WHL: Brent Sutter QA, Part One

Despite having his host of duties with the Red Deer Rebels along with his upcoming WHL coaching stint with the CHL/ Russia series and the World Junior Championships right around the corner, Brent Sutter took time out of his schedule to speak exclusively with McKeen's about a variety of issues.

In part one of the three-part Q&A, he recounts how he ended up with the Rebels in the first place and talks about a possible coaching future in the NHL.

Stay tuned this week for more of the interview. The subjects include: the importance of building a family environment with the team; the origin of the Sutter work ethic; the responsibility of the team to the community; the game plan for the Russians; what it will take to make his WJC team; the emergence of Dion Phaneuf as a star; the next generation of Sutter hockey players and even a stroll down memory lane to his days with the Islanders.

We begin with the destination that his post-player career has taken him: Red Deer, Alberta.

AND SO IT BEGINS

McKeen's: You retired April 18th, 1998 and then bought the Rebels just over a year later. Your family obviously has strong roots in Alberta. Was this just a natural fit for you?

Sutter: You know, I moved back here and I had no intention of buying a junior team at that point when I came back. I got a call from Terry Simpson in November about whether or not I wanted to start working with the Rebels a little bit. So I came in here and all of the sudden you start to get that feeling back a little bit. Then they approached me in January to see if I’d be interested in buying the team.

So, I went through the process. I’d seen enough games here and I’d seen things that needed to be changed; I’d seen some of the good things and I also saw the bad things. And so you do your due diligence, which you would in any business that you buy and it just seemed like it would make sense. And yet there had to be some changes made – some pretty drastic changes – and I was prepared to do it.

McKeen's: What was the first thing you wanted to get across to the team once you took over?

Sutter: I think the first thing was for them to start being a team and start holding themselves accountable in our community and accountable on the ice. To me, you do that by building from within. You don’t find parts from elsewhere. You build your team from within and believe in your scouting staff and the job they’re doing. You try to go from within as much as you can and if you have to fine tune it here and there you’ll do that, but to me you build your team from within. Your draft picks, your list of players, stuff like that – that’s what your scouting staff is there for. You’ve got to trust in your scouting staff and believe in them and I’ve done that as a General Manager and it has worked.

Again, it’s an ongoing thing. We need to make ourselves better; not just on the ice, but off the ice too.

McKeen's: In five seasons, you’ve been to the WHL Finals three times. You’ve won that title once and have also banked a Memorial Cup championship. Throw in the winning percentage your team has had since then and that’s a pretty outstanding overall record by any standards – have you accomplished what you set out to do so far?

Sutter: You know, I don’t look at it that way. I look it as you learn from the past, you take care of the present and you look forward to the future. Even with the success we’ve had, we’ve made some mistakes. I’ve learned from them, but you’re going to make mistakes and you learn from them and you move on.

It’s funny. All I’m worried about is today and where we’re at as an organization and where our team is at as a team today. If you continue to dwell on the success you’ve had, you’re setting yourself up for failure in the future because you’re not taking care of the present.

I refuse to pat myself on the back and I’m not going to. To me, it’s about the people you have around you. If you surround yourself with good people, good things happen. Same thing with your hockey team. You surround yourself with good players and players that are good people and I’ll tell you what, good things can happen. I truly believe in that. Again, you create good habits and good things will happen.

People talk about all of my titles – owner, coach, GM, president, governor – but to me it’s all irrelevant. I could care less about all that. My job is totally to provide leadership to the staff, to the players, to everyone involved. That’s my job.

McKeen's: But at the same time, you do have all of those titles. That has to be pretty demanding.

Sutter: But again, it’s giving people responsibility. It’s giving people responsibility and letting them run with it. I don’t get caught up in titles at all. I could care less.

To me, people talk about a head coach or assistant coaches. Yes, as a head coach I have to make final decision on things and run the bench, but it’s about the coaching staff. Everyone has to believe in that. It’s no different than upstairs. You’ve got your marketing people, your ticket people, administrative people. The bottom line is everyone just has to do their jobs and just has to work hard for each and support each other and things work fine. I do delegate a lot here to different people.

So I don’t get caught up in titles, I really don’t. I just don’t and I never have.

McKeen's: You’re a day-to-day kind of guy, but would you like to coach in the NHL one day?

Sutter: I get asked that a lot, but again, I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. I really don’t. All you can do is look after the present. For me to leave this situation I’m in here right now, it would have to be something that would knock my socks off. We’re having success here. I believe in the community and my job every day here is to work for the people of Red Deer and the surrounding community and that’s the way I look at things.

Have we had a fair amount of success here? Yeah, I’m not going to deny that, but again, you want to continue that on. You just don’t want to have it and let it go away. It would have be the right situation, have to be the right scenario, for it to make sense for me to leave what I’m doing here. I love coaching, but I also love the business side of it too.

Even though I have these descriptions of what I am, some days I come in and I’m strictly a General Manager and I have to have my hat on like that. I can never get really close to the players because my job as a General Manager is putting the best product on the ice and to do that, sometimes you have to make some harsh decisions.

That said, I’m probably as close as a head coach can be to his players. I tell my players that you don’t have to love your coach and a coach doesn’t have to love his players, but the most important thing is you have to have a tremendous amount of respect for each other. I think we have that here. At the same time, when I leave the dressing room and start walking upstairs, my coaching hat goes off and I’m a General Manager. That’s why when I talk about things with players – talking about things on the ice – I’m not talking to them about downstairs. I’m talking to them as a head coach. But if it’s something that needs to come from the General Manager, I bring them upstairs and talk to them as a General Manager upstairs. And the kids know that. They’ve accepted that. They know how it works here. Sometimes it makes it easier for them, sometimes it makes them harder.

I’m sure there are times they wish they could go to a different voice or their parents could, but you know what? That’s not the case here. They either have to accept it or that’s just the way it is.

It’s proven here that it works. We’ve had a lot of success and we’ve put a lot of players up to the pro ranks in the last five or six years. We’ve had a lot of unrestricted free agents sign contracts. We’ve had some of our players go to some of the top schools across the nation. But again, it’s not what we’ve done – it’s what we want to do.

SUTTER SQUARED?

McKeen's: Let me touch on something you said a minute ago. Would it be more favorable or less favorable to coach for Darryl in Calgary?

Sutter: (Laughs) People always bring that up but to me and Darryl it’s such a non-issue. We’ve never, ever discussed it. It’s up to Darryl if he ever wants to approach Brent Sutter about whether he wants him to be his head coach some day. It’s not for me to go to him and I’ll never do it. I’ll never go to Darryl and talk to him about it. If Darryl wants to talk to me then he’ll come to me and talk to me about it. I’ve never discussed it, it’s never been discussed.

I think - in fact, I know - that Darryl knows what’s going here in Red Deer. I know he knows that we’ve got a very good program in Red Deer and things are working here. I think he knows that for me to leave this, it would have to be a situation that would have to be very, very good.

McKeen's: Last question on this subject: if you were to coach anywhere in the NHL at any point in the future, would you still want to retain full ownership of the Rebels?

Sutter: I don’t know. I’ve never, ever considered selling the team. I love the Western Hockey League. I think there’s great ownership in this league. There are great General Managers, great coaches and obviously great players in this league and hey, there are great organizations in this league and across the CHL. Major Junior hockey is a very exciting brand of hockey. The majority of teams run their teams top-notch and I’m proud to say that and I’m proud to be part of that.

But asking me that question – I have no intention at all to ever sell the team. I really don’t. But I guess you should never say never and that’s kind of the way I look at it. I mean, no one has ever come and blown me out of the water here with an offer and yet I know where this team is at and how far we’ve come in the last six years and I know what I paid for it six years ago. I know where we’re at today and I know where we want to be at in the future.

But right now I have no intention of selling the Red Deer Rebels.

TOMORROW

Tomorrow, Sutter touches on the importance of building a family atmosphere with the team. He also discussed the CHL/Russia series as he gears up for the WHL end of it this week, along with giving us some insight into his plans for choosing Team Canada as the WJC approaches.