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Tom MolloyCanucks Team Building Activities
Perry Pearn who coached NAIT in the ACAC vs. my SAIT for 4 years before moving on to higher leagues and Willie Desjardins, who I was an asst. for at the U of Calgary for 6 years run both on and off team building games with the Canucks. I saw it on Facebook and put it in my dropbox. It is best to download it so it runs smoothly.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yxz9vn7rkx737yw/Canucks%20team%20building.3gp?n=355597945
Steve Carlyle (Canada National Team and WHA Oilers) came up to me last week and asked; 'What happened to us?' He was on the staff my first year at the U of Calgary and the other coaches were Willie (Vancouver), Mike Johnston (Pittsburg) and Drew Remenda (was video coach for the Ducks and now is a colour man on NHL TV). We stayed at home instead of traveling around coaching and were both teachers. The next year Steve, Mike and Drew had left and Slava Lener (asst. in Florida and now head of Czech hockey) and Terry Johnson joined the staff. Willie left after the 94 season when we lost to the U of Lethbridge coached by Mike Babcock in the Canada West finals and went on a two year leave to coach in Japan. Tim Bothwell came in as interim coach and they told him to keep Terry and I on because Willie was returning. Willie won the Japanese championship his second season and they offered him so much money that he stayed and coached in Japan for about six years before returning and taking over the Medicine Hat Tigers. Tim took over and we won Canada West and went to the final 4 in Toronto 95 and 96 with the team Willie had recruited, mostly because we went on a three week tour of Scandanavia (in the summer of 93, that I arranged because of Juhani) and that attracted a lot of top major junior players. Terry quit coaching at the U after one season with Tim and I left after two. Tim stayed a few more years and then moved on to be an asst. in Atlanta for a season. 95 and 96 are the last two years the U of C has won Canada West. Willie won in 90, so I was part of the team for 3 of those teams.
So I guess the reason I tell this story is to say that coaching at the university level gives you the opportunity to meet and work with and against some very knowledgeable people and I am grateful that I got the chance to do it.
The most significant thing though was meet Juhani Wahlsten, when he was brought to Calgary to do a coaching course by the then Dean of PE George Kingston. We hit it off because we are both PE teacher/hockey coaches who use 'games to teach the game' and it resulted in me going to Finland and traveling around doing seminars with him and the Russian icon Vladimir Yursinov. This opened opportunities for me to run summer camps in Hamar, Norway, Vierumaki, Finland and Pennsylvania. These led to camps in Jasper, New York, Los Angeles, Norther Michigan, Detroit, Delaware, Guatalajara, Mexico, Seoul, Korea, Boston, Vienna and Salzburg, Austria and I just got an inquiry from Atlantic City. I think I have traveled to Europe twenty times for coaching camps, attending conferences and to give seminars. So hockey has been good to me.
I am enjoying coaching this Bantam team and Wally Kozak is my mentor. He attends a lot of the games and I had him run the last 20 minutes of today's practice.
'The Game is the Greatest Coach'
'Enjoy the Game'