(Huskie Athletics/University of Saskatchewan)

By Ian Gustafson

Working to succeed

Offseason preparation in motion for men’s hockey staff

Apr 28, 2022 | 11:07 AM

The offseason can be a crucial time for many teams as they add to or reshape their roster for the upcoming season.

The University of Saskatchewan Huskie’s men’s hockey teams season didn’t end the way they hoped losing to the Calgary Dinos in the first round of the playoffs. But the coaching staff has been hard at work preparing for next season.

Associate coach Brandin Cote told huskieFAN that at this point they don’t know who all could be returning to the roster but know for sure they’re losing both fifth year players, Wyatt Johnson and Carter Folk.

“Those are pretty big holes we have to fill there. They’re really character guys, experience in the room, leadership and the whole package,” Cote said. “So, we’re looking for that for sure. And there’s a few other guys that potentially, with their fourth year of eligibility, we just kind of got to wait and see. But overall we don’t have a ton of turnover but at the same time what we alluded to at the end of the year is we just want to continue to get better and get deeper as a group overall.”

The coaching staff has been busy recruiting this off-season. Cote said they’ve been communicating with players across the Western Hockey League and Junior A. He said he’s been to Red Deer, Calgary, Edmonton and in Saskatchewan to Saskatoon and Prince Albert to watch some games.

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“We’ve got the ability to watch online but it’s really good to see in person if you can and we’ve been able to do that quite a bit here the last little bit. There’s a lot of good guys that are potentially available to be Huskies but we’re just going through that process like every team is at this point and we just want to find the best people and players we can that are going to fit into our program,” he added.

Some people may think coaching staff’s have a lot of free time in the off-season but Cote explained it’s quite the opposite. It’s a different type of work, including administrative tasks, a lot of pre-planning for training camp, pre-season play, exhibition games and, of course, recruiting. It’s also important to keep in touch with the players already in the program and keeping tabs on what they’re doing during the summer months for jobs or spring courses at the university.

Cote said last seasons playoff loss was disappointing and whenever you don’t get to the level of success that you expect and want to achieve it leaves a sore spot.

“With us as a new staff coming in, we wanted to continue the tradition that [former head coach] Dave Adolph had put in place here. He had done a great job of recruiting and obviously creating the program that it is today. And that can be a tough act to follow obviously and so we came in with the mindset that we were going to put our own little stamp on everything and we were fortunate we had a great group of people, a really solid group of players to work with.”

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Ian.Gustafson@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @IanGustafson12