A familiar face to those in Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League circles will now oversee the Battlefords North Stars.
The club announced in a press conference at the Civic Centre Tuesday morning that they have hired Humboldt native Brayden Klimosko as their head coach and general manager for the 2018-19 campaign.
“It’s an exciting day for me,” Klimosko said. “When my coaching journey began five years ago I always wanted to be a head coach, especially here in the SJHL.
“To have this opportunity with the North Stars is very special. The fan support and the passion for the team in the community is second to none, and I’m really looking forward to working here.”
Klimosko, 30, spent last season as an assistant coach with the Alberta Junior Hockey League’s Drumheller Dragons under former North Stars bench boss Kevin Hasselberg.
He had spent the previous four years as an assistant with the Humboldt Broncos, where he worked alongside Dean Brockman, Ryan Smith and the late Darcy Haugan respectively.
“I’ve learned everything from those guys over the last five years,” Klimosko said. “I had an idea of what to expect when it came to running practices and being behind the bench during games, but I really got to be involved more behind the scenes in Humboldt when it came to scouting and recruiting, which really helped to grow my passions for coaching.
“Last year in Drumheller was my first season away from home and that was a great experience. I really got to learn a lot from working with Kevin and I think we can take a lot away from how they do things in the AJHL over here in the SJHL. They are a league that brings in a lot of younger talent in major roles, and I think we can do that with the talent here in Saskatchewan.”
Klimosko was also a forward for his hometown team from 2005 to 2008, where he had 85 points in 157 SJHL games and captured an RBC Cup championship in 2008.
His father Tim also served as an assistant coach with the Broncos from 2006 to 2012.
“Obviously being a Humboldt native, everything that happened following the bus accident was tough for everyone in the community, and I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to coach again to be honest,” Klimosko said.
“I didn’t apply for this job right away, as I was taking my time to think things over, but I soon realized that this was a great opportunity for a number of reasons. Kevin loved this place and couldn’t say enough good things about it, which was a major influence for me applying here. It’s a great organization and it’s also close to home, so it’s a perfect fit.”
Klimosko will be taking charge of a North Stars team that has made it to the semifinals for three straight seasons and won the Canalta Cup in 2017.
However, the lineup will have a slightly different look to it as many players from that run will be moving on to the post-secondary ranks.
“Obviously it would be great to have Layne Young back for one more season, as that’s a player that comes around once in a decade at this level,” Klimosko said. “Obviously there’s some scoring that will need to be replaced, but we have some key pieces coming back like MacGregor Sinclair up front and we have some veteran guys on the backend like Cody Spagrud.
“I like to have a fast-paced team that’s good in transition play and battles hard in the defensive zone. I like to apply a lot of pressure all over the ice, so we’ll need to have players who skate well and work hard. We need to have all four lines moving and all hands on deck if we want to have a chance to win.”
This marks the fourth head coach and general manager in as many seasons for the North Stars, who parted ways with Brandon Heck in April.
Heck was hired last August to replace Nate Bedford, who left his post two months earlier to take over head coaching duties for the Alberta Colleges Athletics Conference’s Portage College Voyageurs in Lac La Biche, Alta.
Bedford was brought in to replace Hasselberg, who served as the North Stars head coach and general manager for five seasons before taking the same role with the Southern Professional Hockey League’s Pensacola Ice Flyers in the summer of 2016.
“I think we had our first resume about 15 minutes after we posted the job and I got my first phone call about the position a few minutes later, so word travelled pretty quickly about the opening,” North Stars president and governor Shandon Reichert said.
“We received about 70 applications and had a lot of high-quality people apply, but once we interviewed Brayden we knew that he was our guy. His passion for the game stood out after only a couple of minutes and I think that’s something our fans are going to see firsthand when the season begins.”
Klimosko will be one of four new bench bosses in the SJHL when the season gets underway in September.
The Kindersley Klippers hired Clayton Jardine last month, while the Broncos and the Notre Dame Hounds are in the process of filling their vacancies.
“It was very important for us to have the new coach hired right away, especially after the last two seasons where we were looking late in the summer and that put us under the gun a little bit,” Reichert said. “With the other openings around the league, we wanted to make sure that we got things done quickly.”
Announcements on who will be joining Klimosko on the bench as an assistant coach and team trainer will be made in the coming weeks, as his main focus will be on getting to know the players on the North Stars roster.
“That’s the biggest thing for me over the next two weeks," Kilmosko said. "I want to get to know the guys that are part of the team and I want to introduce myself to them.
“Having [assistant general manager] Wylie [Riendeau] here has been a major help already, especially when it comes to the recruiting process for the new guys we want to bring here. It’s really important to get to work early in the off-season on finding potential prospects and he’s done a great job of that already.”
