New Jets assistant coach ready to soar

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This article was published 16/07/2024 (453 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dean Chynoweth was born into a hockey family, but he was undecided what career path he would pursue into his teenage years.

His father, Ed, was the longtime commissioner of the Western Hockey League while his older brother Jeff has a long resume of jobs in hockey operations, including stints as an assistant general manager, general manager, president and franchise owner in the WHL.

Part of Dean’s early education included listening intently to conversations his father and brother were having on the way to the rink, where Jeff was the stick boy for the Calgary Wranglers back in the late 1970s.

“I would literally sit in the backseat and listen to them talk. My brother was very smart, statistic-wise and followed the old Hockey News and everything,” Dean said in an interview last month at the 2024 NHL Draft in Las Vegas. “I would sit in the back and throw out a comment and they’d kind of look at me like ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

“I liked baseball and played all of the sports at school and it actually wasn’t until I was about 14 that Medicine Hat came calling that I realized I might have an opportunity. We were always around hockey and he passion started to develop through that. Then at 14, I had to make a decision about baseball or hockey and figured it would be pretty tough to make it as an Albertan in baseball by going down south (to university).”

The decision proved to be a wise one for Chynoweth, who is now an assistant coach on Scott Arniel’s staff with the Winnipeg Jets.

The Calgary product joined the Medicine Hat Tigers of the WHL as a 17 year old in 1985 and was part of a run that included three consecutive trips to the league win, two league championships and consecutive Memorial Cup victories (1987, 1988).

Chynoweth, a hard-nosed defenceman, was chosen in the first round, 13th overall, by the New York Islanders and captained the Tigers to that Memorial Cup title in 1988 before turning pro the following season.

During the 1989-90 campaign, Chynoweth was limited to six games with the Islanders due to injury in what was unfortunately a sign of things to come.

“I had my struggles with injuries at the NHL level, being up and down from the minors and eventually had to retire from concussions,” said Chynoweth, now 55. “They documented 13, but they weren’t all necessarily documented back then because they didn’t do the study yet. My last year with the Boston Bruins was the first year that the NHL put in the concussion protocol. Harvard did the study for us and that was the first year I ever did baseline testing. I played that year and suffered three more concussions in that season and met with some specialists and they just said, ‘enough.’”

Chynoweth wasn’t sure what he would do next after he retired as a player, but Winnipeg’s own Butch Goring offered him a job as an assistant coach and assistant general manager with the Utah Grizzlies of the International Hockey League.

“I was going to go back to school at that point and I decided that ‘you know what, I love the game,’” said Chynoweth, who won a Calder Cup with the Capital District Islanders as a player in 1990.

“I’ve had a lot of experiences with coaching and development and I wanted to get into that.”

What a ride it’s been.

After two seasons with the Grizzlies in the IHL, Chynoweth went back to his roots in the WHL, spending time with the Seattle Thunderbirds and Swift Current Broncos as head coach.

Following three seasons as an assistant coach with the Islanders under Scott Gordon and Jack Capuano, Chynoweth spent the next four seasons as a head coach in the American Hockey League for Colorado Avalanche prospects, with the Lake Erie Monsters and San Antonio Rampage.

He was out of coaching for the 2016-17 season before the Vancouver Giants of the WHL hired him as an associate coach in the summer of 2017.

That led to him joining the Carolina Hurricanes as an assistant coach in 2018, sparking a run of six consecutive seasons behind an NHL bench.

“Had a few crossroad moments of ‘what am I going to do?’” Chynoweth admitted, noting the season with the Giants helped reignite his passion for coaching. “With the years behind me, it gave me a lot of things to draw on and a lot of observations of how the game is changing, how the players are changing. The game was evolving and you had to adapt. I say that because to me, the best coach I ever had that epitomizes that was Al Arbour.

“He coached through three decades. When those (Islanders) players thought he was an (expletive). By the time we had him three decades later, he was like a grandpa or dad that you didn’t want to let down. So, you saw an evolution.”

Prior to his death, Arbour became a mentor for Chynoweth.

“While he was alive and when I got into the coaching ranks, he was a great resource for me,” said Chynoweth. “He would pick up the phone and he would come to the games when we played in Tampa. It was a neat process to be able to pull from different areas and resources to try and continue to grow as a coach.”

That growth includes time as an assistant coach with Team Canada at the world junior hockey championship and head coach of Canada’s U18 entry in 2003-04.

In the AHL, Chynoweth worked with blue-liners like Tyson Barrie and Nikita Zadorov and when he joined the Hurricanes, the defence corps included Dougie Hamilton, Brady Skjei, Jaccob Slavin and Brett Pesce.

This season, he’ll be responsible for the Jets’ defence corps and will also be running a penalty killing unit that is looking for considerable improvement.

“It’s exciting because it starts with building a relationship, where you’re getting to know one another but you’re really building trust. Then, when there are times where you have to have tougher conversations, you can be honest with them,” said Chynoweth. “Every team is going to have a different make up. Some (players) are more offensive than others, so you’re always going to have that mix. You want to find the balance of what they have.

“Here, I’m not coming in to reinvent the wheel or make drastic changes.”

Jets defenceman Josh Morrissey is excited to see what Chynoweth will bring to the coaching staff.

“I’ve heard nothing but great things,” said Morrissey. “He’s an experienced guy and he’s been around some really good teams. He’s run some really good special teams and I think he’s going to be a really good addition to our team.”

ken.wiebe@freepress.mb.ca

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