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Why Habscheid, Campese and company need to return next season

Mar 26, 2015 | 11:47 AM

When Sawyer Lange graduated from the WHL after Saturday’s 5-1 win over the Regina Pats, he ended a storied four-year career with the Prince Albert Raiders.

But in Lange’s four years with the same team, he played under four different head coaches—four.

Bruno Campese started 2011-2012 season as the head coach, but relinquished those duties to Steve Young in Nov. 2011. Then Cory Clouston was brought in for the 2013-2014 season and was fired this Halloween before being replaced by Marc Habscheid on Nov. 1.

It’s really tough to have success in this league when you have a new head coach every year—let alone two mid-season coaching changes in the last four years.

It’s time for the Raiders to stabilize and find a group that can stick around, plant some roots and grow.

They may already have that group in place in Habscheid, associate coach Dave Manson and assistant Kelly Guard—with whom Habscheid won a Memorial Cup with the Kelowna Rockets in 2004.

Habscheid’s hiring was a breath of fresh air that flowed through the Art Hauser Centre. If you ran into his predecessor Clouston in the hallway, the most you would get is a quick nod and a ‘hi.’ In stark contrast, Habscheid went out of his way to create strong bonds between himself, his players, his staff and the community.

Habscheid’s favourite way to do this was to joke, chirp and rib—sometimes you, sometimes himself. His Raiders debut on Nov. 1 was a win, 5-2 over the Saskatoon Blades, despite arriving in Prince Albert earlier that day. Just before the opening faceoff, he shared a laugh with then-Raiders forward Gage Quinney, joking that he couldn’t read his game notes because he didn’t bring reading glasses.

It should be said that it took a while before Habscheid’s impact was seen on the scoresheets. After the Nov. 1 victory, the Raiders lost their following four games, then went 3-12 in their first 15 games after the holiday break.

But the team really started to rally around Habscheid as he hammered home the narrative of restoring ‘the old Raider culture.’ The team finished 10-6-0-2 in their last 18 as the team battled to get into the playoffs and were 7-2-0-1 in their last 10 games.

Imagine what the coaching staff could do if their roster isn’t replacing itself every couple of weeks. Every junior team goes through significant annual turnover, but the 2014-2015 Raiders take the cake.

There was massive turnover in the Raiders’ roster—some by design, some by surprise, some because the Edmonton Oilers forced them to. 

The Raiders departed with 13 players from their roster that started the regular season. Leon Draisaitl, Josh Morrissey, Gage Quinney, Ryan Coghlan, Tomas Andrlik, Calder Brooks all departed the team in various trades. Cory Millette was acquired in a trade from the Saskatoon Blades, then traded away to the Seattle Thunderbirds.

Dakota Conroy and Colton McCarthy quit the Raiders in October and resurfaced in the BCHL. Marcus Messier was acquired as a free agent to replace Conroy, but went home to tend to family matters a few weeks later. Curtis Roach and Ben Verrall were reassigned to Junior A, Dylan Williamson was reassigned to Junior B and put an asterisk beside Hunter Warner, who underwent season-ending shoulder surgery.

Incoming were Jesse Lees, Austin Glover, Kris Schmidli, Colton Heffley, Dalton Yorke in three different deals from the Kelowna Rockets. Raymond Grewal came in from the Prince George Cougars, Luke Coleman called up from Midget AAA and finished the last 14 games with the Raiders. That’s a whole lot of ‘hey, here’s how we do stuff here’ meetings.

Every junior team has to go through a lot of turnover every year but slap me silly Sidney, that’s a lot.

“I think when you look back on it, the only thing that was consistent throughout the year was change. We went through a lot,” said Habscheid. “The players went through a lot, they went through different coaches and then the trades, you’re trading two marquee players.”

“The year was marked with change.”

If you ask Habscheid whether or not he’s coming back, he’ll tell you he doesn’t know.

Habscheid was signed for the conclusion of this season and would need to sign a new contract to continue with the Raiders. Manson, Guard and Campese can all return if the Raiders exercise the option on their contracts.

That brings me to Campese’s renewal.

Fans have been calling for Campese’s head for years, and those voices may get louder even if the team just exercises his option for one more season. The fans do have a point, the team has only won two playoff games in three playoff berths since Campese was hired in 2007. I talked about the positives and negatives of Campese’s regime last year, a lot of that still stands up today.

Although he made those trades to cause a lot of this year’s changes, the ‘Draisaitl snowball effect’ can be blamed for some of the departures like Draisaitl himself, Dakota Conroy and Josh Morrissey. Some were just plain bad luck like Warner and Messier.

But if he’s replaced, then a new general will very likely hire his own coaching staff. Will all the change, that’s the last thing the Raiders need right now.

Avoiding a coaching change shouldn’t be the only reason the Raiders should pick up the option on Campese—he made the most out of some difficult situations this year. Tell me you could have gotten more than Kris Schmidli, Dalton Yorke, a first rounder and two fourth round picks (one being conditional) in exchange for half a year of Leon Draisaitl—knowing you could only deal with the Kelowna Rockets.

The haul from the Josh Morrissey deal could be quite fruitful as well, 65 per cent of fans like the move. Of course, Campese would rather keep both and make a run for it, but he certainly got the most value back.

You can pray for a new GM and a new brass if you want. But if a new regime comes in and does what they want—all the trades, turnover and turmoil the team went through this year will be for nothing.

jdandrea@panow.com

On Twitter: @jeff_dandrea