On the surface, last week’s opening night looked like any other for the Portland Winterhawks. There was a packed Moda Center, two more championship banners revealed and their rivals, the Seattle Thunderbirds, were on the other side of the ice. As the players were introduced to the crowd you started to notice something different: The Winterhawks had some key players missing in action. Nic Petan, Oliver Bjorkstrand, Chase De Leo, Anton Cederholm, Dominic Turgeon and Brendan Burke were all at NHL camps.
But that was just temporary, a challenge most junior teams face at the start of the season. No, the biggest difference was behind the Portland Winterhawks bench.
Jamie Kompon made his Rose City debut, stepping in as the head coach and GM of a junior hockey powerhouse and all the pressure that comes with it. He replaces Mike Johnston, who’s now leading the Pittsburgh Penguins, a man who saved the Winterhawks and took them to unprecedented heights. “I know I have big shoes to fill and the only pressure I feel is the pressure I put on myself,” Kompon says.
It’s not like Kompon doesn’t know anything about winning hockey games himself. He spent six seasons as an assistant coach with the Los Angeles Kings and was part of their 2012 Stanley Cup championship. He moved on to Chicago the next season and was part of the Blackhawks’ 2013 championship before leaving one Hawks team to take over the other.
A long-time friend of Johnston’s going back to when they were both with the Kings, Kompon was on vacation with his wife this summer when a text message came in from his former colleague to gauge his interest in the Winterhawks job. “It went from zero to 90 in a half hour,” he says. “Next thing you know they offered me the position and I’m the head coach and general manager of the Portland Winterhawks.”
Johnston was not only key in recruiting Kompon, he was at the press conference announcing the hire. It was a press conference that Kompon admitted to being nervous about, more nervous than perhaps he’d been going into the Stanley Cup final. There’s an old saying in sports that you never want to be the coach who replaces the legend. Kompon isn’t shying away from that pressure. “I embrace the challenge,” he says. “I’m excited to impart some knowledge from my coaching experience to these young players. Hopefully they grasp it and we can move forward collectively.”
But don’t expect expect sweeping changes in Portland—why fix what isn’t broken? “The big thing is we believe the game should be played the same way,” Kompon says of Johnston. “With the success that Mike’s had here in Portland the previous five years, the way he teaches the game and coaches the game is very enticing to me.”
Perhaps the biggest challenge facing Kompon as GM is keeping the Portland roster loaded with talent. It’s a new role for Kompon, one that he says is a huge adjustment. He relies on his staff—notably assistant GM Matt Bardsley—as well as the structure that Johnston had put in place. And he will have his work cut out for him. Along with the regular cycle and graduation of players, he will also have to overcome the WHL sanctions that were slapped on the Winterhawks two years ago for violating league rules on player benefits (Portland was stripped of its entire 2013 Bantam Draft and its first round picks through 2017). Surely, this won’t be a walk in the park.
Kompon will have the Petans and Bjorkstrands this year, but the toughest trick to pull in junior hockey is the continuous development of the next superstar, something Johnston had been great at and the biggest reason for Portland’s success. With the inevitable graduation of star players, do the Winterhawks have the young talent to replace them? Will the sanctions limit what they can do? Kompon believes there’s only one reason to have down years. “You trade away what you perceive are your good young players to challenge for one season,” he says. “You never want to have down years in junior hockey,” he says. “It hurts too much from the player’s side of it, it hurts your fan base, and it hurts your reputation.”
And it’s not like there aren’t any talented young players on the roster. Paul Bittner, a 2015 NHL draft prospect, is a big winger who can skate, hit and has nice hands. And there are three 16-year-olds the coach thinks might just be the next great Portland Winterhawks. Skyler McKenzie is key among them. Kompon compares him to the Energizer Bunny and says he has an infectious attitude. Standing only five-foot-seven and 149 lb., he’s small but has many of the same skills and traits of former Portland star Brendan Leipsic. Defencemen Carter Czaikowski and Brendan De Jong should mean the blueline isn’t going to suffer anytime soon. Kompon also like the look of 17-year-olds Ethan Price and Evan Weinger.
The coach hopes that these youngsters will learn the ropes from the Portland veterans, develop their skill, embrace the culture and pass it on to the next wave of players. It’s a pattern and system that Johnston built and one that Kompon wants to keep in place. He puts the responsibility of being successful at that on his shoulders. “I get excited talking about it, just thinking of the potential these kids have,” Kompon says. “Potential is a very dangerous word because now it’s up to us as coaches to make sure we bring it out in them. That’s our responsibility.”
But before Kompon can worry about Portland’s future, he has to deal with the present.
With NHL draftees missing from the lineup, his young guys took it on the chin opening weekend, losing twice and getting out-scored 10-4. “To be honest I hope they don’t come back because that’s their dream,” Kompon says. But make no mistake, once they do the Winterhawks will be a WHL power again this season—in the running for a fifth straight conference title. “We’ve got to play like they’ve played in the past,” Kompon says. “We’ve got to push the pace, that speed game, speed with the puck, move the puck, play together, play for each other, and have that team game attitude.”
Those are things that Johnston believed in with the Winterhawks and reasons that Kompon may just be the perfect guy to follow in his footsteps. “The only pressure I feel is the pressure I put on myself,” he says. “The players that we do have here, they all recognize the window of opportunity to win a championship, to get back to the Memorial Cup, that’s what’s going to drive them. I’m just at the helm to make sure we steer the ship in the right direction here and continue to get better every day.”