Dan Hamhuis has waited 10 years to see the Prince George Cougars blossom into real contenders for the Western Hockey League championship.
As a partner in the EDGEPRo Sports & Entertainment Ltd., ownership group that bought the Cougars in 2014, Hamhuis knew it was going to take time to bring a winner to the city and that he and co-owners Eric Brewer, Ernest Ouellet, John Pateman, Greg Pocock and Raymond Fortier would eventually be rewarded for investing their hard-earned cash in keeping WHL hockey in Prince George.
That time is now.
The Cougars, having set Prince George franchise records for wins and points while winning their first Western Conference championship, are digging in for an extended playoff run, fresh from eliminating the Spokane Chiefs in a four-game sweep.
The Cats will be well rested when they step on the ice at CN Centre Friday to start the second round to take on the Kelowna Rockets.
Years of growing pains and losing seasons that brought in high draft picks, combined with a series of impactful trades and an under-the-radar free agent signing (hello Joshua Ravensbergen) are now paying off for Cougars and their fans, who can’t wait to find out if this is indeed their year to win it all.
“What I’ve noticed over the last three years is the growth in all of them, the coaches have done a wonderful job of instilling winning habits,” said Hamhuis. “They‘ve got a lot of high-end skill to put the puck in the net and it’s the little things they’ve learned in preventing odd-man rushes and knowing how to win board battles in the right places.”
Hamhuis knows that feeling of going on an extended playoff run. In the 2000 playoffs, his second season playing defence for the Cougars, they got to the third round before Spokane ended their season in a five-game series. Two years later, Hamhuis won the Four Broncos Memorial Trophy as league MVP before he left to begin his brilliant NHL career with Nashville, Vancouver and Dallas, a road that led to Olympic gold in 2014.
He also knows what it’s like to play in front of big Prince George audience. Regular season or playoffs, it didn’t matter, it was always a packed house when there was a game in the building formerly known as the Prince George Multiplex. The buzz over this year’s team has brought attendance back and that has to be satisfying for the owners who backed the team and lost money through all those years when empty seats overwhelmingly outnumbered the fans who stuck with the team.
“It’s fun to see it back like this, the players have had such a great season and it’s exciting to watch,” said Hamhuis, who sat in the press box with his family from Smithers for Game 2 of the Spokane series.
“You can see why people are out watching, it’s exciting every night and I think as an ownership group this is kind of what we’ve been building for, for a lot of years. It took a little longer than what we initially hoped, but we’re happy to be here now where the team is doing really well on the ice and the city of Prince George is excited about the team and coming out to watch.
“We had to learn as we went and figured it out and we’ve got some great people in the organization that have got us here. The players, we have a really good group, I mean, not just good hockey players but they’re great guys too and that adds up to being where we are now.”
Hamhuis, a veteran of 1,148 regular season NHL games and 68 playoff games, knows what quality coaching can do to advance a team and the Cougars have two guys with NHL experience working for them behind the bench. Mark Lamb, is now in his 22nd season as a coach and his associate Jim Playfair, has 30 years of experience teaching the game.
Playfair went from a job as an associate coach of the Edmonton Oilers to coaching junior hockey for the first time with his current gig as a Cougars associate. It’s no fluke the Cougars special teams – power play and penalty killing - are among the best in the league.
“Those players are pretty lucky to have those guys behind the bench and you can see the effect that they’ve had on the players,” said Hamhuis.
“They’ve improved so much as individuals and as team, so many of them have had career years. The experience that Mark and Jim bring, they can tell stories of players they’ve coached before and they know what it takes to be at that level and the players have really responded well to that.”
