Sutter: Rebels poised to learn from, build on season of change
By DANNY RODE – Every year Red Deer Rebels owner/president/General Manager Brent Sutter sits down with the media following at season’s end to evaluate what took place over the past seven months.
Each year it’s different. There are times when he can sit back and smile. There are times when he has to make a number of drastic changes.
This year he can feel more comfortable with what he saw over the second half of the year.
“The second half was way better after we made the changes,” he stressed. “The first half we were 10 games under .500 but the second half we were .500 with the young group of players.
“We made our team different at the trade deadline when we got more skill and got faster.”
Still there are things to continue to work on, he said.
“Specialty teams were a struggle for us all year. They hurt us in certain games for sure. Those are points you don’t get back when getting power plays and not getting any goals on them and losing by a goal or two. That was the difference in those games.
“But moving forward there’s encouraging signs for sure. We have a good group coming back, a really good group of young prospects who will push to be on the team next year.”
Sutter added that the WHL is no longer a 19-or-20-year-old league with a number of top-end older players now moving on to the NCAA.
“So your 17- and 18-year-old players have to be really, really important for you. It’s tough to have top-end 20-year-olds when they are leaving after their 19-year-old season. It’s a different path now.”
The Rebels finished the season with three 20-year-olds and no 19-year-olds (2006-born) meaning they have no overage players on their roster.
But Sutter isn’t worried about that.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing our young kids coming in next season because I think they will be really, really good players and add to the skill set of our group.”
As for finding 20-year-olds, he isn’t worried about it.
“There’s not any elite 20-year-olds in our league anymore. If your 18- and 19-year-olds are better why do you need a 20-year-old. I don’t get caught up in that, only if there’s the right fit.
“Right now, we have 10 or 11 forwards returning and six or seven D men with the likes of (Graeme) Pickering coming in. We also have both goalies back and (Matthew) Kondro proved he’s a No. 1 goalie and we have a good back up in Shorsey (Peyton Shore) or whoever else comes in.”
The Rebels have done an outstanding job of drafting the past several years and there will be several high-end younger players vying for jobs come September. But they will be up against a solid group with 11 18-year-olds and seven 19 year-olds, plus Grayden Peterson, who will be 17.
A larger number of that group came in via the trade route at the trade deadline.
“We needed to get skill and needed to get faster and my whole mindset going into the trade deadline was on how we do that,” said Sutter. “We added skill up front from (Kalder) Varga, (Poul) Andersen and (Patrick) Sopiarz (alongside Beckett Hamilton) and others who completely bought in to our group like Lodgey (Kohen Lodge), (Owen) DeWitt and (Landon) MacSwain.
“It’s now important for the kids to have a good summer and come back next fall looking different, stronger, bigger and more confident. With young kids it will be interesting to see.”
Overall Sutter brought in 10 players during the season, plus several others who will be here next season.
“Unfortunately to get good players you have to give up good players and we certainly did that,” he said. “We focused on the 17–18-year-old age group because we knew we had a strong group of younger players coming in as well. We’re excited about that. Yes, the future is bright for this team and certainly will be more skilled for sure, which we needed to have.”
Sutter was asked about the coaching staff, including veteran head coach Marc Habscheid who completed his first year with the Rebels.
“There was a learning curve for him. He was back in junior where he coached for a long time, but you leave for a long time and come back and things are different.
“Things have changed and the whole dynamics have changed with the new NCAA rulings. So, there’s an adjustment with the coaches. They work with the young group of guys and spend a lot of time with them and not just off the ice but on the ice too. It’s about development. You do all the work you want inside the dressing room, but you have to spend the time on the ice.”
What bothered Sutter most this season was the team’s home record (13-18-3-0).
“That has a lot to do with preparation and distractions. We were much better on the road and that speaks for itself and that’s all about being focused on game day and that’s a learning curve for the coaches.”
Sutter indicated he “would like to think all the coaches were learning throughout the year.”
He added he’s going through evaluations but not planning on making any changes to the coaching staff.
“Every year we do it and always determined what’s best for the group,” he said. “I’ve met with the coaches, and they know where I stand. I was unhappy with the first half of the season, and we can’t play that way at home.
“The second half was okay. Unfortunately, we had to make changes, change our attitude or whatever it was. We did it and we did it for the right reasons. So, we went from being not good to being better so when we met with the coaches, we went through it and evaluated it.
“We have a young group coming back and now it’s what is the right fit and at this point I’m not planning any changes.”
Sutter very much expects the team to continue to improve.
“The whole thing is I want us to be competitive all the time. A team playing hard every night. Our work habits have to continue to improve, and I thought for a young team over the second half we did that, even though there were still some inconsistencies and we had a hard time playing for 60 minutes. That has to be corrected for sure, but we have a great group of kids, an awesome group who care and want to succeed, want to have success and now the leadership around them has to be what it needs to be.”
The next on the agenda for Sutter is the WHL Prospects Draft in May and CHL Import Draft in July.
The WHL Prospects Draft is different this year with the American players on the same list as the Western Canadian 14-year-olds.
“Our scouts have done an unbelievable job and now the list is longer,” said Sutter. “There’s more work to be done, dissecting it and more kids to look at.”
But with the new NCAA rules “there’s more opportunities for kids to play here even if they are looking at the NCAA.
“But now if they want to stay, they have to play at a certain level. It’s different than it used to be as before if management signed a player he had to stay because it affected his NCAA eligibility if we let him go.”
As for the import draft, the Rebels plan to select one player after releasing forward Matej Mikes and keeping defencemen Jiri Kamas and Matus Lisy.
“Mikes is a great kid, but he is having a second knee operation on the same knee and it’s too high of a risk for us. We can’t control injuries and another significant surgery to the same knee is a high risk and forces us to go in a different direction.”
