After a 12-hour shift laying pipe in a northern Alberta oilfield Dave Dupas had just settled into a deep sleep when his cell phone rang.
Mad at being awoken at such a late hour, Dupas broke into a smile when he realized it was Prince George Spruce Kings president Darcy Buryn on the line, offering him the job as Kings head coach.
After shuttling from camp to camp, Dupas boarded a chartered flight and was on his way to Prince George where he joined the team in time to board the bus for Kelowna.
Now three games (and three losses) into his second stint as a B.C. Hockey League head coach, Dupas is making less money than he did as a labourer, but he's back doing the job he loves -- teaching junior hockey players how to get better at their game.
"I'm happy to be here, I came in to Prince George a few times last year and I like the building, I like the team, and I like the city, and it's great to be back," said Dupas, 48, a native of Churchill, Man., who grew up in Burnaby.
"We're going to have an exciting team, a team that never quits and we'll be a character team, so people should come out and give us another chance and see what we have for the rest of the season."
In his first games, the Kings lost to Westside 9-4, were dumped 4-3 in Merritt, then came home and lost 6-3 Saturday to Salmon Arm. In the absence of any practice time, Dupas was unable to implement his systems or strategies before the games. The last-place overall Kings (6-25-0-2) will try to end a 10-game losing streak tonight against the Millionaires in Quesnel.
"I've only been here less than a week and they've been enduring this for the last three months," said Dupas.
"They need a win, they deserve a win and we're going to wins coming up pretty soon.
"We have to work a lot on being more organized in our zone. Up front, we're generating enough chances, but we still have to put more pucks in the net. But they work hard and you can tell that they care and they want to win some games, it's just a matter of cleaning some things up here and the wins will start to come. It's hard to change anything unless you can get on the ice for practices."
Dupas admits he felt a touch of deja vu when he took over the Spruce Kings from Ed Dempsey, who was fired last week. He encountered a similar situation last year when he was fired as a cost-cutting measure from the Williams Lake Timberwolves 21 games into the season after compiling a 5-15-1-0 record. He finished the season as coach of the North Okanagan Knights of the Kootenay International Junior B League.
"I did the exact thing last year, almost a year to the day, hired by a team that had three wins out of the first 29," said Dupas. "We started out a bit slow like we did here, and slowly built some confidence and strung some wins together and got out of last place into a playoff spot until Penticton went on a big run and beat us out of the playoffs."
The Kings retained assistant coaches Tom Bohmer and Jason Garneau when Dupas was hired. Mike Hawes will continue to handle the duties as assistant general manager and director of player personnel.
Dupas, who has a wife and two teenaged sons living at the family home in Kelowna, coached the Okanagan Rockets major midget team for two seasons, from 2007-09.
He's a former all-star defenceman in the BCJHL with the New Westminster Royals, the franchise that eventually became the Spruce Kings, and played four seasons in the league in the early 1980s before going on to Northern Arizona of the NCAA and a four-year minor pro career.
The Kings ran into penalty trouble and blew a 3-1 lead in the third period Saturday and the first-place Silverbacks found a way to win. The Spruce Kings are a fragile group, lacking in confidence, and too often this season they've found ways to lose late in games.
"You see it on their faces when things start to go, it snowballs a bit on us because they believe something bad's going to happen to them," said Dupas. "We have to get that out of our mindset. The stars aren't aligned against us, the referees aren't picking on us, and all the bounces don't go against us.
"Something good's going to happen soon, as long as we stay positive on it and keep moving forward. We are better than our record shows and with a little bit of work we'll start to turn it around. We just have to have some patience."
