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WOODSTOCK RENEGADES *______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
NEWS ITEM
Tuesday, March 17th, 2009
Renegades coaching carousel continues
The coaching carousel continues.
Woodstock Renegades' head coach Wayne Maxner announced Monday he would not return for a second season behind the bench.
The former Detroit Red Wings' head coach said it was too difficult to balance his coaching duties with work and his personal life.
"Basically it's a time constraint," he said. "Plus you have to have time to do the things you want to do the way you want to do them. Unfortunately when you try to do both, one of those things suffers. Whether it's work or hockey, you try to do both."
Renegades' owner and general manager Bill McLeod said assistant coach Dave McLaren would take over the head coaching duties.
"Dave's definitely earned it and deserves it," McLeod said.
McLaren, who finished last season as head coach after Derek Partlo's dismissal, will become the club's eighth different head coach to start the season since 2002-03.
"To make that commitment next year, I thought long and hard about it," Maxner said. "It's hard for me because I love the game and it's part of my life."
Consistency and discipline -- both defensively and behaviorally -- were elements Maxner said he was proud of this season.
"That tells you what type of team we had."
Scoring was a problem, however, and the team's power play was one of the league's most inefficient.
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"With goals for and power play, we didn't score as much as I would have liked," he said.
Maxner was also frustrated by the lack of practice time to implement his systems. The Renegades practice every Tuesday, and many times players couldn't make it because of work or school commitments.
"I'm not going to use that as a reason but you can't teach kids things in such a short period," he said. "It's very difficult to have a practice and (when) education comes first ... it's hard to get guys out."
Maxner led the team to a fourth-place finish in the regular season.
Woodstock eliminated New Hamburg in the first round of the playoffs and came within two games of upsetting Norwich before losing in six games in the Niagara west semifinal.
"I think we could have beat Norwich, I really do," Maxner said, "but we needed things going for us. One was a good centreman to win faceoffs and control the power play and that's what killed us (against Norwich)."
Maxner's departure leaves another hole in the junior C club.
Overage captain Brandon Schell and forwards Kevin Lanni, Brent Crawford and Al MacEwan are all finished.
Potential overagers next year include leading goal scorer Cole Maher, Justin Pottruff, Scott Austin, Dan Phillips and John Quinn.
Maxner believes the team has the pieces in place to move forward, but it will have to come with someone else at the helm.
"The kids played well for me," he said. "They worked hard and gave me what they could as a team. There's nothing more to ask for.
"I really enjoyed it here. I had a lot of fun."
(Source Sentinel-Review)