Thommo’s Coaching Clinic

Posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

Steve and I returned from the Paul Thompson Coaching Clinic this week full of great ideas and plans on how to make our team a championship team again in Belfast. It was a fantastic event and was headlined by NHL Legend Scotty Bowman, a man with 9 Stanley Cups to his name. Joining him was Kevin Constantine, who was the most impressive speaker I have listened to on the fundamentals of the game.

Thommo himself gave two days of excellent presentations as well, the whole event in fact was well organized and first class from the venue to the food to the speakers. Two thumbs up to David Simms and Paul Thompson for organizing the weekend, we will definitely be back and I’m booking early next year, that way we might actually get a room in the good hotel!

It was one of those rare weekends during the off-season that coaches and General Managers can get together to talk hockey and learn from each other. We spent the two days swapping stories with Tony Hand and his brother Davey, Rick Strachan from Hull, Brent Pope from Cardiff and of course Thommo and Simmsy. Still when Scotty Bowman was talking or Kevin Constantine was telling us stories, we were all like kids listening to their tales of winning Stanley Cups or how Jaromir Jagr was to coach.

We have almost completed our signings, just waiting on a couple of faxes back to confirm three more guys, leaving us with just one forward spot to fill. The two defenceman we signed today both will be impact players in the league next season. Howells is young and very talented. He hits hard, blocks shots, scores goals and loves to jump into the offensive play to add to the attack. Burgoyne has led his team in scoring for the past two seasons as a D-man! That blows my mind. I am excited to see both of these guys perform and I am sure all of you are as well.

The forwards we sign are all new faces and we will be announcing them as soon as we get signed contracts back. The team Steve has put together looks to be a good mix of speed and toughness, and more importantly, we expect the Giants to be entertaining next season.

I have had a lot of questions about the fixture lists, and they will be coming out late in July once Andy French can finalize the last few dates with the Arena teams. We have a much improved schedule this year, the Odyssey were very helpful by giving us weekend dates and plenty of them. There is also going to be the usual Edinburgh double header and another double-header that I know will become as popular as our yearly trip to Scotland.

Todd Kelman
General Manager