The team is starting to take place, which means the team needs someone to lead them. And for its inaugural season, the Steel Kings will be led by Dustin Whitehead.
Whitehead is a 26-year-old former defenseman out of Cadotte Lake, AB, who previously played for the Saddle Lake Warriors, in the Northeast Alberta Junior B Hockey League, the Northwest Navigators, in the Northwest Junior Hockey League, and the Fort Vermillion Warriors in the Native Hockey Alberta Community.
Whitehead replaces Brian Verbeek, who has been sent to coach the Mackenzie team after the passing of Andre Payette, while Lauren Barr, who owns both teams, will spend her time here in Tumbler Ridge making sure the team gets off the ground.
Whitehead says he was born into hockey. “I have five brothers, and coaching was something I always wanted to do after I finished playing.”
In 2019, he began his coaching career with a ball hockey team for the Alberta Indigenous games. “Last year, I coached a Midget B team in Peace River.”
He says his style of coaching is to work on team bonding, to get to know everyone’s personality and skills and figure out how to best use those skills for the team.
By the time the paper hits the stand on October 28, all the players will hopefully arrived. Whitehead says his plan is to do some team-building exercises and hopefully hit the ice for the first time as a team next Monday.
From there, it is only a short time until the team’s first game on November 4. “We’ll have a week, week and a half to get ready,” he says. “The plan is to do get in as much dryland training, and team bonding and on-ice time as we can. Maybe some team yoga.”
Whitehead says he is excited to have this opportunity to coach the team, and he is looking forward to the next season. “The closer we come together, the closer we are to a championship.”
Steel Kings first game November 4
Last issue, we reported that the Steel Kings start date had been pushed back to October 21.
That date has come and gone, and the team has yet to take the ice.
According to owner Lauren Barr, that date was left over from the old schedule, which hadn’t been updated.
Instead, she says, while league play started October 21, the first game of the season for the Steel Kings will be November 4 against Kitimat.. “It was always planned to be November 4,” says Barr. “The plan was to stagger the start of the BC League’s season, to slowly roll it out.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
