Photo credit: Steve Dunsmoor

By Regan Bartel

Rockets GM not hiding behind struggles

‘Kris Mallette is going to coach this hockey club’, says Rockets GM

Aug 4, 2023 | 11:00 AM

This article was published on January 30, 2023, and came during a time when some fans, not all, were calling for head coach Kris Mallette’s head. We felt obligated to ask GM Bruce Hamilton about Mallette’s future with the team. In typical Hamilton fashion, he didn’t shy away from the question and put water on the fire. This one article gained the most eyeballs since RocketFAN launched last August.  

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With a season full of struggles for the Kelowna Rockets, sitting in the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, it would be easy to point the finger directly at Kris Mallette.

You can hear the quiet whispers on social media with the team owning the fourth fewest points in the entire WHL.

RocketFAN had to ask a pointed question to GM Bruce Hamilton.

Is the head coach to blame for the struggles this season?

“Kris Mallette is going to coach this hockey club”, Hamilton said without batting an eye. “He is a good, young coach. He has been very lucky coaching here because of lots of talent, and now this is a great challenge for him to make our team better.”

Fans quickly forget, Mallette was named the BC Division Coach of the Year last April, voted upon by his peers.

It would be foolhardy to suggest the 44-year-old would lose his mojo to coach at this level only nine short months later.

“He has the makeup of being a real solid coach,” Hamilton added. “He is more frustrated…he cares more than the players, which is disappointing.

“He has to get [the players] to understand that we are going to do it our way, not their way.”

Can Hamilton, who has five WHL championships under his belt and a gold medal as a member of Team Canada’s management at the World Junior Hockey Championships in 2015, provide his coach with any words of wisdom during this time of struggle?

“I am standing beside him,” Hamilton said bluntly. “We have to make sure the players aren’t running the show. This generation of players at times gets thinking they have more input than they do. This group should just worry about playing right now and less about everything else.”

With 15 wins this season, with seven at home and eight on the road, Hamilton doesn’t have his head in the clouds believing his team is something they aren’t.

“We are a little challenged on the skill side, on the depth part of it, so that is the challenge on the coaching staff because you have to get those guys playing better than they have been.

“Kris has had a hard go of it getting these guys to know how hard you have to work to be successful in this league.”

We saw a glimpse of what outworking the opposition can accomplish Saturday night in a 5-1 home-ice win over the visiting Vancouver Giants.

“You can have all the excuses you want about confidence, but hard work gets you out of these things,” Hamilton added. “We may have a group that thinks they are better than they are.

“With the team we have, we don’t have the five-star players as in the past, so it is more of a lunch pail group that has to get to work.”

Struggles in goal, up until this past weekend when Talyn Boyko and Jari Kykkanen were outstanding, have surprised Hamilton.

He also expected his d-core to be better despite the graduation last season of 20-year-olds Tyson Feist and Jake Lee.

“Our defense should be really sound. We have older guys back there that are experienced and have been in the league for a little while.

“Caden Price is going to be a high NHL pick and will be an offensive star for us on the back end, but he is just 17, and you are asking him to do a lot of things he isn’t capable of yet.”

The power play has likely been most impacted, due to the trade of Colton Dach to Seattle and the injury to leading scorer Andrew Cristall.

With the 17-year-old missing the last eight games, the five-man unit manufactured just five goals in 44 chances in January.

“We’ve really, really struggled without him”, Hamilton admitted about the absence of Cristall. “As soon as we get him back, he will have an impact on our games as our power play really struggles without him, yet we need (Adam) Kydd, (Carson) Golder, and (Gabriel) Szturc to carry the games right now.”

Those three combined for nine points Saturday night, with Golder earning a natural hat trick.

That said, the team has scored just 133 goals this season, which is 19th among the 22 teams across the league.

“I am not naïve enough to think there is more there than there is. We are limited somewhat in the talent we have because we have missed a couple of drafts, because of the Memorial Cup bid, but that is not the excuse for these guys.”

With 24 games left in the regular season, the team is nine points back of both 6th place Prince George and 7th place Vancouver, yet are tied with Victoria for the 8th and final playoff spot.

“You know me. I want to get into the playoffs”, Hamilton said. “We’ve got to get in the playoffs. It will benefit this team and next year’s team too.

“I am not dodging one thing here. I am running the ship and we have to get it back on track, and we will do all we can to get it done right.

“We will find our way out of it. Just keep the faith”.