Spokane Chiefs coach Brad Lauer has high expectations in first season as bench boss

With temperatures still in the 70s under mostly sunny skies, it might not feel like hockey season . But don’t let the pleasant weather fool you.

The Spokane Chiefs face off in their Western Hockey League season opener Friday in Prince George for a pair of weekend games against the regular-season defending champion Cougars. The Chiefs play in Wenatchee on Sept. 27 before opening their home schedule at the Arena on Sept. 28 against Tri-City.

After a 4-1 preseason – when the Chiefs outscored their opponents 22-9 – new head coach Brad Lauer said the young, but experienced, team is ready to go.

“I think it’s been a good couple weeks,” he said from practice at the Arena on Tuesday. “This time of the year, you still need to keep getting better and working on those little things. … But you know, the group’s worked hard.”

Lauer begins his first season as Chiefs head coach. The franchise’s 16th head coach holds the WHL’s all-time best winning percentage (.742) and brings more than 16 years of professional coaching experience, including stints in the NHL, AHL and WHL.

With a new coach and staff, there’s always a bit of an adjustment phase at the beginning.

“They’ve done a really good job of trying to understand our systems and our little things that we want to do as a team,” Lauer said. “You can see right now, in our exhibition games, they’re thinking about doing things and, you know, trying to do them. It’s not reactionary yet, but we’ve made some good steps these last couple of weeks.”

The Chiefs had no trouble scoring last season, so emphasis during camp has been on goal suppression. They allowed 283 goals last season – fifth worst in the WHL.

“We want to be responsible defensively,” Lauer said. “Defense for us starts in the offensive zone. If you can be good on your forechecks or good on your reloads, you can spend less time in your zone. We want to score a goal, but not take away from our D-zone responsibilities.”

Of course, all this work in camp and preseason games have come with some of the Chiefs’ best players at NHL camp. Five Chiefs, led by Berkly Catton, were invited to NHL rookie camps, and all five were held over for main camps so they remain away from the team. In addition to Catton, goaltender Dawson Cowan (San Jose), defenseman Nathan Mayes (Toronto), defenseman Will McIsaac (St. Louis) and defenseman Saige Weinstein (Colorado) remain with their NHL clubs.

“I think right now you’d like to have them back,” Lauer said. “But I get it. It’s a great opportunity for them, a great experience. They’re going to bring a wealth of knowledge to our group when they come back from their training camps to see what the pros do, and how the pros act. To me, you sometimes can’t teach that.”

Catton, the Seattle Kraken’s first-round pick in last summer’s NHL draft – No. 8 overall – is making a big impression with the big club. The 5-foot-10 center finished his second full season with the Chiefs as the fourth-highest scorer in the WHL with 54 goals and 62 assists for 116 total points. He became the second-highest-scoring 17-year-old in Chiefs history, behind only Pat Falloon, and was named the U.S. Division’s Player of the Year at the end of the season.

Lauer is expecting big things from Catton once he’s back with the Chiefs.

“I expect better results, better (offensive) numbers from him, but also I expect better results for him defensively, too,” Lauer said. “I expect him to be more responsible as a player on the ice, in his own end, I expect him to do the stuff that in our game we want to play, the type of game we want to play. But it doesn’t mean we’re taking away from his game at all. If anything, we’re going to be more creative with it.”

With a quarter of the lineup out, it has given Lauer a chance to evaluate more players in game settings.

“It’s been a great opportunity for our young guys,” he said. “We’ve played a lot of 15-year-olds this camp, more so than any other team I’ve been on. And they’ve done well. That’s the depth of our group, which is nice. The future looks bright.”

The Chiefs’ organization earlier this summer announced its plans to bid to host the 2026 Memorial Cup. Since the host team automatically gets a bid to the four-team round-robin tournament, one of the criteria is caliber of the host team.

Lauer understands the responsibility and looks forward to the challenge.

“I don’t look at it as pressure,” he said. “I’m realistic in this game. I know what we have. We’re still extremely young, but young wins, too. I won in Edmonton with a young team.”

Lauer said the team will carry four or five 16-year-olds and will lean on the three 20-year-olds and other returning players for leadership.

“We going to develop them, work with them, and create a culture of winning,” he said. “And that’s what we intend to do here. Whether it happens this year or not, we’ve got to keep building on it every day.”