WHL NOTEBOOK: Leslie uses Virden experience in Swift Current

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This article was published 26/01/2022 (1471 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Chad Leslie received the opportunity he’s sought for a long time in October, but it certainly didn’t come the way he hoped.

The 44-year-old Elkhorn product was named interim general manager of the Swift Current Broncos after GM and head coach Dean Brockman stepped away from the team for personal reasons on Oct.14.

“You feel torn,” Leslie said. “That’s a guy who has given me an opportunity to advance and I feel like we’re starting to go in the right direction in Swift Current. For a guy who spent his time in Junior A being extremely successful and having a little tougher go in the Western Hockey League, for me I really wanted to put together a good team for him to have some success because I think he deserved it.

“When that happens and it’s time to step into that role, you just kick it into automatic pilot and move forward and try to do things as best you can, and obviously Dean had faith in me.”

At 44, he earned that trust with a lifetime spent in the game.

Leslie came up through the Yellowhead Chiefs system, and after graduating from the under-18 AAA team following the 1993-94 season, headed to the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League’s Lebret Eagles. He also played with the Flin Flon Bombers and Estevan Bruins, piling up 117 points in 154 regular season SJHL games.

Leslie joined the Brandon University Bobcats for the 1998-99 season and later spent the 2000-01 season playing minor pro with the Lake Charles Ice Pirates in the Western Professional Hockey League.

His career behind the bench began when he was hired by the Bruins in 2008. He was working in the oil industry and playing senior hockey in Midale at the time, and the Bruins asked him to lend a hand with player evaluations when they found out he had moved to the city.

Leslie was then asked to take some notes during games, and that blossomed into cutting video and eventually a job as an assistant coach.

After head coach Karry Biette was asked to resign in January 2011, Leslie took over as interim head coach and GM for the rest of the season. He and his wife had already planned to move back to Brandon — he had taken a job with a different oil field company, Prairie Petro Chem — so that summer they returned to Manitoba.

It was good timing.

Leslie became involved from the start with the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Virden Oil Capitals as director of player personnel and assistant GM before the team started its inaugural season 2012-13 after moving from Winnipeg. He stayed until the 2016-17 season, working with his brother Troy.

“They gave me an opportunity to grow and cut my teeth a little bit in making decisions, doing our scouting and our drafting and all of our trades,” Leslie said. “For me it was a great experience. It was starting from the ground floor up with an organization on the business side and corporate partnerships, billets, everything. You dive deep into that situation where you were interested and involved in all aspects of it.

“The experience for me, not knowing the situation I was going into in Swift Current in a rebuild, I liken them as being very similar.”

In 2015, he began serving as Manitoba regional scout for the Saskatoon Blades, which dovetailed nicely into his Virden duties. He said there is a difference between what he looked at for the two leagues.

“When you’re scouting for the MJHL, you’re looking at cusp guys,” Leslie said. “You want the best players possible, but you’re looking for some later developing players. For me, it’s a little harder (scouting for the MJHL) because you have that scenario where if they’re too good, they’re playing in the Western League, and if they’re not good enough, they’re not playing at all.

“You have a pretty narrow window of players to look at and focus on.”

During his time with the Blades, it gave Leslie a chance to develop a friendship with Brockman, who he had coached against in the SJHL but was then serving as Saskatoon’s head coach.

When the veteran coach was let go by Saskatoon and hired by Swift Current as head coach and GM in 2018, Brockman quickly reached out to Leslie to join him as director of scouting.

“Basically I guess Dean felt a certain comfort level with me and liked how I was looking at players and wanted to bring me over,” Leslie said.

It was still a part-time position, so Leslie continued to work in the oil industry until he was also hired as assistant GM just before the Regina hub season started a year ago. While Leslie is too diplomatic to say it, Swift Current won the 2018 WHL championship by trading away much of its future, with a wide assortment of draft picks and younger players dealt for veterans by former GM and head coach Manny Viveros.

Viveros promptly left after that season, leaving a bill to be paid by Brockman and Leslie.

“I think that Swift Current doing what they did previously to get to that point did an excellent job, and to acquire all the players that they did, there was a price to pay, and certainly we were left with that,” Leslie said.

“I never looked at it negatively, just as a great opportunity for myself and my staff to step up and see what we can do with it in a short period of time.”

Leslie was able to draw on his Virden experience when they overhauled nearly 80 per cent of the team’s 50-man list in their first year.

Brockman and Leslie made several trades to reacquire draft picks, and have assembled a fine young team built around the club’s 2004-born players, who are in their 17-year-old seasons.

“We were able to get quality players and quality people with that first draft,” Leslie said. “We’re in the situation we’re in now because our ‘04s have been tremendous to this point. They’re character kids who knew what they were getting into in Swift Current in regards to what was left over.”

Leslie is quick to add the team’s 2001-, 2002- and 2003-born classes have also been outstanding under difficult circumstances.

Now it’s his job to continue the progression, a task he shares with Devan Praught, who was named interim head coach on Oct. 14 when Leslie’s promotion was announced.

In a release issued that day, Broncos board chair Trent McCleary said the pair earned their opportunities.

“Both Chad Leslie and Devan Praught were selected for their original roles because of their character, knowledge, and abilities to act as leaders for the organization,” McCleary said in the release. “We have confidence in both individuals that they can carry out the roles and responsibilities required of their interim positions within the vision, mission and values of the Broncos organization.”

Leslie quickly learned it’s a different experience as general manager rather than assistant, even with the interim tag. He was besieged with congratulations after he got the position, which is a job spent on the phone. A hockey general manager isn’t just chatting with other GMs, he’s also dealing with virtually every problem that crops up in an organization. On top of that, Leslie is still running the team’s scouts.

“It makes it very busy for sure,” Leslie said. “… You admire the guys in this league who have been doing this job for a long, long time. The dealings I’ve had with most of the general managers, they’ve been tremendous, ultimate professionals, and have certainly been very good to me.”

He doesn’t have to look far for inspiration. Growing up in Westman, he became well acquainted with the Brandon Wheat Kings organization and the work by longtime general manager and owner Kelly McCrimmon. He said that standard was carried on by the general managers who followed him.

“The one focus we have is to try to bring not only really good players but really good people and good families,” Leslie said. “We have a small market in Swift Current. Being from Brandon and the Westman area, I’ve basically had a front-row seat to watching a team do it right for however many years here in Brandon with the way Kelly conducted things and carried on with Darren (Ritchie) and now Doug (Gasper). “For me, we just want to do things very similar to how Brandon has done them forever by trying to draft well with minimal trades, minimal movement and just bring in the right people.”

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