Warriors fire Tim Hunter, name Mark O’Leary head coach

By Corey Atkinson

The Moose Jaw Warriors announced Monday that head coach Tim Hunter has been relieved of his duties.

He will be replaced by associate coach Mark O’Leary.

O’Leary is in his eighth season as an assistant coach with the WHL team. He took over as head coach when Hunter was at the world junior hockey championships, leading the Warriors to a 24-6-4-1 record.

“It has been a whirlwind here today, and kind of a mixed bag of emotions in terms of how it has gone,” O’Leary said during a media conference at Mosaic Place.

“For me, Tim has been a big part of why I’m in the position I’m (in) here today. I can’t thank him enough for what he has done for me for challenging me to be a better coach, pushing the status quo and always looking for new ways to do things.”

O’Leary said he’s excited for the opportunity.

“I really do love our group,” O’Leary said. “I know we’re young but there’s a lot of things to be excited about moving forward. I really can’t wait to get started. I know that we’re not going to change things overnight. But I’m really excited about the opportunity moving forward.”

Warriors general manager Alan Millar said a couple of factors came into the decision to let Hunter go.

“Tim was in the last year of his contract, and over the course of the last weeks and days, and last night and into this morning, I had come to the decision that I was not going to renew Tim in the summer or offer him a new contract, and I felt it was only fair to him, and I have too much respect for him, to string him along for the next 30 games in what has become a very difficult season,” Millar said. “This allows Tim to move on to find another opportunity in the game, and I’m very confident that he will.”

In saying this isn’t an interim coaching decision, Millar said he would sit down with O’Leary in the off-season to hammer out a multi-year contract for the position.

The Warriors have had a mixed bag of success in the Hunter era.

Hunter, 59, was hired in 2014 as the Warriors’ head coach when then-head coach Mike Stothers accepted a head coaching job in the American Hockey League. After playing 16 seasons in the National Hockey League with Calgary, Quebec, Vancouver, and San Jose, Hunter had been an assistant coach in the NHL for 13 seasons.

The Warriors finished out of the playoffs in his first season, 2014-15, with a 32-35-5 record but then made four straight playoff appearances.

Hunter won 189 regular-season games behind the Warriors’ bench.

During the 2017-18 season, the Warriors won 52 games and claimed the Scotty Munro Memorial Trophy for posting the WHL’s best regular-season record. But Moose Jaw lost to the Swift Current Broncos — the eventual league champions — in the second round of the playoffs.

This season, the Warriors are 11-22-2-0, the second-worst record in the league. Only Swift Current (9-25-1-2) has a worse mark.

The Warriors won only two rounds in the playoffs in Hunter’s five-plus seasons with the team.

This season, after getting off to a 5-1-0 start, the wheels started to fall off. The Warriors have won only six of their last 29 games, including a stretch of two wins in their last 18 games.

“Results are results,” said Millar. “Everybody’s going to look at this and look at our season. If we go back, we were very transparent in terms of what our team was going to look like, the age of our team. And we anticipated there would be tough nights. Some things certainly haven’t gone our way personnel-wise that have added to the toughness of the season. Results matter, but that’s a really small part of the announcement today.”

Hunter was an assistant coach with Team Canada at the world junior championships for two seasons before taking the reins for the 2019 tournament.

Hunter is the winningest head coach in Warriors history and ranks second in games coached.

Millar said this was one of the toughest decisions he has had to make in hockey and said the team will be turning a page with the coaching change.

“(It’s a) very difficult day for the organization and a very difficult day for me personally,” said Millar. “I met with Tim (Monday) morning. He’s a good man, a good coach, a good hockey guy. But at this time we just feel it’s time to turn the page… and look in a new direction.”

Millar said Hunter heightened their program through his experience at Hockey Canada.

“I look at some of the players that developed and moved on,” Millar said. “The one year, really unique that three 20-year-old free agents signed NHL contracts, in Tanner Jeannot, Jayden Halbgewachs and Brayden Burke and Tim certainly deserves a lof of credit for his leadership and what he’s done for the hockey club and what he’s done for the community.”

Millar said that the Warriors expect to finish the season with the staff they have: O’Leary as head coach, Scott King as assistant, Matt Wenninger as goaltending coach and Olivia Howe as coaching assistant.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an amended version of the story. Due to an editing error, Tim Hunter’s career record was incorrect in the original story.