Towards the end of the 2012-13 EIHL season, Paul Thompson announced he was to step down as the Head Coach of the Coventry Blaze to take up a position with Troja-Ljungby. It was a difficult decision, particularly as at the time he was the longest serving Head Coach in European ice hockey with strong, emotional ties to the club. After two seasons in Europe, one in Sweden and the other in Denmark with Aalborg, Thompson will return to the Skydome as the man in charge of the Sheffield Steelers bench.
“I’ve been away for two years and I felt that the Coventry side of my life was over, certainly the coaching side. From the day I signed with Troja, I pretty much cut all ties with the business side of things. Sheffield came to me and I started looking at the family, the fact that they were in the Champions League (CHL) and once I got speaking to Tony (Smith, Sheffield Steelers Owner) and he outlined where he wanted to be. I sat down with my wife and my kids and we looked at the whole situation and what was on offer at Sheffield and I was quite excited about that opportunity”
It’s not often you join a team in a management capacity after they’ve just won a league championship, but it’s the situation Thompson finds himself in with the Steelers. “There’s been a lot of changes – I’ve brought in a lot of changes too. I think the league is changing and the evolution of hockey in GB is changing and he (Tony) wanted me to spearhead that here. From the hockey point of view, I’m the General Manager. I asked for certain things to happen and I would implement them. Prior to signing, I wanted his backing on that and 100%, he wanted the same things as well.”
Part of that evolution is a shift from 3-line hockey to 4-line hockey. How much influence that will have this season is currently unknown, but right now there is a lot of talk (and action) in that area and it’s being led by the teams in the CHL, Sheffield being one of them. “In the CHL, you have to have that. They run 13 forwards and 7 D, or 8 D and 12 forwards and if one of them goes down, one pops up from their U20s, they have the mechanism to just keep bringing them through.”
This of course has a knock on effect in the EIHL, “The league is changing. It’s now six defencemen, it used to be five but now it’s six with a seventh rolling in. And hopefully that’s an opportunity to get more British kids involved as the rosters are getting bigger. Your best players still get their minutes whether it’s a 3-line league or a 4-line league. It’s a myth that you don’t. The shifts are shorter and the players are fresher. You’re not pacing yourself because you get that recovery time. More importantly, the product to the fans is way better because you keep the speed and the tenacity in games.”
The reason for a strong line up though isn’t being driven by the CHL. Whilst that’s a good competition to be involved in, the realism is that the EIHL campaign is main focus, and of course what the fans are interested in. “You take this job and you’re given a budget and there’s an expectation that you’ll be in the mix for everything. I want the team to win every game and every trophy but the league is a different animal now. There’s probably six teams who are genuine contenders right now.” Having a close league may well add even more to the EIHL product alongside the strength-in-depth as more games become important games, which ultimately are the games players want to play in and fans want to watch.
You only have to spend five minutes in the company of Paul Thompson to know that he still feels a huge attachment to the Blaze. Though in that five minutes, you’ll also realise that he’s absolutely committed to putting the Sheffield Steelers in first place above anyone else, Midlands-based or otherwise. Which was arguably why he was so successful here in the first place. We wish him luck in the future, just not on September 12th. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
This article was published in the September 2015 issue of the Coventry Blaze magazine, OnFire.
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