New coach Clouston gearing up for his first Blazers training camp

This week Shaun Clouston is on the ice at McArthur Island, working the hockey school with some potentially future Blazers and Western League’ers in another ten to fifteen years.

In a week and a half he’ll put his 17 years coaching experience in this league, including ten as a head coach, to work at Blazers training camp.

That work actually started the day he was hired in June —– reaching out to all the players.

“Just to try to get a feel for what went well last year, what they enjoyed, areas they thought we could get better at.” says Clouston. “And I wanted to find out who the players thought were the leaders. I think that’s so crucial to make sure you get the team support.”

Clouston gained a loyal following from his players in his 15 years in Medicine Hat —– the last nine as head coach.

Many of his current and former players reached out after he was let go by the Tigers.

One of those Chad Butcher, who played five seasons for Clouston in the Hat.

“You know he played to win — his track record kind of speaks for itself.” says Butcher. “I loved him, and I enjoyed all of it.”

Medicine Hat missed the playoffs only once in Clouston’s 15 seasons, and lost a tie breaker to get in in that one —- the Tigers also won two league championships.

In Kamloops he takes over a team that has struggled to regain some of the identity it had during the glory years in the 1990’s, and has missed the playoffs three of the last six years.

“There’s a fairly high expectation this year.” says Clouston. “There’s a large group of returning players. Some real good experience. The run at the end of last year, where they had to win a bunch of games to get into the playoffs, those are meaningful games. The players got excited during that stretch, and they want more of it.”

There’s a constant evolution of the game —- one that Clouston says is so much different than it was only five or six years ago —– and the challenge is to build and mold the team to what works now.

“My time in the league, there was a time when everybody was trapping and sitting back, and playing a very defensive minded game.” says the Blazers coach. “I think the pendulum has swung about as far as it’s going to go the other way, I think, where most teams are playing an up tempo kind of game.”

Clouston won’t really know what he has until they play those meaningful games. He says it’s always a challenge when you switch things up, like a different head coach for the third time in three seasons.

“I’m really going to have to speed things up to really get to know the players.” says Clouston. “I’m going to ask for them to help out an meet me halfway. I think that’s really going to be the challenge early on —- to build that team environment that’s necessary for winning.”

by Earl Seitz

New coach Clouston gearing up for his first Blazers training camp

Our Community