Tom Renney took a job no one else wanted.
Not the presidency of Hockey Canada, mind you. There would have been candidates lined up for that position, no head hunting needed. And when Renney was named as the successor to Bob Nicholson this week, it should have registered only mild surprise. Besides his extensive NHL bona fides, the 59-year-old has ties to the organization that go back to the early ’90s, when he served as the coach of the national team and the 1994 Olympic squad.
#RedWings announce hiring of Tony Granato as assistant coach. He'll replace Tom Renney, who's off to become Hockey Canada president/CEO.
— Stephen Whyno (@SWhyno) July 15, 2014
The job that no one else wanted goes back to the fall of 1998, back when he was the veep of hockey ops for Hockey Canada. The job to fill was to be behind the bench of the Canadian under-20 team that was supposed to hold up the national honor at the 1999 world juniors in Winnipeg.
OK, hockey men of all sorts had lined up and applied for that job too, but there was a difference: Renney was coming in after the fact, after all the players had gone home from the summer-evaluation camp, after George Burnett, the head coach that season, resigned so that he could take a job as an NHL assistant.
It would have been a difficult situation for anyone to walk into late in the day. What’s more, the timing couldn’t have been worse.
Back in 1998 Hockey Canada was in a crisis mode. Belief in the organization was at an all-time low. The Canadian juniors had embarrassed themselves and everyone involved with a loss to Kazakhstan and an eighth-place finish at the world under-20s in Finland. Then came the crash-and-burn for both the men’s and women’s teams at the Nagano Olympics. It was enough to set off the most profoundly Canadian of responses to disaster: conferences and white papers on the state of the game. So Renney was taking the job at Canada’s first return to world competition after the ugly fact.
You might suggest that he had the benefit of knowing the talent pool he was inheriting—in his hockey-ops position he would have been in attendance at the summer-evaluation camp, just not on the ice. This, however, was a case of a little knowledge making things just that much tougher. He knew as well as anyone that the talent pool wasn’t deep. Yeah, he had Roberto Luongo returning from the previous year, but he’d had a mediocre season to that point. And yeah, he had a few defencemen who inspired confidence, Brian Campbell and Robyn Regehr among them. Up front, though, Canada was hurtin’. No franchise players, no future all-stars, nothing like that. When your dynamic scoring is expected to come from Daniel Tkaczuk and Rico Fata, you know you’re in trouble. Brenden Morrow and Simon Gagne were there, but otherwise no one who would stick in the NHL. Renney’s squad was going to have to scrounge for goals. Potentially Nagano Redux.
Tom Renney will be great hire for @HockeyCanada The key will be trying to find the balance of business and grassroots hockey and hockey ops
— Cassie Campbell (@CassieCampbell) July 15, 2014
OK, long story short. It started ugly, a goalless tie with the Slovaks filled everyone with dread, but then things took an unexpected turn for the good. The Canadian team didn’t quite pull off the storybook finish, losing to Russia in overtime in the gold-medal game, but they did manage to upset Sweden, the pre-tournament favorites, in the semis. In fairness “upset” doesn’t quite cover it. No, the squad pounded the Sedins and the rest into submission. I’ve been to 20 or so international events and never seen a Canadian team play harder than Renney’s did against Sweden. They gave the Russians a good game even though they were beat up and out of gas.
Renney’s appointment to the Hockey Canada presidency will get some people rolling their eyes. He’s regarded as a bit of an iceman. Not “hail fellow well met” or anything like that.
And, OK, if you’re from the right side of the country you’re saying that his appointment is further proof of an Albertocracy of Hockey Canada. If you have had a deep connection to either of the NHL franchises in the Wild Rose province, you have one foot already in the door. Renney was an assistant coach in Edmonton for one season and the head guy for a couple more. Bob Nicholson is now upper management with the Oil. Go to Hockey Canada’s office lunch room and you’ll find a coffee mug with Renney’s name on it.
I’m willing to play a let on that, though. I will offer one piece of advice and Renney is free to dismiss it and he probably will: Remember what worked in Winnipeg.
Many among you will say he should remember what happened in the past two Olympics and just hold the torch high. That, however, ignores the fact that the world junior program is at its lowest point since 1998. Lower, probably, given that Canada has gone without a medal in the past two tournaments. You have to go all the way back to 2009 for Canada’s last gold. What’s more the failures have been excruciating—the third-period meltdown against the Russians in Buffalo in 2011, the OT loss to the Americans in Saskatoon in 2010, and more.
No, Hockey Canada’s under-20 program has been caught and passed by the U.S. and Sweden, and has no real edge on Russia or Finland either. You can put a season or two down to a cycle of talent, but it’s gone on longer than that.
When Renney came in, he changed the culture around the team and not slightly. Too many national squads live inside a bubble for as long as they are together. Every waking moment is tightly scheduled. The program prides itself on micro-management. Renney’s team in Winnipeg didn’t roll that way. He let them outside the bubble enough to breathe. You wouldn’t exactly describe it as a loose camp. It wasn’t the Bad News Bears and I don’t know that you’d aspire to that. But still his players didn’t burn up emotional energy in the weeks ahead of the event. That is surely an issue with so many recent Canadian teams at the world juniors.
Keeping it light when so much is at stake isn’t easy. But Renney knew back in ’98 what he was getting into, just as he does now.