Medicine Hat Cubs head coach JD Gaetan (left) sends players off for another drill during practice Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2016 at the Kinplex. The team has decided to move on without its entire coaching staff from last season.--NEWS FILE PHOTO SEAN ROONEY
rmccracken@medicinehatnews.com@MHNMcCracken
The Medicine Hat Cubs are moving on without JD Gaetan and Steve Leipert.
The local co-coaches spent the past four seasons helping rebuild the Cubs junior B program, closing out their stint with back-to-back trips to Game 7 of the Heritage Junior Hockey League’s second round. But with their contracts expiring at the end of the season, Cubs general manager and director of hockey operations Dave Kowalchuk made the decision to take a different route.
“When we came on board here a couple of years ago we had a vision, and that vision is to be in the league final, to be in the championship every year. We’re very, very close, and we just felt we need to go in a different direction,” said Kowalchuk, adding assistant coaches Dylan Gejdos and Kit Clarke have also been released. “Nothing against the coaching staff, we just want an opportunity to bring in someone else and see what they can do in helping us get to that next level. I have full respect for Steve and JD, and the assistant coaches. We’re just going to move forward at this time and hope for the best, but they certainly did an amazing job the last couple of years … We only had eight wins their first year and every year they improved – eight, to 12, to 17, to 25. They did really well.”
The Cubs initially announced the decision in a Twitter post last week. The tweet thanked Gaetan and Leipert for their work with the team over the past four years, though it did not explicitly state they were no longer with the club.
Gaetan did not respond to request for comment.
While the team has yet to make an official posting for the newly vacated positions, Kowalchuk says he has been in touch with a few prospective bench bosses and is on the lookout for an assistant general manager as well.
The Cubs also recently announced Hatter Troy Sandau has joined the team as head scout.
“I’ve been trying to find somebody locally for the last couple of years who is around the game a lot,” said Kowalchuk. “Troy has been busy with the Hockey Hounds as president, he’s scouted for a couple of different agencies and he’s with Drayton Valley now. He’s a good, solid guy who can help me with recruiting. He’s got tons of contacts like I do and we’re just going to try to find the right guys.”
As with most organizations, COVID-19 has created a number of challenges for the Cubs – from attracting prospects and a new coaching staff, to bringing in sponsorships and holding season-ticket drives. Kowalchuk added the team’s operating budget routinely exceeds the league average, largely due to travel expenses, and as a result he says the Cubs will need to “get creative” moving forward.
“We’re the furthest away from all the other teams. We’re constantly on a bus. If Airdrie is in Cochrane, the boys drive themselves. Our budget is way over $100,000, where most team budgets are maybe $40,000 per year,” he said. “There are a lot of hurting businesses and we rely on a lot of sponsorship and stuff like that, so we’re going to have to do some creative strategic planning on how we’re going to go about our budget.
“We’re going to have to really sit down as a group and figure out where to tweak some costs and expenditures and stuff like that, get creative on ways of bringing in income.”
Kowalchuk has also been organizing the Western Canada Junior Hockey Prospects Camp for the past few years – which provides the Cubs with an opportunity to scout prospective players while also bringing in staff from junior A, B and post-secondary teams across the region. The camp was slated for May but has been pushed back to July due to the pandemic, and could end up cancelled if social distancing measures continue into the summer.
“Right now we don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Kowalchuk. “That’s why Troy is going to be another key guy because he’s got contacts in junior A with Drayton Valley, so hopefully we can get a relationship with the junior A team and work that way.”
Thankfully, says Kowalchuk, the HJHL is still hoping to go ahead with the 2020-21 season as scheduled, and Medicine Hat should retain its role as hosts of the provincial championship after having this year’s tournament cancelled due to COVID-19.
“There is a really good possibility, like a 99 per cent chance, that we’re going to host provincials in 2021,” he said. “That’s a nice route that we’re able to utilize to recruit players, and I think it will help with the recruitment of coaching.”
