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Cats fire Schoneck |
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Written by JIM SWANSON, Citizen Sports Editor
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Monday, 01 December 2008 |
As first reported on princegeorgecitizen.com on Monday, the Prince George Cougars have fired head coach Drew Schoneck.
The 35-year-old native of Abbey, Sask., was in his third season on the bench for the Cats, and was in the final year of a two-year contract.
The move comes after two lopsided weekend home losses -- Saturday’s 7-1 drubbing by the Regina Pats, and Sunday’s 7-3 setback against a Saskatoon Blades team that is in first place in the East Division and has won nine straight road games.
Schoneck’s replacement, to no one’s surprise, is Wade Klippenstein, a former WHL head coach who has served as both the assistant coach and assistant general manager of the Cougars since August of 2007.
“We all wanted this to work out, but things started piling up and other things started falling through the cracks,” said Cougars general manager Dallas Thompson, who could end up assisting Klippenstein on the bench. The basic plan, not finalized, is to have part-time assistant Brent Arsenault, a local elementary school principal and the former head coach of the BCHL Spruce Kings, help out at home games and selected road games that mesh with his schedule.
“Like I said to the players today, everything you do translates to the ice -- whether it’s giving that little extra in workouts or in practice, or away from the rink and I think we fell short a little bit there.
“Wade is the head coach until we tell him he’s not. We’ve talked about this before, this isn’t the best time to be looking for a head coach, and the next coach we have here we want that to be someone long-term and someone who can get us to where we want to be. I thought we were heading down that direction, but we had to make this change.”
The players, who were given a day off, were informed at a meeting Monday afternoon.
The Cougars have a record of 10-18-0-1, registering just four wins in their last 22 outings after a promising 6-1 start that gave the team a one-week stay in the CHL Top 10 rankings.
The Cougars are on a five-game losing streak, four of those at home on this current seven-game homestand.
Schoneck was told of the move just before noon on Monday in a meeting with Thompson, held in Schoneck’s now former office in the bowels of CN Centre. Schoneck, a junior teammate of Thompson’s with the Tacoma Rockets, was not taken by surprise.
“We hadn’t played well for awhile, so no, it wasn’t a real surprise,” said Schoneck, who plans to return to the Tri-City area where he and wife Lindsay, who have a three-year-old son, own a home. Lindsay is from Kennewick, and Schoneck both played and coached with the Tri-City Americans.
“We were working our hardest to try and get things turned around, and unfortunately we couldn’t. We’ve had some lopsided losses at home, and a change had to be made.”
The team’s dreadful Alberta road swing, with one win in eight games, was the beginning of the end.
“We didn’t play well on that trip and we knew it was going to be a tough trip,” said Schoneck.
“We came home and faced some pretty good clubs and we never really could get ourselves back on track.”
Looking back, Schoneck can understand how it could’ve been suggested by fans and media that the players had quit on him.
“It was a question I had asked, yet I saw the team quit (against Regina) and then come back with a better effort (on Sunday against Saskatoon),” he said.
“We had asked earlier if we were losing the guys, but we watched how they worked in practice or in workouts, and I didn’t see them stopping. This team is going through a funk and they have to work their way out of it.”
Thompson said it was the ‘quit’ factor that made the final decision.
“Yeah, there were signs,” said the GM, “but I think we have a pretty good group in there that wouldn’t have gone so far as to quit on the coaches totally. But there were signs.”
Schoneck becomes the second coaching casualty in the WHL this season. Rich Kromm was removed in Portland when new ownership took over that struggling franchise.
Klippenstein was the head coach of the Prince Albert Raiders for parts of two seasons, and Schoneck was his assistant.
The friendship between Thompson and Schoneck made it a difficult move for both sides.
“It wasn’t an easy situation, and I know Drew wasn’t surprised,” said Thompson, describing the meeting.
“We had a good talk, we had a couple tears, then we shook hands and had a hug... now we have to move forward.”
Schoneck, who leaves the Cougars with a record of 57-90-4-4, said he expects to remain on friendly terms with Thompson. Schoneck joined the Cougars as associate coach in November of 2006 when the team fired Mike Vandekamp and Stewart Malgunas. The team had a 5-8-0-2 record at that point, and a lop-sided home-ice loss combined with off-ice issues led to that decision.
“(Dallas) has been a friend of mine going on 17 years now, and that obviously makes it tough,” said Schoneck, who didn’t hesitate to say he still wants to coach junior hockey.
“There was some emotion on both sides, and I know it wasn’t easy for him to do that. It wasn’t easy on me either, but the nature of being in the hockey business is that things like this can happen.”
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Last Updated ( Monday, 01 December 2008 )
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