Adam Foote’s credentials on the ice are not in question. He won two Stanley Cups with the Colorado Avalanche over 19 NHL seasons and was a three-time Olympian at Nagano 1998, Salt Lake City 2002, Turin 2006 with the gold medal from Salt Lake City.
But it is behind the bench in the Western Hockey League where the 47 year old must now state his case, continuing tonight against the visiting Victoria Royals at Prospera Place.
Foote replaced two-season Kelowna head coach Jason Smith after the Smith got off to a disappointing 4-10 start this season. They are not used to that in the Okanagan.
Despite never having been a head coach before this, Foote seems has the Rockets heading in the right direction and is 6-3-1 since taking over the club. The Rockets (10-13-1) are fourth in the B.C. Division and the Royals (12-6) are second behind the Vancouver Giants (15-6-2). Both the Rockets and Royals come into tonight on two-game winning streaks.
Since Ryan Huska’s last season on the Kelowna bench, the Rockets have had four different head coaches in the past five seasons — Dan Lambert, Brad Ralph, Smith and now Foote. That is a strange amount of upheaval for a usually-stable franchise that has only missed the playoffs once in 23 seasons since coming to the Okanagan and which still consistently has finished at the top or near the top of the B.C. Division during the coaching carousel of the past five seasons. That is thanks to GM Bruce Hamilton and his scouting staff.
Foote inherits a team he knows on a personal level. His son Cal Foote, a first-round draft pick of the Tampa Bay Lightning and currently in the AHL, moved on from the Rockets last season with a stellar graduating class that included Dillon Dube, Kole Lind and Carsen Twarynski.
Yet, Hamilton restocks better than anybody in the WHL and the Rockets began this season with five players listed by Central Scouting for the 2019 NHL draft, tying with the London Knights for the most among CHL teams. Included in that list is another of Foote’s sons — projected Rockets 2019 NHL first-rounder Nolan Foote. This is the core group the Rockets will build around for the 2020 Memorial Cup, when Kelowna hosts the CHL major-junior championship tournament. The team’s slow start this season became a talking point around the league. So suddenly Smith was out and Adam Foote was in on Oct 23.
A quirk is that two of Smith’s four wins this season had come in a sweep of the Royals on Blanshard Street. But that wasn’t enough to save his job.
“I thought the Rockets were playing well and competed and played hard before the change. But the record was not great,” said Royals head coach Dan Price.
The Royals travel down to the Langley Events Centre on Saturday to meet the Giants, another team that has known bench turbulence since the Don Hay era. Michael Dyck replaced Jason McKee this season to become the fifth Vancouver head coach in five seasons.
Price realizes there is little or no job stability in his profession. Marc Habscheid, now guiding the CHL-leading Prince Albert Raiders, was one and done after the Royals moved to the Island from Chilliwack in 2011-12. But there has been more of an orderly transition since. Dave Lowry left the Royals’ bench of his own accord after five seasons to become assistant coach in the NHL with the Los Angeles Kings. Lowry’s assistant Price, groomed as Lowry’s heir apparent, is in his second season as Royals head coach.
“In our profession, you are grateful when you are working, especially with great players and a great organization around you,” said Price.
Meanwhile, Price said the last two victories over the Regina Pats and Giants were because the Royals again began laying on the body.
“We were much more physical in our last two games than we were in the previous two against Spokane,” he said.
“That was the difference.”
Price added that previously-injured 20-year-old forward Dante Hannoun is probable for this weekend’s road set, which should help lift a troubled Royals power play that has gone 1-10 over the last two games. With the likes of Kaid Oliver and D-Jay Jerome, they have the makings of a power-play engine, but were missing the ignition switch which Hannoun provides.
