Wranglers’ Mr. Everything

By Rob Miech

Monday, June 9, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Hockey coach Glen Gulutzan is on the ice, softly sliding pucks to a trio of tykes balancing on shaky skates five feet from the net.

Jacob and Tyler, the twin sons of assistant coach Brent Bilodeau, are shooting one-times while Landon Gulutzan, the coach’s son, waits his turn.

It’s the middle of the ECHL Kelly Cup Finals, the first time the 36-year-old Gulutzan has guided his Las Vegas Wranglers to a championship series. But before the big boys showed up to practice at the Orleans Arena, Gulutzan took time to put these mini-Wranglers through drills.

It was vintage Gulutzan, the only coach and general manager in the five-year history of the Wranglers.

His playoff motto — don’t change a thing, don’t get caught up in the anxiety or pressure, business as usual.

“They want us to win,” he says of the three kids. “But the next morning, their day isn’t affected by whether the Wranglers won or lost. They want to play, take shots, color.”

Winning or losing a title doesn’t color how Gulutzan gauges success for his organization.

The Wranglers have gone to the playoffs in four of their five seasons, and each postseason run was ended by the eventual Kelly Cup champion.

This time the Wranglers reached the finals before getting ousted by the Cincinnati Cyclones in six games. If that’s getting old, Gulutzan doesn’t show it.

Then again, he is well versed in tough luck.

As a left-handed-shooting center for Saskatoon, during his junior days, he lost Game 7 of a title series. In 2003, as a player and assistant coach in Fresno, he lost another one.

The previous season the Falcons won a West Coast Hockey League crown. However, a dislocated shoulder kept Gulutzan on the bench for the entire playoffs.

“It’s a tough, tough sled, right?” he says. “It’s a lot more fun to play.”

As a head coach, Gulutzan learned most about himself during the Wranglers’ second season, when they missed the playoffs.

Injuries, call-ups, trades and defections depleted that roster and forced Gulutzan to acquire Billy Tibbetts, a tough, skilled player with a hair-trigger temper and notorious past who recorded 132 penalty minutes in his 13 games as a Wrangler.

“I’ve rewound that team 100 times,” Gulutzan says. “But I’m proud of that team. We had a lot of hard-working, third-line guys.”

The scrappiest of them, a defenseman, broke down at a practice.

“He’s tough as nails, and he’s crying,” Gulutzan says. “The words came out of his mouth. He says, we’re doing everything you say. We’re working our (bleeps) off. We just can’t win.

“Sometimes that happens, right? You know?”

This season the Wranglers hit a rough patch from mid-December to mid-January, losing 11 of 16 games. Gulutzan pushed his players harder, challenging them.

“You get in guys’ faces so you get out of it quicker,” he says. “You never want that C-word — complacency — to set in. Still, when you have 106 points, there aren’t too many low points.”

Before the season Gulutzan experienced another mini-exodus. He didn’t think so many players would bolt, but high turnover is the nature of the ECHL.

It helped that Toledo suspended operations for two seasons while it built a new arena. Former Storm players Gerry Burke and Bruce Mulherin needed a new team. During the summer, both interviewed Gulutzan about his franchise more than he interviewed them.

It helped, they say, that former Wranglers center Jeff Attard played with them for two seasons in Toledo and had nothing but good things to say about how Gulutzan operates.

Mulherin also tapped former junior teammate Dustin Johner, who played for Gulutzan in Las Vegas, for insight.

“We knew he ran great, intense practices, that’s why we came here,” Mulherin says. “He is the most committed guy on the team. He always stays late at the rink. Some coaches don’t put in that effort.”

Juggling both positions is an art, and Darryl Sutter, the general manager of the Wranglers’ parent NHL club in Calgary, admires Gulutzan for his devotion to the business and to improving.

Gulutzan attends Calgary Flames camps and clinics in the offseason, and several players noted how Gulutzan copies every nuance of the NHL team’s system to teach his players.

“He’s been pretty nifty,” says veteran right winger Chris Ferraro. “He gets the job done doing double duty, as a coach and a general manager. That’s a rare gift, a special gift.”

Gulutzan says he’s just trying to do the best job he can.

The gifts are on the other end of those slow passes on any given morning, in any given month, at the Orleans Arena, five feet from the net and wearing those little Wranglers jerseys.