LaFontaine leaving Bozeman for coaching job in Minnesota

By JIM CNOCKAERT Chronicle Sports Writer

As John LaFontaine considered whether to accept an offer to become a hockey coach at Minnesota's Shattuck-St. Mary's prep school, he'd recall a conversation he'd had with Tom Ward, who directs the academy's hockey program.

Chronicle file photo John LaFontaine, with whiteboard, guided the Bozeman Icedogs to the NAHL championship game in May 2006 - and then the team folded. Like LaFontaine, Ward is a respected member of hockey's coaching fraternity. He'd been a head coach for seven seasons in the United States Hockey League before spending four more years as an assistant at the University of Minnesota. He assumed Shattuck-St. Mary's would be a brief stop on the road to a high-profile head coaching position. It hasn't worked out that way.

“What Tom said to me was convincing,” LaFontaine recalled recently. “I told him I thought he'd be a head coach in college by now, and I know he's had opportunities. He said, ‘John, I thought I'd be here two years and I've been here seven. I hope I'm here another 25 years. That's how much I like it here.”

That testimonial did much to convince LaFontaine to take the job, in great part because LaFontaine understood exactly what Ward was talking about.

Before he took the job as head coach of the Bozeman Icedogs Junior A team seven years ago, LaFontaine wondered whether it would be smart to venture too far away from hockey's hotbeds in the East and the Midwest. And, even after he decided to come to Montana, he expected his stop here would be brief, a stepping-stone to something bigger and better.

Members of the coaching staff at Northern Michigan University had recommended the Icedogs job to LaFontaine, a former college assistant who was then coaching youth hockey in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. He was skeptical, but they told him to keep an open mind. The Icedogs job was one of the best in junior hockey, they said, adding that there weren't many nicer places in the country to live than Bozeman.

Now, as his days in the Gallatin Valley dwindle to a precious few, LaFontaine understands how difficult it will be to leave. He says he believes that, had the Valley Ice Garden not been sold a year ago and eventually closed, taking the Junior A team with it, he might never have left.

“I think I'd be happy here another 20 years. If they'd have me, I'd still do the job,” he said. “I don't see anything wrong with that. People would ask me, ‘Why don't you strive for a college job?' There's a coach I've really gotten to respect, Brian Kilrea of the Ottawa 67's in the OHL (Ontario Hockey League). He's been coaching there for 30 years and he's still putting kids into the NHL.

“I would have continued to try to put kids into college. There is a challenge every year in that.”

Now, he will help to do that at Shattuck-St. Mary's, where son Jean-Paul, a sophomore, and daughter Monique, an eighth-grader, will attend school. The hockey program there features eight teams: six for boys and two for girls. Four of the boys teams play at the Midget level; the other two are Bantam teams. He will coach the fourth Midget team, a development squad that will feature mostly sophomores and some juniors. It is not unlike the task he undertook last season with the Bozeman Icedogs Junior B team.

“It is very similar,” he said. “We had a lot of undersized and underaged kids playing against some older, tougher kids. Our biggest challenge was to get them to compete physically against those older teams.”

LaFontaine knew a lot about the Shattuck-St. Mary's program before he ever interviewed there. During his first season in Bozeman, he took the Icedogs to a national tournament in Novi, Mich. On the way, they stopped to play two games against the academy's top Midget AAA team. The next four season, Shattuck visited Bozeman to take on the Icedogs. A number of future college and NHL players played for those Shattuck teams, including future Pittsburgh Penguins star Sidney Crosby, the No. 1 pick in the 2005 NHL Draft.

LaFontaine joined the Icedogs in March 2000, and he immediately began to turn the program around, leading the Icedogs to a .500 record and playoff appearance in his first season.

In 2001-02, the Icedogs tore through the America West Hockey League, finishing with the best regular season record. The Icedogs defeated the Fernie (B.C.) Ghostriders in the championship series to win their first Borne Cup. The Icedogs then played host to the Gold Cup National Championship tournament, in which they failed to win a game.

LaFontaine says he'd gotten an edge those first two seasons because his early arrival in Bozeman enabled him to get a head start on recruiting - an advantage he did not enjoy once his Icedogs teams began to make the playoffs. The 2002-05 seasons were marked by poor records and early playoff exits.

“As a coach, you like to think that you can make up for not having the right players, but you don't,” he said. “The one thing you learn as a coach is that recruiting is 90 percent of the game. You have to bring in the right kids - and the right mix of kids.

“Anaheim (the Stanley Cup champion) is a perfect example of that. They've got some very skilled kids at the right positions, but they also have a lot of grit after that. They're not relying on a 5-foot-11 guy to be their role player. They have a 6-foot-3 guy who will win the corners and control the boards and be tough to play against. Maybe the 5-11 guy is gritty, but he's not hard to play against.”

LaFontaine and the Icedogs returned to prominence in 2005-06, when Bozeman set North American Hockey League records for total wins and consecutive wins en route to the regular season championship. The Icedogs defeated the Fairbanks (Alaska) Ice Dogs at home for their second Borne Cup title - an accomplishment LaFontaine ranks as the highlight of his Bozeman career - and then lost to the Texas Tornado in the final game of the national championship Robertson Cup tournament.

Later that month, the Valley Ice Garden was sold to a beer distributor and the Icedogs were dissolved. The Icedogs resurfaced last season as a Junior B team and played at the Gallatin County Fairgrounds' Haynes Pavilion.

“From the first year I was here, the Valley Ice Garden was always for sale, so you knew there was a chance the place could be sold and new owners would come in and decide to bring in a new coaching staff,” he said. “I always knew it was one year at a time. There were times, because we liked it here so much, I thought I'd be willing to do something else so we could stay. I work in the factory for seven years for Chrysler, so I was not scared to do something other than coaching.

“It was not a shock when it finally happened (the Valley Ice Garden was sold), because you knew that day would come. What was a shock is that it didn't stay an ice rink.”

Though he doesn't leave the program the same as he found it - a situation that obviously was out of his control - LaFontaine said he knows the Icedogs and Bozeman's youth hockey program are in good hands. His former assistant, Kevin Stone, takes over as the Icedogs' head coach.

“There are great hockey people here, people who have the right vision and mentality, people whose hearts are in the right place for the kids,” he said. “They won't let this program do anything less than succeed.”

Asked to compare the coach who leaves Bozeman to the one who arrived here seven years ago, LaFontaine says there really isn't much of a comparison. He says he was a taskmaster then, a coach who didn't care whether his players liked him as long as they respected him. In seven years, he says, he's learned it's important to cultivate a relationship with each player. That's the best way to begin to help each realize his potential, he says.

“I never cared that players were scared of me. I liked hearing that,” he said. “But I wasn't getting to know the kids and building relationships with them. I've learned that has to come first. My mentor, Paul Baxter, would always tell me, ‘Before you show them what you know, show them that you care.' The first couple of years, his advice went in one ear and out the other. But I found I can get to know these kids and not lose their respect.”

He also leaves knowing he did everything he could to meet what he believed to be the Icedogs' primary mission: To help every player improve and to help as many as possible get into college.

“That would maybe be the only thing about the program that would reflect me,” he said. “We wanted the reputation that if you come to Bozeman, you're going to develop as a player, you're going to be challenged. This is going to be a tough environment, but if you want to become a better player, this is the place to come.

“Looking back over seven years, I feel we did that. I've learned a ton along the way. Believe me, I wish I knew then what I know now. But I always wanted to get better as a coach, and I think I did that.”

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