So who is this Greg Pocock fella?
Well, with all due respect to former Prince George Cougars owner Rick Brodsky, he's the anti-Brodsky. At least in terms of being local.
To Brodsky, Prince George was just a place where he happened to have a business venture. Even for the period of time he lived in the city, it was never his home. He was rarely seen at the Multiplex/CN Centre on game nights and, most of the time, didn't even check the messages left on his office phone.
Quite simply, Brodsky was almost never here. He was happier at his other residences, either in Kelowna or Arizona.
The fact Brodsky was an absentee owner is one of the reasons why, as a business, the Cougars failed under him. After so many frustrating and banner-free seasons, fans of the Western Hockey League team grew tired of the lack of success and equally weary of putting money in the wallet of a guy who wasn't invested in the community. As a result, the seats at CN Centre grew emptier and emptier.
Now, as was celebrated Tuesday at the same arena, the Cougars are in new hands. Pocock, who has called Prince George home for more than 45 years, is part of a new ownership group that includes locals Ernest Ouellet, Ray Fortier and John Pateman and former Cougars players Dan Hamhuis and Eric Brewer, who now skate in the National Hockey League for the Vancouver Canucks and Tampa Bay Lightning respectively.
The 53-year-old Pocock is the managing partner/team president and he's so passionate about Prince George that he may have water from the Nechako and Fraser rivers running through his veins. He and his partners - who also have deep roots in the city - are exactly what the Cougars needed in order to survive and hopefully thrive again. For years, an alienated fan base had been crying out for local ownership and now that those fans have gotten their wish, they are vowing to return to the rink. The task of Pocock and the rest of the organization will be to ensure that actually happens.
Pocock - a man who loves and understands Prince George and loves and understands hockey - is the perfect figurehead for the Cougars franchise.
Some tidbits and points of interest about Pocock.
He arrived in Prince George in 1968 when his father, Bill, accepted a transfer with Finning and moved the family here from Dawson Creek. Growing up, Pocock attended Highland elementary school, Lakewood junior secondary and graduated from Prince George secondary in 1979. He went on to study at the University of British Columbia (pre-commerce) and the University of Calgary (business).
As a kid, Pocock was a hockey nut. He started playing at the age of six or seven and, at a time when the Coliseum was Prince George's only indoor rink, remembers practicing on the outdoor surface at Carney Hill.
"It was brutal," he said. "That was in the days when it was really cold, and they had a little, tiny trailer there. Nobody got dressed there. You came with your hockey gear on and the parents or a coach would tie your skates up for you if you were a little guy and then they would all sit in their cars with their engines running to try and stay warm. It was a different world back then."
Pocock moved up through the minor hockey system and skated at the rep level for two or three years. But, as a smallish player who tried to be a physical defenceman, he had - by his own admission - limited success. His favourite coach was Jeff Rowland, a longtime local hockey figure who was also the city's fire chief for almost a decade before his retirement in 2011.
"He was young and fun and was kind of a quiet guy," Pocock said. "He wasn't a yeller or a screamer and I thought he had a good balance between the strategic and technical side, as well as maintaining some fun. He was a guy we had a lot of respect for and, to this day, if I see him, it's 'Hey coach, how are you doing?' He's a good guy."
Later in life, Pocock stayed in the game in a coaching capacity. As a Hockey Canada certified coach, he worked with players in the College Heights Community Association, the Prince George Minor Hockey Association and in the B.C. Best-Ever program.
Pocock and his wife, high school sweetheart Barbara, have three kids - Jenna, Allison and Brad - and all were local hockey players as well. At various points in time, Pocock coached Jenna and Brad, but not Allison.
Allison, now living in Nanaimo, recently finished her first year of coaching and was named the Nanaimo Minor Hockey Association's coach of the year.
In the business world, Pocock is president and sole owner of Prince George Hydro Mechanical, which provides industrial cleaning services around Western Canada. Under Pocock's leadership, the company has been a success story and has routinely given back to Prince George. P.G. Hydro Mechanical was the corporate sponsor of the Rotoract waterspray park and was a driving force behind the construction of the Southridge outdoor rink in the College Heights area. And Pocock's involvement in the rink is ongoing.
"My company provides all the equipment for clearing the snow and we maintain all the nets up there," he said. "It's kind of a nice little escape for me to go up there and blow snow for a couple hours in the evening when we have a good dump."
One of Pocock's comments on Tuesday was that the Cougars are in Prince George to stay. In that respect, they're exactly like their new president.
"Why would you want to be anywhere else?" he said. "Prince George is a fantastic place to live. I can't think of anywhere better in the world to have raised my kids. There is every opportunity available to people in the Prince George area and the nice thing is, with the cost of living, you can afford to live here and if you want to go down to Vancouver and experience the big-city life, you can do that for a weekend. You can afford to go down there and have a good time. In the early days, we had to go down there to get NHL hockey and now WHL hockey is available to us here. It's one of the reasons why I think it's important this team did stay in Prince George."
For Cougars fans past and present, it's time to let out a collective cheer. There has never been more "Prince George" in the Prince George Cougars. And that's the first step in rebuilding a franchise that was once the envy of the entire WHL.
