Pedrick follows passion to hockey

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/10/2023 (900 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When Del Pedrick was growing up in Melita, the siren song of a little fast food and the Brandon Wheat Kings beckoned.

Especially after he and his friends got their licences, they would make the 80-minute drive from Melita for a Big Mac and a Western Hockey League hockey game.

“This was our big centre and the Wheat Kings were the big show for us growing up,” Pedrick said. “Right up until I left in ’86, we were always watching and following the Wheat Kings. In those days you didn’t get out of your community very much so maybe you came to two or three games a year, maybe you if you were lucky.

“But I remember them well, the brawls with the Hextalls and all those guys, a lot of tough customers.”

Little did he know back then just how much the Wheat Kings were going to factor into his future.

Pedrick, 55, was born in Swan River but his family — father Kalvin, mother Eleanor, and sisters Dawn and Dayle — moved to Melita when he was five.

Naturally, hockey was a priority, with two practices a week and games on the weekend.

“The nice thing about a small town was the rink was almost always open,” Pedrick said. “Although you only practised twice a week, you were out there whenever you could.”

An outdoor rink opened when he was a little older — “That’s where we spent a lot of our nights” — and if they weren’t available, road hockey was a popular option.

“Hockey was a passion of mine, I loved it, and I had the same dream as every other Prairie kid of playing in the National Hockey League,” Pedrick said. “Back in those days, we only had three channels out in Melita so Saturday night was Hee Haw, Tommy Hunter and then Hockey Night in Canada. You were always parked in front of the TV.”

Pedrick played in the inaugural season of what came to be known as the Manitoba U18 AAA Hockey League in 1985-86 with the Southwest Cougars under coaches Bob Caldwell and Wayne Wilson.

CAREER ROOTS

After graduating, Pedrick headed to the University of Manitoba and tried out for the Bisons hockey team. He didn’t earn a spot with the Bisons and instead played in the Manitoba Major Junior Hockey League while earning a physical education degree.

In a funny way, his schoolwork did more to push him into coaching than the playing did.

At the time, Coleen Dufresne was the women’s basketball coach, and Pedrick did a project that involved shadowing her. That gave him his first real look behind the scenes at a successful coach.

By that time he had ended his playing career and jumped on an opportunity in 1991-92 to serve as the trainer for the men’s hockey team, coached by Peter Sullivan and Don Depoe. It also didn’t hurt when he showed up late for class one day and was punished.

Wayne Fleming, the former Bisons head coach, taught at the school and when Pedrick was tardy, asked him to put together a list of hockey drills for a practice as punishment.

“I took them to him and he looked at them and said ‘This is pretty good. You should probably look at doing something like this,’” Pedrick said. “I had no clue at that time what I was doing, but it was all those little influences like Coleen Dufresne, Wayne Fleming, Donny Depoe, Peter Sullivan. I was really intrigued.

“I’ll never forget how I saw coaching affect the players.”

The Bisons were out of the playoff picture, so the coaches mapped out what needed to happen in the second half. The team improbably reached the playoffs, and Pedrick was struck by the impact the two men had.

TEACHING

Pedrick moved to Brandon in 1992 to teach at Vincent Massey, where Tom Skinner served as vice-principal and Peter Gerlinger taught and coached the hockey team.

Pedrick joined him on the Vikings staff and a coaching career was launched.

“It was invaluable spending time with Pete in those early years and really learning how to coach and interact with kids,” Pedrick said. At the same time, Skinner was coaching the Brandon University Bobcats and would invite Pedrick to practice as a guest coach.

Pedrick was hired to coach Southwest in the last season of the old Souris Arena — 1995-96 — and spent five seasons with the club. They missed the post-season on the last day in his first year, won a playoff round the next year and then captured league titles in 1997-98 and 1998-99. They remain the franchise’s only two championships.

“Opportunities like that come around because of the good people I was able to work with,” Pedrick said.

NEW PATH

He and his wife Carolynn made what proved to be a life-changing decision in 2000. With four young kids — Cole, Davlynn, and twins Danica and Denelle — Pedrick stepped away from teaching after nearly a decade to join the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Waywayseecappo Wolverines as a full-time coach for the 2000-01 season.

“It was my wife who gave me the push,” Pedrick said. “We talked about it that we probably wanted to wait until the twins were in school before I looked at coaching. Barry Butler had come calling — at the time we coached against each other in the (U18) league — and he asked if we would be interested.

“My wife said ‘If you want to do it, now is the time. Let’s do it.’”

While he chuckles that you can question his sanity for leaving a full-time job to go into coaching, he hasn’t looked back.

He spent two seasons in Wayway, and when the general manager Butler was fired, the writing was on the wall. Pedrick was let go in November of the second season.

He was teaching in Rossburn, but when Butler called from the North American Hockey League’s Cleveland Barons around Christmas, Pedrick went south and his wife took over the term teaching job in Rossburn.

Cleveland made him an offer after the season ended but wouldn’t guarantee it — that made it hard to justify moving his family down — so he returned to the MJHL and his birthplace with the Swan Valley Stampeders.

“That was a great four years,” Pedrick said. “I loved the area and the people.”

Pedrick said an important part of his development as a coach is that he worked with different age groups, with his background as an educator coming in handy at the high school level as the players balanced the books with hockey. He said U18 and junior players are fairly similar, although the latter is different because of what he refers to as the “hierarchy of the game” involving the age of players.

But ultimately there is a unifying factor.

“It’s about dealing with people,” Pedrick said. “I think people skills from the time I spent in education and coaching have helped me the most probably.”

Pedrick signed two-year deals with the Stampeders twice, but after the second one expired following the 2005-06 season, the three-time MJHL coach of the year finalist and the team parted ways.

NOTRE DAME

With his children getting older, Pedrick connected with former Wheat Kings defenceman Mike Vandenberghe of Reston, who was coaching at the Athol Murray College of Notre Dame in Wilcox, Sask. The community of 264, which is located 52 kilometres south of Regina, proved to be an ideal spot for the family.

He initially was tasked with teaching and being a house parent. In his second year, Carolynn took over as house parent and Del moved into hockey operations as the bantam co-ordinator, who was in charge of recruiting while also teaching half time.

“It was a great spot for our family,” Pedrick said. “Our kids were still young and it provided us with a much more stable income and much more stable job scenario. You talk about small towns, towns and villages raise your kids as much as you do. I owe it to that little town for raising our kids with us.”

When Dale Derkatch was hired by the Regina Pats, Pedrick took over the whole hockey department at Notre Dame in 2008.

He began coaching the U18 team, and while he was never behind the bench with the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League team, he oversaw the operation. He also spent one season with the U15 club but mainly spent his time in the higher age division.

His efforts were noticed. Pedrick was picked to coach at the World Under-17 Hockey Challenge in 2004 and 2006 and the U16 Challenge Cup in 2012 and 2013. Another part of the mark Pedrick left in Notre Dame was winning back-to-back U18 AAA national championships in 2009 and 2010.

ROMANIA

During the summer of 2009, Pedrick went to Romania to help Skinner with a summer program he was running. They also held a coaching clinic, so he met a number of coaches there and stayed in contact with them.

Early in 2016, one of the coaches he met reached out to say an academy was being started in Romania and asked for Pedrick’s help. That led to a job offer in April, but with the twins set to graduate, he wasn’t certain if it was the right move.

But by the end of June, both teenagers had made university commitments, with the elite gymnast Denelle heading to Central Michigan University and the wrestler Danica joining the team at York University.

With Carolynn’s encouragement once again, he took the job as the technical director at the Seclerland Hockey Academy in Transylvania in central Romania for the next four years.

“I had to start everything from scratch, helping them build programs for the U8s all the way up to their U18s,” Pedrick said.

Since there was nothing after U18 other than pro, they developed a U23 team in partnership with a nearby university, Sapientia. He coached the team in the second season, 2019-20, as the team played in the European university hockey league.

The couple returned to Canada during the pandemic in July 2020, and Pedrick discovered it was hard to find work. He ended up working in Rouleau, Sask., as a farmhand for Bill Aulie — the father of former Wheat Kings defenceman Keith — while also doing some substitute teaching.

WHEAT KINGS

Pedrick returned to Notre Dame for a season before landing the job that finally led him home to Manitoba.

His hire was announced on Aug. 25, 2022: He replaced Dan Johnston, who left to join the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers.

“The nice thing is that you’re just focused on coaching,” Pedrick said of life in the WHL. “Everywhere else, there are many distractions. You’re looking for volunteer goal judges, off-ice officials, trying to be the pseudo-billet co-ordinator, fundraising, attending board meetings and lots of other things.

“The nice thing about coaching major junior, the Western Hockey League, is you’re straight coaching. You’re looking after your on-ice product. You have duties away from it, but it’s basically helping players pursue their goals to hopefully feed the team goals moving forward.”

Pedrick said there is a learning curve in every job, and he was adapting to how things are done. For instance, he was heavily engrossed in player evaluation, scouting and recruiting in other jobs, but in Brandon, he is another set of eyes and the decisions are ultimately made by director of player personnel Chris Moulton and head coach and general manager Marty Murray.

Pedrick said his approach in Brandon was to listen and learn after he joined the team.

“I was fairly quiet for that first year,” Pedrick said. “I just wanted to take things in and try to offer as much as I can. You have to see how the dynamics play out and where I can offer and where I can fill holes. As things move forward, I keep trying to do that. As an assistant coach, your job is to make the head coach as good as you can.

“… It’s never been about the title for me, it’s about working with the group toward the common goal and chasing that championship and success at all levels for every individual in our coaches’ room and every individual in our players’ room right through the organization.”

One of the nice things for Pedrick is the people he’s worked with in Brandon. His fellow assistant coach Mark Derlago has been the one constant, with Don MacGillivray serving as head coach at the start of last season before he was fired and Murray took over.

(Derlago’s nickname is Billy in honour of his uncle Bill Derlago, who also played with the Wheat Kings.)

“I’m very, very fortunate,” Pedrick said. “In my first year that was Don and Billy and Marty coming in. He was hired days after I was. It made me feel good to know the people. I didn’t know Billy that well but it doesn’t take long: I felt very comfortable right from day one.”

Pedrick played with Southwest before Murray, but since Murray’s cousin was on the team, he watched his future assistant coach in action. Later, when Murray was with the NAHL’s Minot Minotauros and Pedrick was at Notre Dame, they worked together on some players.

They didn’t know each other well before they both ended up in Brandon, but Murray said Pedrick is an impressive coach with his knowledge, work ethic and ability to communicate with the players.

“He’s a great person,” Murray said. “He’s very passionate. He is an extremely hard worker and has that teacher background so he has a really good way to interact with our players. “I’ve enjoyed being around him daily. He knows a lot and has been in the game a long time. His passion for his job is second to none.”

Murray and Pedrick work together on the forwards, while Derlago has the defencemen. He also coded video during games and is now spending more time on the bench during games.

That means coding video, which means marking certain plays in a program that allows the staff to pull it up quickly for players later, is done on the bus or in the office after games. That includes making a digital notation on every faceoff, power play, penalty kill, defensive zone coverage and offensive zone play.

“It just makes the job so much easier than ‘Oh ya, it happened at about the five-minute mark of the second,” Pedrick said.

He chuckled his first exposure to video came when he coached Southwest in the 1990s, and it was done by rewinding and fast-forwarding on a video cassette recorder. In Wayway, he had three VCRs and cut between tapes.

LABOUR OF LOVE

In a new era, Pedrick finds way to do a familiar old job.

While Carolynn still lives in Regina and the couple travels back and forth, the family dog Jane has been a familiar presence in the coaches’ room when she visits.

So, did Pedrick make the right decision when he left full-time teaching in 2000? He doesn’t hesitate when asked.

“I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world,” Pedrick said. “If there was a sanity check, people would be continuing to check when (Wheat Kings owner) Jared (Jacobson) had called with a contract offer when I had already started back at Notre Dame that year.

“The offer came on a Wednesday or Thursday and I was in Brandon on Sunday and for a lot less than the salary I would have been making (in Notre Dame). It’s a labour of love.

“I’ve always told my kids ‘Make sure you love what you do and do what you love.’ I try to live that out.”

» pbergson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @PerryBergson