Constantine named WHL Coach of the Year

Published 9:00 pm Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Apparently all it takes to win a coach of the year award is to take over a team filled with castoffs, win more games than any expansion team in league history and make a run to the championship series.

OK, so maybe Kevin Constantine went above and beyond.

As expected, the Everett Silvertips’ head man was given his due Wednesday when the Western Hockey League named him the winner of the Dunc McCallum Memorial Trophy for Coach of the Year.

In his first year in the WHL, Constantine led the Silvertips to a 35-27-8 record, the U.S. Division title and a series win in the Western Conference finals. Already having exceeded every expansion team in league history, Constantine’s team is four wins away from winning a WHL title and a berth in the Memorial Cup.

"It’s really a team award," Constantine said of the honor he received Wednesday. "I’m not deserving of the award, because it’s been the whole organization. I showed up a year after (general manager) Doug Soetaert and his scouts had already laid all the groundwork. They’re the ones who scouted the players and did all the hard work before I even got here.

" … I guess if the league isn’t going to give us an award for what we’ve done as a team, then this is their way of rewarding the entire organization. So I’ll take it."

The Silvertips play Medicine Hat in a best-of-seven series for the WHL championship, beginning Friday. Game 1 will be played in Medicine Hat, with faceoff scheduled for 6:30 p.m.

Constantine said he is excited about the award, but a win over Medicine Hat is his main focus.

"This is a nice honor and so forth, but it’s similar to how it was when we beat Kelowna" in the Western Conference finals, Constantine said. "It’s a nice honor, and that was a big win, but it’s still not what the guys want at the end. We still want to go to the Memorial Cup. That was our goal, and we’re still trying to get there."

To put Constantine’s accomplishments in perspective, no WHL expansion team had ever posted a record above .500. Everett wiped out the 1992-93 Red Deer Rebels as the best expansion team in league history, breaking their records for wins (35 to 31) and points (80 to 64).

The previous record for any expansion team in Canadian junior hockey history was 78 points, set by the 1982-1983 Longueuil Chevaliers of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. (Two points are awarded for each win, and one for each tie or overtime loss.)

While Constantine was hugely responsible for much of Everett’s success this season, some critics around the league point toward a new rule that allows expansion teams to carry five 20-year-old players. Other teams can have just three.

But a similar advantage was given to the WHL’s last expansion team, the 2001-02 Vancouver Giants, and they won 13 games.

"People that are saying those things are just making excuses for their own organization," Soetaert said of the recent expansion rule. "All of our 20-year-olds were left available to us for one reason or another, so you’re talking about the sixth and seventh defensemen on other people’s roster or the 12th and 13th forwards.

" … We might have five 20-year-olds on our roster, but we also have a 15-year-old (rookie Zach Hamill), so it all balances out."

Constantine’s success this year is nothing new to him. He started a junior program in the North American Hockey League, making the Pittsburgh Forge the first expansion team in Junior A history to qualify for the postseason. In his second year with the Forge, Constantine led the team to a Junior A record of 42 wins.

He also led the San Jose Sharks to the biggest turnaround in National Hockey League history and the Kansas City Blades to the biggest turnaround in International Hockey League history.

But that didn’t mean he thought the Silvertips would get as far as they have.

"There’s enough history there to say that this can be done," said Constantine, who also coached in Pittsburgh and New Jersey during a 10-year career as an NHL head coach. "But we had no idea whether it could be done in the WHL because we didn’t know the league and we didn’t know the players. That’s been the pleasant surprise in all of this."

Other winners from Wednesday’s WHL award ceremony included Red Deer’s Cam Ward (Player of the Year; top goaltender), Vancouver’s Gilbert Brule (Rookie of the Year) and Red Deer’s Dion Phaneuf (top defenseman).