Woods set for Brandon return

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This article was published 25/09/2014 (4247 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bob Woods hasn’t set foot in the Keystone Centre since he played defence for the Brandon Wheat Kings in the late 1980s.

As the new head coach and general manager of the Saskatoon Blades, Woods will return to his old stomping grounds a lot more frequently, starting Friday night when his club visits the Wheat Kings.

“(The Keystone Centre) was a great building,” Woods, 46, reminisced on Wednesday. “I loved playing there and it’s exciting to go back and see some people. I met a lot of great people there, a lot of friends, and it’s exciting to go back to really where your hockey career started.”

Woods turned in two superb seasons on the Brandon blue-line, tallying 153 points in 140 Western Hockey League games. Among his teammates was his brother, Brad, while current Wheat Kings owner/head coach/general manager Kelly McCrimmon was Brandon’s assistant coach and assistant GM at the time.

“(McCrimmon has) been very helpful to me and I’ve kinda talked to him a lot about certain things because he’s been around this league for a long time,” Woods said. “So he’s a good guy to pick his brain on a certain thing.”

Selected by the New Jersey Devils in the 10th round of the 1988 National Hockey League draft, Woods played 12 years of professional hockey, racking up 563 points in 751 games in the North American minor-pro leagues and winning titles in the American Hockey League and East Coast Hockey League.

A member of the ECHL Hall of Fame, Woods did just about everything as a player, setting the ECHL’s career record for goals by a defenceman, spending a season in Austria and even playing professional roller hockey for a few years, but he never made it to the NHL. He would change that as a coach, working his way up the ranks, starting as a playing assistant coach in the ECHL. Woods won Calder Cup titles as both an assistant and a head coach in the AHL and landed on an NHL bench in 2009-10 on Bruce Boudreau’s Washington Capitals staff. He followed Boudreau to the Anaheim Ducks in the 2011-12 season, remaining there until jumping to the Blades this summer.

A native of LeRoy, Sask., Woods said he’s enjoyed working close to home for the first time in his career and said coaching junior players has also been refreshing.

“The kids, they’re so attentive and they work hard and they know that you can help them get to where they want to go, so they’re going to listen and do whatever they can,” he said. “At the pro level, it’s a little different. You’re dealing with the superstars and guys that maybe are a little bit tougher to work with, but for the most part pretty good, too.”

Woods has his work cut out for him. Rebuilding under new ownership after hosting the 2013 Memorial Cup, the Blades went 16-51-2-3 to finish third-last in the WHL last season. But Woods said part of what drew him to Saskatoon was the chance to build something virtually from the ground up.

“I think the pieces are falling into place here,” he said. “I think we can be a very competitive team. I think we’re probably two or three years away from being an elite team but we’re going to get there at some point. It’s just going to be a little bit of a process.”

ONE-TIMERS: C John Quenneville was assigned by the NHL’s New Jersey Devils to the Wheat Kings on Wednesday after helping the Devils beat the New York Rangers 5-2 in a rookie scrimmage yesterday … Wheat Kings RW Jayce Hawryluk made his NHL pre-season debut for the Florida Panthers in a 4-3 shootout loss to the Dallas Stars last night … The Rangers have sent Wheat Kings LW Richard Nejezchleb to training camp with Hartford of the AHL.

» rhenders@brandonsun.com