With Yorkton Junior Terriers head coach Trent Cassan away at the recent World Junior ‘A’ Challenge with Team Canada West, a new face was on the local bench.
Kevin Stringfellow, who played with the Terriers from 2007 to 2010, a part of his last season under head coach Cassan, was filling in to help Casey O’Brien with the team.
“Trent just called looking for someone … To see if I was willing to help out,” said Stringfellow, adding his background with both Cassan and the Terriers helped him say yes. “… I knew him and knew the way the Terriers worked.”
Stringfellow lives in Yorkton, and works at the mines in Esterhazy, so he was available as a quick fill-in.
As for coaching experience, Stringfellow admitted it was limited, having helped Grant Ottenbreit one season with his Bantam team.
While not working on the bench a lot, Stringfellow said that experience “was a good one.”
And he added he has always been curious about coaching.
“I always had an interest in it,” he said, adding “I’m not sure if it was a serious interest, but this was a chance to help out.”
The first thing Stringfellow said he realized once helping the Terriers was that “it was good to be around the rink.”
As for coaching Junior players, Stringfellow said he wouldn’t term it a big “eye opener” but it was certainly “a chance to see the other side of the business instead of being just a player.”
Stringfellow said he has gained a different perspective.
“I think as players we think coaches don’t know that much at all,” he said with a smile, adding once you are behind the bench you start to fully appreciate what they see on the ice.
And in the case of the Terriers there is a modern approach with lots of film study and set plays.
“I think Trent is more into the numbers. I think he is more of a new age coach,” offered Stringfellow.
With his job Stringfellow did not attend practices, but was on the bench for games, working with the defence to make sure they were doing what was expected.
“I was making sure the right guys were out there at the right time,” he said, adding it was a very “different perspective than as a player.”
So what about this season’s Terriers?
“They’re a young team with a lot of 18-year-olds,” he said, adding youth and some struggles are likely after a team makes the run it did last season winning the Royal Bank Cup.
Even at that the team is in most games, losing a lot of one-goal contests. Stringfellow said those losses could become wins as the team matures and learns how to win.
So is coaching in Stringfellow’s future now?
“I liked being around the rink,” he said again. “It doesn’t take long on a hockey team to know everybody and be part of the team.”
Stringfellow said he also has a better appreciation of the responsibility of a coach away from the ice.
“It definitely opened my eyes more to what Trent and Casey do when the players don’t see them,” he said. “They’re always looking for ways to help the team.”
Stringfellow said a key to coaching “is always being prepared.”
But would he do it?
“It’s tough to say,” he said, adding he has a good job he isn’t sure he would want to leave, then added “in another sense it would be an opportunity.”
