Skinner helps Romania take title

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This article was published 21/04/2011 (5490 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As Canada prepares to head overseas to battle for the world hockey championship, Brandon’s Tom Skinner returned home this week with a gold medal after leading Romania to the Division II world title.

The 55-year-old coach guided Romania to a perfect 5-0 record at the Division II world championship in Croatia, beating the host team 2-1 in the final game last Saturday night as Romania earned promotion to the Division 1 championship next year — one level below the elite level that Canada will compete in next week.

"It was pretty special," said Skinner, an education professor at Brandon University who previously coached the Brandon Midget AAA Wheat Kings and the now-defunct Brandon University Bobcats hockey team. "We move up now and we will be in that next layer of teams, which is right below Canada, playing the Ukraine, Poland, Italy. The top teams in that group sort of alternate year after year, going up (to the top pool), so it was real big."

Skinner, who spends about six weeks a year overseas, signed a two-year contract extension last spring to coach the Romanian national team and help with the under-20 and under-18 teams on a part-time basis through to 2012, with an option for a third year that now kicks in after leading the country to the Division II title.

"From our perspective, just getting up to that next group, there’s a big difference between Division I and Division II," Skinner said. "It’s tough for us as Canadians to imagine when you talk about teams like Holland and Great Britain. But that next (Division I) group has Kazakhstan and we actually beat Kazakhstan at Christmas … We knew Croatia would be very difficult, so for us it was pretty special. A lot of people in Romania were happy and excited that we won."

In addition to Kazakhstan, the Division I level features countries like the Ukraine — led by former Detroit Red Wings head coach Dave Lewis — which regularly battles to earn promotion to the elite world championship to face Canada and the other world powers. For Skinner, helping unheralded Romania advance to Division I has been one of the highlights of his coaching career.

"This ranks right near the top," said Skinner, who became a grandfather while on the flight overseas three weeks ago when his daughter Laura had a baby in Winnipeg. "For me personally, I think the longer you stay in the game as a coach, the more you appreciate the wins because they just don’t happen. There are very few coaches that win year in and year out. So it was pretty special. The people of Romania have been really great to me and the players, we’ve really grown together … They are not Canadian hockey players, but when it comes down to the game of hockey, they’re players. They want to win and they want to get better, so it was really special."

ICINGS: Souris product Chris Falloon, a graduate of the Southwest Midget AAA Cougars, WHL’s Prince George Cougars and the University of Manitoba Bisons, played professional hockey in Romania this past season … Brandon native and former NHL goaltender and coach Glen Hanlon is coaching the Slovakian national team, the host team for this year’s top division world hockey championship, April 29 to May 15. Canada is not scheduled to play Hanlon’s Slovakian team in the opening group stage of the 16-team championship … Also coaching at the worlds will be Souris native and former BU and ex-NHL coach Andy Murray, who is an assistant coach with Switzerland, which faces Canada on May 3.

» jshewaga@brandonsun.com