Being dismissed while coaching in a charity game, that’s a new one.
On Sunday, Gatineau Olympiques coach Mario Duhamel and general manager Marcel Patenaude were involved in a benefit game for the Pat Burns Foundation, when news circulated that Duhamel had been fired after only 47 games as Gatineau’s coach. Interim coach Éric Landry was also on the ice.
The Olympiques (tied for 15th in the QMJHL) stayed the course during the trade period. As an 18-year-old, leading scorer Vitaly Abramov (Columbus Blue Jackets) was likely off the table, but their best graduating players, 19-year-old Yakov Trenin (Nashville Predators) and over-ager Zack McEwen, were also retained. The Olympiques are just 3-4-1-0 since the deadline and are barely hanging on to a low playoff seed. Evidently, in team president Alain Sear’s mind, that meant change for its own sake.
The way it was handled, though, is a bad look for Gatineau, which has seen attendance fall to less than 2,000 on the regular. It’s cold to let the well-respected Duhamel, who heretofore had never been fired, while he was doing some community service. The fact that the beneficiary was the foundation named after the late Burns, who coached the Olympiques in the 1980s, is Webster’s-worthy irony. If a team can’t get those optics right, what does it do for consumers’ confidence in the brand?
It marks the second time the coach who followed Benoît Groulx in Gatineau did not make it through a full season. In 2008-09, Mario Richer resigned after only 20 games.
Carleton University coach Marty Johnston, who captained the Olympiques’ 1997 Memorial Cup championship team, has long been linked to the Gatineau head-coaching job. It’s a minor mystery what that hasn’t happened yet.
OHL adds major-midget draft
There are noble intentions with OHL’s introduction of an under-18 draft, which was announced last week.
Essentially, in addition to the 15-round priority selection, the league is tacking on a four-round supplemental draft for players who have stayed in midget hockey. Creating incentive for later-blooming players to stay in more age-appropriate hockey and limiting the capacity to sign free agents seem like good intentions. It’s also in keeping with a realization that under-18 hockey, a staple of the developmental ladder in most every other hockey country, has been lacking in Canada. (Hockey Eastern Ontario has been out front on this, incidentally, reforming its Junior B circuit as a U18 league.)
Former Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds standout Michael Bunting, now a second-year pro in the Arizona Coyotes system, is an example of the type of player who might have been dug up by the under-18 draft. Bunting played two extra seasons at the midget level, but made the ‘Hounds as a late-birthday 18-year-old in 2013-14 and earned a contract.
Blades, new citizens provide slice of Canadiana
Super stick-tap to the Saskatoon Blades for the reminder the world is not so divided as the discourse on social media might make it seem sometimes. Prior to the WHL team’s game on Sunday, 20 new Canadian citizens had their swearing-in ceremony at centre ice at the SaskTel Centre, receiving a warm ovation from the 4,224 in attendance.
It was the first time a WHL game has been the forum for a citizenship ceremony, although Saskatoon Open Door Society and the Blades began the event last summer. Some 500 new Canadians attended.
More major junior teams should explore holding similar events. On top of helping new and first-generation Canadians know they are valued, it might help make some new fans.
Canadian NHL team prospect of the week: Matthew Phillips, C, Victoria Royals (WHL)
The Johnny Gaudreau analogies are hard to resist when the Calgary Flames have a draft pick whose vitals are 5-foot-6, 141 pounds and 35 goals in 47 games. Phillips, a sixth-rounder (No. 166 overall) last summer, cut a swath through his home province last week with back-to-back hat tricks on the road against the Calgary Hitmen and Edmonton Oil Kings during a swing through Alberta.
It’s far from a sure thing whether the 18-year-old Phillips will overcome being undersized at the next level. In the here and now, the Calgary native is making the Flames scouts look prescient.
New name to know: Drake Batherson, RW, Cape Breton Screaming Eagles (QMJHL)
A sixth-round choice blossoming into the Q’s unofficial leading homegrown rookie scorer rates some attention. The Pierre-Luc Dubois trade with Blainville-Boisbriand freed up some offensive opportunities on the Eagles and the 18-year-old Batherson has broken out in January, with 14 points (5G-9A) across 10 games. The playmaking forward from New Minas, N.S., who contributes excellent vision, is third in rookie scoring after Halifax’s Nico Hischier, and Victoriaville’s Ivan Kosokenkov, both import players.
Suffice to say, it’s been a happy homecoming for Batherson, whose father, former American Leaguer Norm Batherson, is a Cape Bretoner.