Kings fill out coaching staff

By Tyler Lowey, Times Reporter

The Strathmore Wheatland Kings overhaul behind their bench is complete.
Last week, the Kings announced that Blake Bishop, Chris Williams and Ryan Grasdahl will take over for Braden and Keenan Desmet as assistant coaches on the Junior B club.
According to the newly named head coach Joel Robinson, the choices were easy.
“For me, keeping it local was a definite deciding factor in bringing these guys in,” said Robinson. “Off the bat, these were the names I had in mind. It took them a couple days to think about it, but I’m glad they jumped on board.”
There is plenty in common with the new coaching staff. For one, they all played together at one point with the Kings and under Robinson’s tutelage, they all live locally and they are all fairly green to life behind the bench.
Grasdahl recently graduated the Kings program this past spring and has never worked a season as a coach.
Bishop and Williams are older than Grasdahl and spent last year working with Ron West with the Strathmore Storm midget A program.
“It’s going to be a big jump for everyone involved,” said Robinson. “I think they each bring different things to the table and complement each other.”
Last season with the Storm, Williams and Bishop were a part of an underwhelming squad that went 4-13-1, and they learned a lot of lessons along the way.
“I brought them in last year because I wanted to mentor them. I thought it was important to get some younger guys into coaching in Strathmore and they did a great job,” said Storm Head Coach Ron West. “It’s definitely going to be a different step for them, but they’ll do fine. They are familiar with the league and they will be able to relate to the players easily.”
Now working together in the Heritage Junior Hockey League, they all bring something different to the table.
Bishop and Grasdahl combined for 281 games as defencemen in the HJHL and played together on the Kings from 2014-2016.
Williams netted 100 points (30 goals, 70 assists) in 127 career games in the HJHL, which included 91 games for the black, white and yellow. He also spent part of the 2014-15 season with the Kings and ended his junior career the following season in Strathmore by setting a career high with 13 goals.
There won’t be any chemistry issues off the hop with this crew, as they all played for the Kings when Robinson was an assistant in 2014-15 and a co-coach for the 2015-16 season.
“I never had any pushback from those guys back then,” said Robinson. “I was more of a player-coach back then and built great relationships with those guys. That definitely helped me hire these guys because I knew them more than just hockey players back then.”
Robinson hopes his new coaching crew can stick together longer than the last one did. Shadoe Stoodley had the Desmet brothers by his side for two seasons and went 28-39-3 and never won a playoff game.
Now with this new crew intact, Robinson has dreams of bringing a league championship to the Family Centre.
“We now have a base to work with. I hope to be here long enough to win a championship with the Kings,” said Robinson. “If I’m not, I feel like one of these three guys will be ready to move up into the head coaching job one day. There is a lot to look forward to with this group.”
Championship aspirations are awfully big dreams for a unit that hasn’t made it out of the first round in the past two years. But Robinson is hoping that going all in with the local connections will help drum up more interest in the program by talented, local hockey players.
The next big step in laying the foundation for what Robinson hopes is the groundwork for a championship contender is signing a couple local players and getting ready for training camp, which is set to take place at the end of August, with the puck dropping early in September on their exhibition season.