VANCOUVER – On the eve of his summer vacation, Bruce Boudreau looked Monday neither uncertain nor uneasy about his coaching future. This off-season should be a lot more enjoyable for him than the last one.
Despite the to-be-determined option year on his contract with the Vancouver Canucks, the 67-year-old head coach said at his season-ending press conference that he is confident he will be back with the National Hockey League team he led to a 32-15-10 record after he was hired in December.
Boudreau had spent the previous 22 months unemployed after being fired by the Minnesota Wild, and last summer was granted just two unsuccessful job interviews by NHL teams.
“It’s funny because when I when I left Minnesota, it was really a bad taste in my mouth,” Boudreau said after the Canucks ended their season six points short of a playoff spot. “And when you’re a year out and you interview for a couple jobs in the summer and you don’t get them, you just wonder, like: ‘Do people think the time has passed or what have you?’
“And then coming back and having that kind of record, and having the team play the way they did in a lot of different areas positively, it makes you believe when you go home that you did well. And that you still can do the job. The other thing is you know you still have the fire in your belly and the desire to do the job. You wake up every morning and can’t wait to get back to the job. And that’s what I found out: once I started doing it again, I couldn’t wait to get to work. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you love something until you don’t have it, and then you get it back and you realize it.”
Boudreau coached his 1,000th NHL game in Vancouver, and also reached 599 wins, deprived of another milestone by a season-ending 3-2 shootout loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Friday. His .649 winning percentage with the Canucks, albeit from a tiny sample, would over time make him the most successful coach in franchise history.
No wonder fans, players and – truth be told – reporters want the quotable coach back. But Canucks president Jim Rutherford and general manager Patrik Allvin, who will meet the media on Tuesday, have said they’ll review the season and Boudreau’s performance before making a decision on the coach who preceded them to Vancouver.
The option clause on the “two-year contract” that Boudreau signed with owner Francesco Aquilini is open to both sides, which puts the coach in position to demand an extension before agreeing to return.
“I told Patrik and Jim that I wanted to coach here next year,” Boudreau said. “We’re just talking right now. I think they want me back and I know I want to be back, so I think it should work out.”
Boudreau said the only thing he knows for sure is that he is going home to Hershey, Pa., on Wednesday.
He and his wife, Crystal, own and operate the Hershey Cubs, a junior team in the United States Premier Hockey League. Bruce and his grown sons, Ben, Andy and Brady, also run summer hockey camps in Belleville, Ont., and St. Catharines.
“I usually just run the Gatorade back and forth now,” Boudreau joked after his press conference.
An avid baseball fan, Boudreau said he was offered a rookie-league contract by the Pittsburgh Pirates after he won a Memorial Cup with the Toronto Marlboros in 1975, but turned down the Major League organization because he was singularly focussed on becoming a professional hockey player. But he’ll attend Toronto Blue Jays games when he’s in his hometown, and sometimes drives two hours south from Hershey to watch the Washington Nationals.
Boudreau said he also plans to play lots of golf this summer. A seven-handicap, his home backs on to Hershey Country Club, where he is a member.
“I’ll go out in the evening and play the second hole five times,” he said.
Whatever he does, Boudreau will be thinking about the Canucks, what they accomplished and how to make them better next season.
“I think the biggest thing is the team believing that they could win every game,” he said of the change in culture he witnessed the last five months. “It didn’t matter whether we played Minnesota, Calgary, Colorado, any one of the really good teams in the West, we thought we could win. That makes you feel pretty good that the players came ready to play.”
In his far-ranging press conference, Boudreau said:
• The organization was aware of winger Brock Boeser’s concern for his ailing father, Duke, and supported him any way it could, offering him a leave of absence if needed.
“If you have a core covenant on your team, the first thing is always family first,” Boudreau said. “It was tough on him. If you look at his (season), it starts out with holding out a little bit, and when you don’t have a full training camp, it’s really difficult. And then you have this (Boeser’s dad’s health) on top of it. It makes for a long, tough year. I think Brock will be great next year, and I hope everything goes well at home. But he knows he has our support for anything he needs.”
• Ideally, Boudreau would like to play starting goalie Thatcher Demko, who ended the season with an undisclosed injury, about 55 games next season rather than the 64 he logged this year.
• With Demko, a star defenceman in Quinn Hughes and formidable 1-2-3 punch at centre with J.T. Miller, Elias Pettersson and Bo Horvat, the Canucks are close to being contenders.
“With a couple little tweaks here and there,” Boudreau said, “I think this team can be very, very dangerous next year.”
• Boudreau has no plans to change the coaching staff he largely inherited from Travis Green.
“You end the year not making the playoffs,” he explained. “But it’s very rare that you end the year not making the playoffs but on a very positive note. And I think (players will) take that all summer, and they will look to come back and be a different team in training camp and at the beginning (of the season) than they have been in the past. That’s going to be the biggest factor is that this summer, they’re going to come back and they’re going to expect to win.”
TORONTO – The Toronto Maple Leafs have announced cookie brand Oreo as the team’s helmet sponsor for the upcoming NHL season.
The new helmet will debut Sunday when Toronto opens its 2024-25 pre-season against the Ottawa Senators at Scotiabank Arena.
The Oreo logo replaces Canadian restaurant chain Pizza Pizza, which was the Leafs’ helmet sponsor last season.
Previously, social media platform TikTok sponsored Toronto starting in the 2021-22 regular season when the league began allowing teams to sell advertising space on helmets.
The Oreo cookie consists of two chocolate biscuits around a white icing filling and is often dipped in milk.
Fittingly, the Leafs wear the Dairy Farmers of Ontario’s “Milk” logo on their jerseys.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
MacKenzie Weegar wasn’t bitter or upset as he watched friends live out their dreams.
The Calgary Flames defenceman just hopes to experience the same feeling one day. He also knows the road leading to that moment, if it does arrive, will likely be long and winding — much like his own path.
A seventh-round pick by the Florida Panthers at the 2013 NHL draft, Weegar climbed the ranks to become an important piece of a roster that captured the Presidents’ Trophy as the league’s top regular-season club in 2021-22.
Two months later following a second-round playoff exit, he was traded to the Flames along with Jonathan Huberdeau for Matthew Tkachuk. And less than two years after that, the Panthers were hoisting the Stanley Cup.
“Happy for the city and for the team,” Weegar said of Florida’s June victory over the Edmonton Oilers. “There was no bad taste in my mouth.”
His sole focus, he insists, is squarely on eventually getting the Flames to the same spot. The landscape, however, has changed drastically since Weegar committed to Calgary on an eight-year, US$50-million contract extension in October 2022.
Weegar has watched a list that includes goaltender Jacob Markstrom, defencemen Chris Tanev, Noah Hanifin and Nikita Zadorov and forwards Elias Lindholm and Andrew Mangiapane shipped out of town since the start of last season — largely for picks, prospects and young players as part of a rebuild.
Despite that exodus, he remains committed to the Calgary project steered by general manager Craig Conroy.
“It’s easy to get out of all whack when you see guys trying to leave or wanting new contracts,” the 30-year-old from Ottawa said at last week’s NHL/NHLPA player media tour in Las Vegas. “I just focus on where I am and where I want to be, and that’s Calgary.
“I believe in this team. The city has taken me in right away. I feel like I owe it to them to stick around and grind through these years and get a Stanley Cup.”
The hard-nosed blueliner certainly knows what it is to grind.
After winning the Memorial Cup alongside Nathan MacKinnon with the Halifax Mooseheads in 2013, Weegar toiled in the ECHL and American Hockey League for three seasons before making his NHL debut late in the 2016-17 campaign with the Panthers.
He would spend the next five years in South Florida as one of the players tasked with shifting an organizational culture that had experienced little success over the previous two decades.
“There’s always going to be a piece of my heart and loyalty to that team,” Weegar said. “But now I’m in a different situation … I compete against all 32 teams, not just Florida. There’s always a chip on my shoulder every single year.”
Weegar set career highs with 20 goals — eight was the most he had ever previously registered — and 52 points in 2023-24 as part of a breakout offensive performance.
“I think my buddies cared a lot more than I did,” he said with a smile. “All I hear is, ‘fantasy, fantasy, fantasy.'”
Weegar was actually more proud of his 200 blocked shots and 194 hits as he looks to help set a new Flames’ standard alongside Huberdeau, captain Mikael Backlund, Nazem Kadri, Blake Coleman and Rasmus Andersson for a franchise expected to have its new arena in time for the 2027-28 season.
“You have to build that culture and that belief in the locker room,” said Weegar, who pointed to 22-year-old centre Connor Zary as a player set to pop. “Those young guys are going to have to come into their own and be consistent every night … they’re the next generation.”
Weegar, however, isn’t punting on 2024-25. He pointed to the NHL’s parity and the fact a couple of teams surprise every season.
It’s the same approach that took him from the ECHL a decade ago to hockey’s premier pre-season event inside a swanky hotel on Sin City’s famed strip, where he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the game’s best.
“From the outside — media and even friends and family — the expectations are probably a bit lower,” Weegar said of Calgary’s outlook. “But there’s no reason to think that we can’t make playoffs and we can’t be a good team (with) that underdog mentality.
“You never know.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept 17, 2024.
Jose Maria Celestino da Costa was named vice-president and head of soccer operations while Marianne Brooks was appointed vice-president of partnerships, Kelly Shouldice as vice-president of brand and content and Joyce Sou as vice-president of finance and business operations.
The new six-team women’s pro league is set to kick off in April.
“Their unique expertise and leadership are crucial as we lay the foundation for not just a successful league in Canada, but one that stands among the top sports leagues in the world,” NSL president Christina Litz said in a statement. “By investing in top-tier talent and infrastructure, the Northern Super League is committed to creating a league that will elevate the game and set new standards for women’s professional soccer globally.”
Da Costa will oversee all on-field matters, including officiating. His resume includes stints with Estoril Praia, a men’s first-division team in Portugal, and the Portuguese Soccer Federation, where he helped develop the Portuguese women’s league.
Brooks spent a decade with Canucks Sports & Entertainment, working in “partnership sales and retention efforts” for the Vancouver Canucks, Vancouver Warriors, and Rogers Arena. Most recently, she served as senior director of account management at StellarAlgo, a software company that helps pro sports teams connect with their fans
Shouldice has worked for Corus Entertainment, the Canadian Football League, and most recently as vice-president of Content and Communications at True North Sports & Entertainment, where she managed original content as well as business and hockey communications.
Sou, who was involved in the league’s initial launch, will oversee financial planning, analysis and the league’s expansion strategy in her new role.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 17, 2024.
