McCrimmon’s WHL time provided template for team’s success

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This article was published 11/05/2018 (2732 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An NHL Western Conference final matchup pitting the Winnipeg Jets against the Vegas Golden Knights would have seemed wildly improbable if anyone had seriously considered the possibility at the start of training camp last fall.

Well, so much for that.

The greenhorn Golden Knights and the previously unproven Jets will face off in tonight’s Game 1 at Bell MTS Place, and for Vegas assistant GM Kelly McCrimmon, at least part of that equation isn’t as far-fetched as it might have seemed.

“Well, quite frankly, I’m not that surprised the Jets are in the conference final,” McCrimmon said Friday. “I don’t think anyone expected the Golden Knights to be in the conference final. It’s been an ongoing process — whereas time passed by and the players continued to meet the challenge and we remained in the playoff hunt, and then we had a stretch where we got to the top of our division and then were able clinch a playoff spot.

“We took nothing for granted. Even as obvious as it was to some people that we were going to be a playoff team, until we beat Colorado at home (on March 26) to clinch, I think we were all fearful that things could still unravel. The league is so close that if you ever hit a bad run for five or six games, you could go from in the playoff picture to out of the playoff picture.”

The 57-year-old from Plenty, Sask., spent the better part of three decades in the Western Hockey League as a GM, coach and owner of the Brandon Wheat Kings before accepting Vegas GM George McPhee’s offer to become his top lieutenant following Brandon’s championship run in 2015-16. Much of the knowledge McCrimmon gleaned in building the Wheat Kings from the WHL’s worst franchise into a perennial contender transferred to the NHL level.

“A lot of the aspects of building a team are very similar,” said McCrimmon, who estimates he watched the Jets play 15 to 20 times in 2016-17. “Player development is very similar, the Western League is a draft-and-develop league, which is an approach good NHL teams take. Winnipeg would be exhibit A. The relationships — dealing with players, working with coaches, scouts, management people — those are all similar to how you would run a WHL team.”

McPhee and his management team did their homework thoroughly, selecting or leveraging the acquisition of young players such as Jonathan Marchessault, William Karlsson, Shea Theodore, Alex Tuch and Reilly Smith by way of the expansion draft, while also securing the services of key veterans such as Mark-André Fleury, James Neal, Pierre-Édouard Bellemare and Deryk Engelland.

“The year leading up to the up to the expansion draft was an incredible education for me, based on the amount of NHL hockey I was able to watch and learning the players,” McCrimmon said. “With each team, the exercise involved your best guess as to who the team would see as their core players and that you would expect to be protected.

“Then, identifying a group of players that we needed to make sure we did a lot of work on in terms of background, in terms of projecting. They were players of interest, so some teams had quite a few of those, some teams didn’t have as many and then we worked hard to make sure we were current with the teams’ best prospects and some exempt players that might be able to be included in (trade) discussions. That worked out in a couple of situations.

“We were looking for young players whenever possible. There were a few situations where those weren’t available, and that’s where we were able to add good pros, real good leaders. Deryk Engelland, Pierre Bellemare are two that come to mind. But Fleury is another one of those… and I would add David Perron and James Neal.”

The comparisons to his early work in the WHL are obvious, but with a key distinction.

“The difference (in Brandon) was I had to tear it down first,” McCrimmon said. “I remember those early years in Brandon, thinking it would be way easier to start without any negative history or baggage or culture issues that sometimes are part of a turnaround or a rebuild.”

Starting at ground zero in Vegas had its benefits.

“It certainly contributed, because it put us all — everyone started work the same day — so every player showed up for training camp last fall,” McCrimmon said. “We had no hierarchy in place, no entitlement, no situations where we had contracts we wished we didn’t have or those types of things. I think a combination of players having something to prove, and again, beginning the journey together, became pretty powerful.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @sawa14