McCarthy ready for junior C challenge with Hornets
By Jon Yaneff, Sports Reporter
Sandy McCarthy was certainly an aggressive hockey player with 1,534 career penalty minutes in 736 National Hockey League games.
The 38-year-old will try to bring that same aggressive style to coaching the Alliston Hornets junior C hockey club.
“I like aggressive hockey, determination and I like physical and emotional hockey,” said the Innisfil native, who was recently named the head coach of the Hornets. “I think junior hockey is all of that wrapped in one. I think I would suit junior hockey perfectly.”
McCarthy joins a proven team in the Hornets, who have won four straight Georgian Bay Mid-Ontario Junior C Hockey League titles, as well as reaching the Clarence Schmalz Cup Final in those years, winning the Cup in 2008 and 2010. The Schmalz Cup championship-winning teams had been coached another former NHLer player, Darrin Shannon.
The new Hornets’ coach has coached minor hockey with the Innisfil Winterhawks the past four seasons, three as an assistant coach and last year as the head coach for the Winterhawks midget A team.
“I kind of mentioned I wanted to try junior hockey a year before to a couple of people and when this came about I had a friend of mine ask me if I’d be interested, and of course I was,” said McCarthy
McCarthy replaces former head coach Randy Salmon, who recently accepted the coaching position with the Huntsville Otters, of the Ontario Junior A Hockey League.
After playing his junior hockey with the Hawkesbury Hawks (Canadian Junior Hockey League) and the Laval Titan (Quebec Major Junior Hockey League), McCarthy was drafted 52nd overall in the third round by the Calgary Flames in the 1991 NHL Entry Draft. He would go on to play 11 season with the Flames, Tampa Bay Lightning, Philadelphia Flyers, Carolina Hurricanes, New York Rangers and Boston Bruins, as he had 148 points (72 goals, 76 assists). McCarthy will certainly draw from his NHL experience when developing young hockey players.
“The junior level players are already good hockey players and there’s only a little bit you really have to add to their games to make them great hockey players,” McCarthy said. “I think that’s the stuff we know as pro players, those little things to the game, and that’s what I want to add to the team.”
He hasn’t seen his new players skate yet, but McCarthy has gotten some pretty good scouting reports on the returning Hornets players and has started getting the rookie camp ready, as he prepares to lead the Hornets for another long season.
“The easiest thing is to get a team to the top, but the hardest thing is to keep a team on top, so that’s going to be my challenge and keep the team at a high level of hockey,” explained McCarthy. “I have high level, upbeat practices. We’re going to be in shape and ready to go when it’s time.”
Hockey Profile: Sandy McCarthy
Age: 38
Hometown: Innisfil
NHL teams: Calgary Flames, Tampa Bay Lightning, Philadelphia Flyers, Carolina Hurricanes, New York Rangers and Boston Bruins
Best NHL Memory: “The excitement of playing the highest level you can and the sport that you love. I was always a fan favourite, so that made it easy for me to get excited to play. Anytime I went on the ice the fans cheered, screamed and yelled because I liked to excite them. I think playing on Original Six teams, New York and Boston, was pretty exciting. Playing in Calgary, a Canadian city, was awesome. The way Canadian fans are, you can’t match it. Overall it was just making it there, which was the most exciting thing of all.”
Stanley Cup prediction: Vancouver Canucks vs. Boston Bruins – “I’d like to see the Canadian team win it. I think they deserve a Cup and they’ve had a good team for a long time now, but Boston is a good team also and they’re not just going to give it to them.”
