Sitting alone in the quiet confines of an empty dressing room at the Innisfail Arena, Brian Sutter is at first oblivious to the disruption of the door swinging wide open.
He is lost in thought as he pours over a notepad. There will be at least 30 players at the practice on this night, the first time the pre-season hopefuls for the Innisfail Eagles will vigourously compete against each other on home ice for a coveted spot on the team.
This will be first season with Sutter coaching the team and the Eagles will be competing at the AAA level in the Chinook Hockey league, the highest level of men's seniors' hockey in the country. The is the league that boasts the current Allan Cup champions, the Bentley Generals, the team Sutter took all the way in 2009 to the Holy Grail of senior men's hockey.
In his first year with the Eagles last season, Sutter led the Eagles, a squad that won only one game the year before, all the way to the Alberta AA championship.
But now the stakes are even higher, and Sutter has a hefty goal.
“Our goal is to win our league,” said Sutter, turning away from his notepad to get dressed for practice. He said it would be a “tough” road towards the Allan Cup when the regular season begins Oct. 18 at home against the Okotoks Drillers. “There are a lot of steps to get there. The toughest one is to win the league. It is the toughest league in Canada. The second toughest one is to win the McKenzie Cup, which is five games in five nights in B.C.
“If you do those two things you get to the Allan Cup,” he added. “That is why you need a solid group of people, and you have to take pride in what you are doing.”
The Eagles are now in their final set of practices before the team hosts the Chinook Hockey League Pre-Season Showcase Tournament this weekend. Five league teams are participating, including the defending league and Allan Cup champion Generals.
As of last week, there was no decisions about the team's roster for the pre-season tournament. There have been many players who are coming for a tryout -- locally, from Calgary, and some from north of Edmonton.
They all know the Sutter name. They all know the famous hockey moniker carries a lot of weight if they have ultimate ambitions for the big show, at the AAA level and beyond.
“I know what it takes to win and we are not going to go out and buy a team. You want players here who want to play from year to year to year, and that is why three quarters of the team are coming back from last year,” said Sutter. “We have added some really young players again this year. They are quality guys, and yet you know you can't win with 20 guys in this league because guys work and they got jobs.
“You got to add guys. You have got to do your homework,” he said.
Helping Sutter with the homework is Jason Lenz, the team's general manager.
He is bolder than Sutter with his goal for the team this season. Winning just the league title is not enough.
“Our goal, and our only goal this year, is to win that Allan Cup,” said Lenz, who agrees with Sutter that there are many steps the team needs to take to get to that level. “Finding players is something Brian and I do 365 days of the year to try to improve our team. They are out there.
“With Calgary being such close proximity there are over a million people there with some sort of hockey background and it is our job to dig them up and get them to come and play,” he added.
Achieving the goals Sutter and Lenz have marked for the team will take a different approach than what has been done in the past, said the former NHL coach of the year. And he said it's not a plan that can be put on paper.
“When you go through it you know there are certain paths a person has got to take -- to treat people properly,” said Sutter. “It is funny I did a thing with TSN today (Sept. 26) and one gentleman said, ‘What you talk about you don't write on a piece of paper.' You don't talk about it, it just happens.
“It is how you treat people, and how you look at people, how you respect people. It is not necessarily something you put in words,” he added. “I know what we got to do and how we got to do it. We have the players but it takes time.”
The Eagles' first game of the pre-season tournament at the arena is Friday night at 8:30 p.m. against the Okotoks Drillers.
