Part one of the “A Tale of Two Expansion Teams” series starts off with the head coaches of each respective team. Read on to dive deep into their careers and what each general manager might have been thinking when hiring Brian Idalski and Steve O’Rourke.
When the PWHL announced that the cities of Vancouver and Seattle were getting expansion teams, a great opportunity was born. For the fans and most of the media it means women’s pro hockey on the west coast, with all the great content opportunities that come with that. For the nerds like me, it means we get to dive deep into the minds of two general managers who had been given the tools to create the team of their dreams with very few restrictions. I’m sure Meghan Turner and Cara Gardner Morey wished they could have gotten Marie-Philip Poulin or Taylor Heise, but they didn’t get players too far off from their calibre.
It’s fair to say that the PWHL expansion rules gave Vancouver and Seattle the most probable playoff teams in the league. As a refresher, the six inaugural PWHL teams (Boston, Minnesota, Ottawa, New York, Toronto, Montréal) were only allowed to protect three players at the beginning, plus a fourth player once two of their players had been selected or signed. For some teams this meant that their blueline was nearly wiped out à la Ottawa and Minnesota, or that their forward corps took a big blow à la New York and Toronto. When Seattle is threatening the league with a Hannah Bilka, Alex Carpenter, and Hilary Knight first line, even the most casual fans’ jaws are dropping at the potential firepower there.
With that in mind, it’s not difficult to see some people jump to the conclusion that building these rosters was as simple as picking the best players available. I don’t think it was. Yes, Vancouver and Seattle had very favourable expansion rules, but there were still restrictions on who they could pick, and each team only had so many roster spots on their team. Not to mention, despite some disbelief publicly, Vancouver and Seattle still had to take salaries into consideration.
This is what I find the most fascinating about all of this. Since Turner and Gardner Morey were given so much leeway in building their teams, how would they choose to go about it? What biases were going to be shown in how they picked their teams? What positions, what skills, what lessons did they take from the past two seasons of PWHL hockey that they thought would be the key to having successful first seasons? Essentially, when you set a kid loose in a candy store, what are they going for first?
The Coaches
Starting with the coaches, Cara Gardner Morey stuck to her NCAA roots and hired Brian Idalski. On top of his 18 years of NCAA hockey experience and three years of coaching in China for the KRS Vanke Rays, he also coached the 2022 Chinese Olympic team. Idalski is a NCAA women’s hockey coach through and through. It makes sense that Gardner Morey would bring him aboard considering her vast experience in the NCAA as well. As a general manager you want to be on the same page as the head coach and to be comfortable with them. This is a very important hire and you’d struggle to find a person willing to go completely out of their comfort zone in this situation.
While Gardner Morey didn’t see much of Idalski in person as the two of them coached in different conferences—WCHA for Idalski and ECAC for Gardner Morey—Idalski has a reputation of building up very solid programs. With the University of North Dakota, Idalski brought a team that had been sitting at the bottom of the WCHA up to two NCAA national tournament appearances. When he came to St. Cloud State, it was a similar story: the Huskies regularly finished sixth and seventh, but then Idalski came along, bringing them up to fifth.
Idalski’s story isn’t one of bringing teams to outstanding heights and having Cinderella type stories. UND and St. Cloud State were decent teams but never threats to win a NCAA National Championship. You can only coach the roster you have, and Idalski isn’t the one in charge of building the Vancouver roster, just coaching it. That’s where he does do a good job, or at least that’s what the results say. He’s able to get teams to play a step above or at least meet expectations, as shown with his NCAA rosters and in coaching KRS Vanke Rays, where he won two of three championships. For Gardner Morey, getting her roster to play up to expectations is all she’s probably asking for, considering the talent that’s on it.
In Seattle, we’re seeing a completely different approach to the head coaching position under Meghan Turner’s leadership. Like Gardner Morey, Turner played in the NCAA. Afterwards, Turner played in the CWHL then the PWHPA. When Turner was hired by Danielle Marmer to be the assistant general manager for the Boston Fleet in the inaugural season, she was coming in with zero experience in a hockey front office. Learning under Marmer in the PWHL was Turner’s first time helping to operate a hockey team.
Here we have a completely different perspective from Gardner Morey and even Danielle Marmer, who spent three years as Quinnipiac’s Director of Hockey Operations. Turner is coming in only knowing how a PWHL team works. I’m sure as a NCAA player she had some idea about how to run a NCAA team. Having a general idea versus putting ideas into practice are on completely different planes of existence, though. That’s why it’s interesting to see Turner’s path to the Seattle general manager spot versus Gardner Morey’s path to Vancouver general manager and how that led them to their head coaching hires.
Turner was part of a front office featuring head coach Courtney Kessel. Kessel was hired with only two notable head coaching experiences: a year coaching the Toronto Furies of the CWHL and a tournament of coaching the Canadian U18 WJC team. In-between all of that was four years of being an assistant coach at Princeton University. As the Boston Fleet’s assistant general manager, Turner was able to watch firsthand what an NCAA coach with some experience was able to do. I do believe if Turner wanted to find another Kessel-type coach she could have, but she didn’t—she went in a direction I don’t think anyone expected and hired Steve O’Rourke.
Like Idalski, O’Rourke does have a long coaching resume, but that’s essentially where the similarities end. This will be his first time coaching in women’s hockey. His head coaching experience wasn’t anything to particularly write home about. Can’t judge anyone for feeling as though it’s an odd hire. So why did Turner go with O’Rourke? Apart from the vague answer Turner gave us, I believe she went with him because he’s more experienced in the pro expectations of the PWHL than a coach coming from the NCAA.
The NCAA is obviously a very good league considering the talented players and staff it sends to the PWHL. This is all the more reason for Turner to hire out of the NCAA, but she didn’t. I believe Turner views O’Rourke’s Canadian major junior experience as having him more prepared for the rigorous expectations of the PWHL than a coach coming from the NCAA.
O’Rourke spent time in the WHL which, apart from men’s pro leagues, is arguably the most travelled league you can end up. It stretches from the west coast of North America all the way to Manitoba. O’Rourke needs the players to be ready for long trips to play games on a regular basis. Every so often you’d see cross conference play in the NCAA, but to keep costs down teams generally stick to an area requiring minimal travel.
Another aspect of O’Rourke’s resume that Turner probably found intriguing are his three years as Prince George’s director of player development. Until recently the NCAA wasn’t focused on getting players to the next level in women’s hockey, be that the PHF, CWHL, or SDHL. The NCAA had players go to various leagues post-graduation, but the league didn’t act like a development league on the women’s side. On the men’s side, however, there’s definitely a pitch to players that if you go play there, they’ll get you into pro hockey. In women’s NCAA hockey, on the other hand, once a player made it to the NCAA it was expected they’d do their four years and be done with hockey.
NCAA teams and coaches d0 develop players but they develop them from U18/U19 programs with similar structure to the NCAA in terms of games played and balancing school with hockey. Canadian major junior provides a different type of development and has been doing so for decades whereas the NCAA is just starting to look at seriously preparing its players for the next pro step on their hockey journeys. NCAA programs are experienced in getting players ready for national team play, but a six-game tournament is a lot different than a pro season. O’Rourke has extensive experience in developing players from youth programs into major junior and then preparing them for pro hockey.
It’s fair to ask if O’Rourke can do this for women, but this is where Turner might find an advantage with O’Rourke. The jump to the PWHL has been described by rookies coming out of the NCAA as extremely harsh. With O’Rourke’s experience in helping players along on their pro journeys to an extent we haven’t seen in women’s hockey in the NCAA, he might have the advantage in having rookies settle in easier in the PWHL than other coaches who don’t have that experience. Once again, he just doesn’t have that experience in women’s hockey. That’s the downside of hiring him. We simply don’t know if he can transfer that experience to women’s hockey, and he’s going to have to do that on one of the biggest stages.
It’s an interesting juxtaposition between the two expansion teams. Which coach is going to better prepare their team, the one with a lot of experience in women’s hockey or the one with a lot of experience in development? It’s also interesting that Turner’s former team, the Boston Fleet, hired Kris Sparre, who is in the same position as Steve O’Rourke. Marmer and Turner are trying something new, looking at the game from a different point of view. Maybe it’s the completely wrong view and this will blow up spectacularly. For us hockey nerds this will be informative to watch, both on the ice and through player interviews. Through two seasons we don’t yet know what makes a good PWHL head coach, so the more data points we have, the better.
