Prince George Cougars general manager Todd Harkins will be heading to Switzerland next week for two reasons.
One is the fact his 17-year-old son Jansen will be skating for Team Canada at the world under-18 hockey championship.
Being a hockey dad at such a high-profile tournament is one thing but the elder Harkins will also be there to try to find a couple of Europeans good enough to become impact players in the WHL with the Cougars next season.
The Cougars' current imports, defenceman Tomas Andrlik and winger David Soltes are both moving on to pro hockey in Europe next season, which leaves two holes to fill. The 10-team world U-18 tournament will give Harkins a good opportunity to see some of the younger talent available when the Cougars announce their selections in the 60-team CHL import draft on June 30.
"The first-round pick we get has to be a player who can play and compete in the league and will help our team get back into playoffs," said Harkins. "We want to try to get away from picking two (import) players in the same draft year because when you're picking 100th, usually the players are not the best. We want to make sure our first-round pick is a good one and then we can draft one every year."
The Cougars will also lose graduating forwards Jari Erricson and Zach Pochiro but otherwise they don't have a lot of holes to fill. Their depth chart is as full as it's been in many seasons and includes five 20-year-olds - defencemen Josh Connolly, Joseph Carvalho and Kirk Bear and forwards Chase Witala and Aaron Macklin - fighting for three overage positions. The Cougars have five returning 19-year-olds - goalies Ty Edmonds and Patrick Gora, defenceman Sam Ruopp and forwards Tyler Mrkonjic, Colby McAuley and Jordan Ross, and have eight players in a deep 18-year-old talent pool - defencemen Tate Olson and Shane Collins and forwards Jansen Harkins, Brad Morrison, Jared Bethune, Haydn Hopkins, Aaron Boyd and Brogan O'Brien.
Goalie Tavin Grant and winger Kody McDonald will be 17-year-olds next season and centre Justin Almeida and defenceman Max Martin, who both impressed in WHL auditions, could catch on as 16-year-olds.
"The emphasis is on off-seasoning training, and to come back and give yourself a chance to make our hockey club you've got to be in the best shape," said head coach Mark Holick. "We can return 13 or 14 forwards but we have to make way for some young guys along the way here. I think the guys returning know what to expect and know what our staff would like out of them and that certainly can help the new guys coming in. We're in position now where it's not just handed to anybody."
The Cougars made the playoffs for the first time in four seasons but lost in five games to the Victoria Royals, a series which gave most of the Cougars their first WHL playoff experience. A 12-game losing streak in January forced the Cougars to scramble the last six weeks of the season just to make it into the postseason. But once they were in, aside from Victoria's 3-0 win in Game 4 in Prince George, the Cougars came close to winning all the other games.
"I thought that series could have gone either way," said Holick. "They never were out of it, they always stayed positive. I liked their mindset on the bench and they refused to throw in that towel, they just kept digging.
"The first two games in Victoria I thought we deserved better and easily could have been coming home up 2-0. Holding serve was important and losing Game 4 hurt. We played an excellent Game 5. It would have been nice to come back here for Game 6, and in Game 7 anything can happen."
The Cougars did have their special teams working for them a lot better in the last month of the season and in the playoffs. On the power play, they went 8-for-27 in the series against the Royals for a 29.6 per cent success rate, fourth out of 16 playoff teams. They took just 7.2 minutes in penalties per game (15th lowest out of 16) and allowed just three power-play goals against in 15 Royals' chances in the series, an 80 per cent kill rate.
But there's no denying their special teams play in the regular season hurt the bottom line and contributed to their disappointing 31-36-2-3 record. The Cougars had the worst penalty-killing stats in the league, killing off just 71.9 per cent of their opponents' opportunities, and led the WHL in penalty minutes (1,310 total, 18.2 per game). The Cats' power play ranked 19th out of 22 teams, scoring on just 15.9 per cent of their chances.
While some of the blame for that has to fall on the coaches - Holick and his assistants Mike Hengen and Roman Vopat - the players are ultimately responsible and their youth and inexperience weighed against them.
"That was a thorn in my ass all season," said Holick, who has two years and an option left on his contract. "We got off to a bad start to the season with our PK and it just never recovered and that was something that cost us some points. We were undisciplined a lot of times, especially early in the season when we did some silly things. As a coaching staff we spoke about it all season long and in our meetings at the end we vowed that's something we'll work our asses off to get better at."
Harkins and his scouting staff have their work cut out for them over the next month leading up to the WHL bantam draft, May 7 in Calgary. The Cougars will have the eighth overall selection from the pool of players born in 2000. Harkins has been at the draft table with the Cougars the past two years, but this will be his first as the team's general manager.
He'll be in Winnipeg this weekend for the Manitoba under-16 camp. While he's in Switzerland next week, the Cougars' U.S.-based scouts, Bill Horton and Ben Stromberg, will be at the U.S. under-16 camp in Los Angeles and Bob Simmonds and Jason Gordon will be in Regina for the Saskatchewan bantam camp. Harkins will be in Salmon Arm for the B.C. Cup under-16 tournament April 23 and will attend the Alberta Cup tournament the following weekend in Canmore.
One of the B.C. players expected to go in the higher rounds is Jonas Harkins, the youngest son of the Cats' GM. The six-foot-one, 190-pound stay-at-home defenceman played this past season for North Shore Winter Club Winterhawks, who won the Western Canadian bantam championship last Sunday in Winnipeg.
"We'll evaluate him with the rest of the boys and make the decision based on what the needs of the team are and we'll take the best player available," said Harkins. "I've seen some draft lists and he could be anywhere between the second and fourth round. He's kind of been in Jansen's shadow and it's important that he finds his own path, but I won't pass him up if I think he's the best player available."
