Wheat Kings promote MacGillivray

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This article was published 24/11/2020 (2127 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Don MacGillivray’s second chance to take the helm of a WHL team has finally arrived.

One day after Dave Lowry announced his departure to join the Winnipeg Jets, the Brandon Wheat Kings selected MacGillivray to take his place.

The 55-year-old Winnipeg product has spent the past four seasons as an assistant coach with the club, and was a finalist for the job a year ago when Lowry was hired.

In the end, it worked out perfectly for MacGillivray.

“I was extremely disappointed when I didn’t get the opportunity a year ago,” MacGillivray said. “That was a tough pill to swallow but I’m so grateful that I had that opportunity to work with Dave last year. I think I’m a better coach today than I was a year and a half ago.”

It’s a redemption story more than two decades in the making.

After two seasons as an assistant and six seasons as a head coach in the MJHL, MacGillivray made coaching his full-time job when he jumped to the WHL as an assistant coach with the Prince Albert Raiders for the 1996-97 season. At the trade deadline that year, they dealt their top-end stars Chris Phillips and Shane Willis, and the rebuild began.

Midway through the next season, he received an interim promotion to the top job after Chris Stewart was fired but MacGillivray left after the year ended when he was told he wasn’t in the running for the position.

His wife Leslie had taken a leave of absence from her job in education, so the couple returned home to Winnipeg instead, where they had children Jackson, Joel and Jayne. But it certainly didn’t extinguish his goal of becoming a WHL head coach.

“That was definitely something that I wanted to do,” MacGillivray said. “I didn’t think it was going to take as long as it did, to be honest.”

Wheat Kings general manager Darren Ritchie said hiring MacGillivray wasn’t a difficult decision. Since arriving in Brandon, MacGillivray has handled the defencemen, guiding a unit that had to be completely rebuilt after the 2016 WHL championship.

Under former head coach David Anning, MacGillivray looked after the power play, while last season he took over the penalty-killing unit, improving its performance by a remarkable 14 per cent and lifting it from 21st in the league to second best.

“He’s got a wealth of knowledge and experience,” Ritchie said. “He’s won wherever he’s gone and has done a really good job with our defence over the four years he’s been here. Last year he improved our penalty killing to one of the top PKs in the league.

“That’s just a great job that he did with understanding how to push our players to be better and understanding what their roles were. I think he does a really good job of getting his message across to the players.”

The coaching staff will include Mark Derlago, who debuted as an assistant coach with the club last season after retiring from pro hockey, and another assistant who will be added later.

There wasn’t much hockey in his immediate family growing up, but MacGillivray didn’t have to look far for inspiration. His uncle Billy Reay won the Stanley Cup twice in a long NHL tenure as a player and coach.

Naturally, MacGillivray’s hockey career started on the ice. He spent four years with the MJHL’s St. James Canadians from 1982 to 1986.

He moved behind the bench with a minor hockey team after graduating from junior, and launched his coaching career with the Canadians as a part-time assistant at age 22. He has been behind the bench ever since, earning his first job as head coach with the Canadians in 1989-90.

“When you can’t play, the next best thing is coaching,” MacGillivray said. “The intensity of the game, the passion, the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat — I’ve had enough experience in both of those things — and it’s about the people. I’ve met some great people along the way and I’ve worked with some really good people along the way. For me, it’s all encompassing. When I found out I could maybe make a living at it, it became very attractive.”

He also had a lot of success at it.

MacGillivray is a four-time MJHL coach of the year, earning the honour in 1994-95, 2004-05, 2010-11 and 2012-13, and winning league titles in 2004-05 with the Portage Terriers and in 2013-14 with the Winnipeg Blues. He is second all-time for wins with 669.

He spent three seasons coaching the University of Manitoba Bisons from 2006 to 2009 when Mike Sirant was on sabbatical, and was named Canada West coach of the year for the 2007-08 season.

MacGillivray said he has constantly evolved over the last three decades, in part because players have changed so dramatically.

“It’s not about yelling and screaming as much as it is about building relationships and earning trust,” MacGillivray said. “When I see players from when I first started, I actually apologize to them because I wasn’t a very good coach.”

After seven seasons with the MJHL’s Blues from 2009-2016, where he had the opportunity to coach son Joel, MacGillivray joined the Wheat Kings in the summer of 2016 when Anning was named head coach following the departure of head coach and general manager Kelly McCrimmon to the Vegas Golden Knights.

“When I left Winnipeg to come to Brandon, it was with the idea that I wanted to have an opportunity to keep learning and eventually get the opportunity to be a head coach, whether it was in Brandon or somewhere else,” MacGillivray said. “Obviously the best-case scenario is when someone moves on to a higher level and that opportunity presented itself.”

That opportunity was delayed a year ago when the Wheat Kings selected Lowry instead, but it didn’t take MacGillivray long to realize the opportunity he had with the veteran NHLer Lowry, who enjoyed a long professional career before stepping behind the bench.

“This past year with Dave was like going to a coach’s clinic every day,” MacGillivray said. “The best thing about working with Dave Lowry was we were always on the same page. We challenged each other but we were always on the same page. We liked the same type of players, we liked the same way of having our team play and we’re the same age. We had a lot in common.”

Since hiring Bobby Lowes for the 1992-93 season — he lasted nine seasons until after the 2000-01 campaign — Brandon has had seven head coaches, Dean Clark (2001-03), Mike Kelly (partial season, 2003-04), McCrimmon (2004-11 and 2013-16), Cory Clouston (2011-12), Dwayne Gylywoychuk (2012-13), Anning (2016-19) and Lowry (2019-20).

Now MacGillivray’s name is being added to the list.

“You just never know when your opportunity is going to come along,” said MacGillivray.

 

pbergson@brandonsun.com

Twitter: @PerryBergson