Victoria Royals assistant coach Enio Sacilotto smiles when asked about his laid-back style, which acts as a foil on the bench to the harder edge presented by head coach Dave Lowry.
If you can compare their successful partnership to that old good-cop, bad-cop routine, it will be just good-cop, good-cop for the next eight Royals games as Sacilotto is in charge, with Lowry in Toronto as assistant coach with the Canadian team for the upcoming world junior hockey championship.
The stint begins tonight in a WHL encounter against the streaking Vancouver Giants at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
“We have the same philosophy and [I bring] the same message Dave brings every day to this team. Nothing really changes, it’s business as usual,” said Sacilotto, in his fifth season as assistant with the Chilliwack Bruins/Victoria Royals franchise.
“Defence first and take care of our own zone.”
The Royals (17-14-2) have won two in a row but the suddenly-resurgent Giants (13-18) are are on a four-game winning streak under new head coach Claude Noel, who replaced former ECHL Victoria Salmon Kings coach Troy Ward on Nov. 30.
Noel, 80-79-18 as a head coach in the NHL with the Winnipeg Jets from 2011 to 2014, and Sacilotto have had a long-distance working relationship in the past but have never met face-to-face before tonight.
Sacilotto has had extensive coaching experience in Europe, including in the pro Italian league and with the Croatian national team.
“When [Noel] was coaching in the AHL and I was in Italy, he was a person I was on the phone a lot with regarding player recommendations and transfers,” said Sacilotto.
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Meanwhile, whatever Noel is doing in his new junior gig in Vancouver, it seems to be working.
Sacilotto needs to fend off the surging Giants with a Victoria blue-line missing the dynamism of Joe Hicketts, the WHL’s leading scorer for defencemen, who is also at the Canadian team selection camp for the world junior championship.
“Jack Walker will be moving back to defence and the other players also have to step up,” said Sacilotto.
It’s actually a double-headed defensive gap when you factor in the recent trade that sent strapping NHL Flames-signed blue-liner Keegan Kanzig from the Royals to the Calgary Hitmen in exchange for forward Greg Chase.
That suddenly brings a lot of attention to emerging six-foot-three, 215-pound Victoria defenceman Chaz Reddekopp, who is projected by Central Scouting to go in the latter rounds of the 2015 NHL draft.
“That’s a big chunk out of our defence,” noted Reddekopp, a native of West Kelowna. “But it’s also an incredible opportunity to step up and make the most out of it. I have to be hard to play against.”
This is the sort of crucible in which you learn and are forged.
“It’s pressure [on Reddekopp] but it’s good pressure . . . he is a big guy but also very skilled,” said Sacilotto.
Tonight’s game is the annual Teddy Bear Toss night, a popular hockey tradition in which stuffed toys will be tossed over the glass for charity when the Royals score their first goal.
ICE CHIPS: The WHL-leading Kelowna Rockets are all-in in their bid for the 2015 Memorial Cup. They have landed defenceman Josh Morrissey, the Winnipeg Jets prospect who is in the Canadian selection camp, and 19-year-old forward Gage Quinney in a blockbuster trade with the Prince Albert Raiders. Going to the Raiders are defenceman Jesse Lees and forward Austin Glover and second- and third-round bantam draft picks in 2016 and 2017.
