at some point, we have to evaluate all that. But, I’ll say that I feel comfortable with our staff. We added a couple of guys, have a younger look to it. With Shaun Clouston and Tim O’Donovan and what’s happened in our training room – we’ve moved on from [Colin ‘Toledo’ Robinson], who was a stalwart – and I just think we’ve got a really good thing in Kamloops. And I know that because I talk to agents and the word is that the changes were fantastic, you know, just getting a little bit younger. These kids are different today. We have a nice balance. We’ve got a veteran in Shaun and we’ve got a staff that’s as good as any in the league. Continuity is super important. We had a good year. We’ve got to continue to move forward. We’re not here to lose in the first round. And, I really thought this team could win a round. As it turned out, we just didn’t get it done.

MH: This will be 15 years in a row in which a Blazer is drafted into the NHL. That’s the longest active streak [in the WHL]. What does it mean to you?

TG: Roughly eight or 10 years ago, we had this little streak going, but we weren’t putting guys in the national league. That’s one of the jobs we’re here to do. People come to Kamloops and we’re going to develop you and we’re going to get you drafted and we’re going to give you a shot in the NHL. That’s what our program needs to do. In the last several years, we’ve delivered on that. We might be the most successful Western Hockey League club right now in getting kids drafted, given our streak. Since 2023, we have seven Blazers playing in the National Hockey League. It’s something to be proud of. We know we’re doing the right things. Obviously, J.P.’s going to be a high pick this year and he didn’t have a successful year last year. He came to Kamloops, came to the Western Hockey League and it was a great league for him. And it is a great league. Give him credit. He delivered and he’s earned the draft pick. Our club is highly regarded in the game of hockey and scouts want their kids playing in Kamloops. I’m not sure that’s always been the case. It certainly hasn’t been the case to the extent that it is today. We’re all proud of that. We’ve just got to translate that to a bit more winning when it comes to playoff time.

MH: Looking back at the trade deadline strategy, that’s all intertwined with the new world we’re in. How do you assess it looking back now? Part of the reason why there was not as big of a splash made by your club this year is because there’s belief – and they’re backing their program – that next year, they hope a few of these [NCAA-committed] guys come back. They’ll have the draft capital for making a splash this next season. But, if you lose four of your players, was it a missed opportunity last season to not make a move then? How much of a conundrum do you find yourself in?

TG: I mean, the prices were so crazy. I know that our management was trying to do more than we did, probably considerably more than we were able to accomplish. At the end of the day, to get the players we wanted, we had to move players, and we just weren’t prepared to do that.

We’ve amalgamated a lot of draft picks. The market for those things this year just wasn’t what it has been and so we made the choices we did. And I get it. We’ve still got a lot of picks. I think we’ll be active before the draft with those and if not then we’ll be picking some good players. That’s the plan. I’m hoping we can keep our best players another year here. That’s the big push for us right now.

MH: How excited are you about this wave of Aaron Keller guys?

TG: We’ve got some great young players coming in. We’ve got the Czech kid [Petr Tomek] who’s a superstar. We need to make sure he’s playing in Kamloops next year. There’s lots to be excited about. We’re going to be younger. But this is a group that we can really, I think, keep together for a while and have some success, but the game’s changed now. Let’s face it, it’s a different way to build a team today in the Western Hockey League and it’s going to be tougher to sustain success. You think about that group we had going into the Memorial Cup. We had that core together for three or four years and really mowed down the league. It’s going to be tough to do that now. Penticton’s going to lose a whole bunch of players. The landscape is going to change pretty dramatically year to year. I don’t think we all really understand how this is going to work and what the strategy should be. But I think we’ve got the team that can figure this out and execute it.

MH: Last one. I always ask you a question about expectations for results next season. Maybe it’s a little bit tougher to answer this year?

TG: I don’t know. It’s kind of a different thing. You always sort of know in the WHL who’s coming back. This year, it’s open. And I’d say the same thing applies to the rest of the B.C. Division. It’s a little hard to say. We’re going to be younger, but does that mean we’re going to fall in the standings? I don’t know that. Who do we bring in? We brought in Evaschesen kind of out of nowhere and what a year he had. We’ve got to continue to do that. But we’re going to be competitive. I know that. We had four 16-year-olds on our roster. They all played good. Our 17-year-olds are a strong group, too. We’re in a good spot. But we could possibly lose our entire top line. But we won’t be the only club in that position.

by Marty Hastings

Blazers’ majority owner Gaglardi offers season review, talks of changing WHL-NCAA landscape

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