Former Leafs' assistant coach relishes challenge

And then one day the phone rang. It was fellow Islander Al MacAdam, coach of the St. John’s Maple Leafs offering a vacant assistant coach’s position with the American Hockey League (AHL) club.

The job was only for a year. But to Cameron, it was no-brainer.

This was a coach who admittedly was “addicted” to hockey, a man who in 1997 drove from P.E.I. to Kitchener, Ont., just to interview for a head coaching job with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League (OHL) (he landed the job, by the way).

So Cameron threw his bags in the car again and headed east, landing in St. John’s only to watch the AHL Leafs languish through a 23-win season.

So much for that job.

But Cameron landed on his feet, with an assortment of head coaching postings. This week, he returned to Newfoundland 10 years later, holding one of the highest-profile coaching positions in Canadian hockey.

Cameron knows coaching the national junior hockey team won’t be a cakewalk. Losing isn’t generally accepted very well in a country where Orr, Gretzky and Howe are sometimes mistaken for the Holy Trinity.

Cameron is running 46 hopefuls through their paces at the team’s summer evaluation camp at Mile One Centre in St. John’s. In December, a second camp will be held from which the final roster will be determined for the world junior hockey championship starting Boxing Day in Buffalo, N.Y.

“I remember watching the world juniors back when I was coaching Tier II junior and thinking, ‘Boy, I bet it would be really neat to do that,’” he recalled Thursday.

“Can I honestly say was that something that I sat back and said eventually I would do? No. Definitely not.”

Following that one season in St. John’s — after which MacAdam was let go, and Toronto deleted Cameron’s phone number — the Kinkora, P.E.I. product, who turned 52 last week, began a journey which took him through head coaching stints in the OHL, AHL and back again to the Ontario junior circuit.

Along the way, he fashioned a nice international resume, winning a gold medal as Canada’s head coach at the 2004 world under-18 championship, and a pair of medals — gold and silver — as an assistant in the past two world junior tournaments.

These days, when he’s not doing homework on the pending world juniors, Cameron is coach and GM of the OHL’s Mississauga St. Mike’s Majors, a job he gladly jumped at following a trio of seasons in Binghamton of the AHL, when the Sens missed the playoffs twice.

With this crop of juniors, Cameron has a collection of hockey gems from which to mould a gold-medal contender; the current camp roster includes 20 first-round NHL draft picks, including Tyler Seguin, the second overall pick last June, and stud defenceman Erik Gudbranson, the third overall pick by Florida.

But given that bevy of talent, Cameron isn’t about to reinvent the wheel, to sway from a blueprint that’s gotten him this far.

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“The players are coming from coast to coast, and some are even playing in the U.S.,” he said, “so you’re never really able to get a real good handle on all the players. That’s the biggest challenge.

“From a systems standpoint, everything stays the same with a few tweaks here and there.”

Cameron can take some comfort when he glances down the bench and eyes Seguin, the ultra-talented 18-year-old who won the OHL scoring title last season.

But Seguin might not be around come December. The Boston Bruins are high on their young star and the Brampton, Ont., native will be given every opportunity to start the season in the NHL.

That can’t be good news for Canada, which will already do without Taylor Hall, who has been all but guaranteed a job in Edmonton after the Oilers made him the top pick in June.

This on a team that will have no more than four returning players from last year’s silver medal-winning junior team.

Of those, only Brayden Schenn is on the ice in St. John’s. Calvin de Haan and Jared Cowan are injured, and Ryan Ellis took a pass on the camp which, as a two-year national junior team veteran, he’s permitted to do so.

“I remember watching the world juniors back when I was coaching Tier II junior and thinking, ‘Boy, I bet it would be really neat to do that,’” - Dave Cameron

The last time a team with so few returnees hit the ice was in 2006 on Brent Sutter’s watch. And that didn’t turn out so bad, as Canada won its second of five straight gold medals.

“Would we like to have Tyler Seguin? That’s a given. But you can’t get caught up in that, or that this tournament is a pressure-cooker.

“I just spend my time and energy focusing on the process, and making sure my team is ready because there are three or four teams capable of winning this tournament.

“If you spend your time worrying about things that might happen, you’d drive yourself crazy.”

Despite the Senators’ record, Cameron enjoyed his three years in Binghamton. And while he’s settled in nicely as the Majors’ architect, chances are he wouldn’t snub his nose at another shot in the pros.

And what better way to fast track your career but a gold medal at the world juniors.

Ask Sutter. Or Tom Renney. Or Mike Babcock.

“I’m no different from the players who aspire to get to the NHL,” he said. “But I’ve been in this business long enough to know the chips will fall where they are.

“You go to work every day and try to get better as a coach every day. But it’s really hard to get to that next level. There are only 30 head coaching jobs in the NHL, and another 60 assistants, and there’s a lot of good coaches out there.

“A lot of it is being in the right place at the right time, to get the right break. Thing is, you can’t control that, but what I can look after is getting better as a coach every day, and this program is such a valuable experience from a coaching standpoint.”

rshort@thetelegram.com