While it’s often the lighting fast forwards, impassable goal tenders, and punch-now-ask-questions-later goons who get the most applause from the stands, it’s the coach who, like a scholar at a chess board, puts those players on the ice at the right time, in the right position, and with the right teammates.
Gerry Dalton has been involved in amateur hockey for the past seven or eight years both at the senior and junior level. Currently, he is the head coach of the Southern Shore Breaker’s Junior team, and an assistant coach with the Pugliesvich Southern Shore Breakers.
Recently, he was named Coach of the Year by the St. John’s Junior Hockey League.
“When something like this comes along, it’s gratifying,” said Dalton. “But like I told the boys, it’s easy to get something like this when you have a team that’s committed and dedicated.”
As a coach, Dalton’s duties involve determining what line combos work best, who should play on special teams, and what players perform best with one another. It also means working with the team, both on the ice and in the locker room, as a whole and with individual players, to put forward the best effort every game.
“The biggest thing is understanding and communication with the players,” said Dalton. “Talk with them about ways of improving, rather than being a negative guy all the time.”
The boys are close friends outside the rink, and that, said Dalton makes his job much easier.
He said it’s important to be honest with guys who don’t make the cut, but always invite them back next year, or to keep their phone handy in case alternate players are ever needed.
And, says Dalton, it’s important to have a bit of fun, seeing as it is a game after all.
This season, a few COVID bumps aside, was the first full season since 2019.
“No one expected, over the next four or five or six months, that it would last as long as it did,” said Dalton of the initial COVID regulations that went into effect in March 2020. “In the fall of 2020 it was hard to accept that the season was still going to be deferred.”
Things picked up again in 2021, with teams having to abide by restrictions set forth by Sport NL and HockeyNL, as well as provincial guidelines and individual stadium guidelines.
Social distancing rules, stadium capacity limits, and declining sponsorship income made playing games look like the easy part. Breakers players, said Dalton, even had to bear the burden of selling tickets, a challenge Dalton said the players met head on.
The biggest disappointment of the cancelled season, said Dalton, was watching graduating players who aged out of the league without being able to play their final season.
Back to a sort of new normal, the junior league announced a return to play after a COVID hiatus on February 8, with teams set to hit the ice the week of February 14 for a handful of games before the playoff series commenced the week of February 21.
The Breakers played a tight series against the St. John’s Caps forcing a Saturday night Game 5 which they narrowly lost 4-3.
“St. John’s may give the CBN Stars a shove,” said Dalton. “It’s going to be hard to beat CBN in a four out of seven series, but you never know, they have a good, solid team there. They (CBN) are first in the league for a reason.”
Meanwhile, Dalton is happy with the Breakers’ performance.
“It was a good run all year, there was lots of commitment from the guys,” said Dalton. “It’s a good group of young fellows.”
The semi-finals commence on Thursday, March 10.
