Craig Hartsburg’s head was telling him that he should leave his job as head coach of the Everett Silvertips and take a position as an associate coach with the National Hockey League’s Calgary Flames.
But a little piece of his heart will always stay in Everett, Hartsburg confirmed on Monday.
“I just loved the area,” he said by telephone from Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, where he makes his offseason home. “The people are fantastic and the fans are fantastic. There’s probably not a better place in the Western Hockey League to coach or to play.”
Making the decision to leave was hard, he went on, because “I love Everett and I love the organization. And for my wife (Peggy), it might even be harder on her to leave than for me, to be honest with you, because of all the friendships she made there.”
And it was not just members of the community who reached out to the Hartsburgs. They grew close to a number of people in the organization, among them Silvertips vice president and general manager Doug Soetaert and director of business operations Zoran Rajcic.
“I’m going to miss those people,” Hartsburg said, “but they’ll be friends for the rest of my life.”
Hartsburg’s contract with the Silvertips gave him the month of June to explore other hockey positions. The Flames were one of three teams to contact him this spring and their offer was appealing, in large part because Calgary head coach Brent Sutter is a longtime acquaintance. The two men have played together, coached together, and for three seasons (1995-96 to 1997-98) Sutter played for Hartsburg when the latter was head coach of the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks.
Sutter and others in the organization “are people that I trust,” said Hartsburg, whose Silvertips resignation was announced on Sunday, one day before his hiring in Calgary became public. “At the next level, it’s all about being a team and working as a team. And I feel pretty comfortable about going there and that we’re all going to work hard to make it successful.”
Another lure, of course, is the chance to return the NHL, where Hartsburg has spent 10 seasons as a player, seven seasons as an assistant coach, and all or part of seven seasons as a head coach.
“It’s the best league,” Hartsburg said. “It’s the toughest league to play in and it’s the toughest league to coach in. But a big part of it is that I feel like I’m a National Hockey League coach. You only get so many years and so many opportunities, and this one (with the Flames) was a good one.
“It’s an opportunity I felt very comfortable with,” he added, “and so I grabbed it.”
Though Hartsburg has been a head coach for much of his career, he is content to return to the NHL — where he last coached in the 2008-09 season with the Ottawa Senators — as an associate coach.
“I’m not concerned about (being a head coach) now,” he said. “There was a time when I was younger when I probably wanted to chase that dream, but for me now it’s about trying to help people. I want to help Brent Sutter be the best coach he can be. I want to help the players be the best they can be. And I want to help the organization be the best it can be.
“At the end of day, I want to go to bed every night knowing I helped people to get better.”
Though Hartsburg spent just two seasons in Everett, they were eventful both professionally and personally. The highlight, he said, came in his first season of 2009-10 when the Silvertips, coming off a 27-36-7-2 record the year before under previous coach John Becanic, rebounded to finish 46-21-3-2 and tied for the most points in the WHL’s Western Conference.
“We really got on a roll,” said Hartsburg, recalling the team’s 14-game winning streak in January 2010. “In the second half (of the season) the kids really played their hearts out. It was a neat thing to see a bunch of young guys come together and really sacrifice for each other.
“I was fortunate to coach a lot of good young men in Everett who are going to move on to bigger and better things, whether it’s in professional hockey or whatever in life they choose to do. And for me that was the neatest thing.”
His greatest disappointment came this past season, but it also produced perhaps his greatest blessing. Hartsburg missed 24 games from Oct. 20 to Dec. 28 due to open-heart surgery in early January to repair an ascending aortic aneurysm.
Though he regrets “having to miss so much time because of my health and that I was not able to do my job for those months,” Hartsburg said he is “grateful for the medical people in Everett who really took care of me and fixed the problem that I had.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
