Former Senators head coach Dave Cameron will be back for another OHL tour of duty.
After signing a two-year extension this week, Cameron, who’s 67, will continue to be the 67’s head coach for a 6th and 7th season, which will surely give some of our readers an excuse to resurrect the nonsensical “6-7” internet meme for a day or two.
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Under Cameron this season, Ottawa had a fine year with 47 wins and 100 points but they ran into an equally good Barrie Colts team in the second round, losing in five games.
Cameron told TSN 1200 radio this week that coming back was a pretty easy decision.
“Your best chance for success is the people you work for,” Cameron said. “I can’t say enough about the organization here in Ottawa and the staff with Jan, Norm and Paul (GM Jan Egert, and assistant coaches Norm Milley and Paul Stoykewych). It’s just been a real pleasure to work (here). And throw on top of that, knock on wood, I’ve been blessed with good health and energy.”
Cameron was asked by 67’s play-by-play man Kenny Walls how long he wants to keep coaching for.
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“Yeah, obviously, when you’ve been at it as long as I have, the discussion about when you’re going to retire is something you do annually,” Cameron said. “So, for me, your challenge when you’re coaching at the OHL level is your energy level.
“Because I’m at the point where I’m not ready to do anything half-heartedly. And the big thing in that is you have to have good energy, and I love getting up in the mornings. I love going to the rink. I love hockey.”
Those are three pretty solid reasons to return.
That love of hockey goes back to his playing days, growing up in PEI, where Cameron won a spot on his hometown University of PEI hockey team. There, he caught the attention of the New York Islanders, who took him in the 8th round of the 1978 draft.
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In 1981, the Islanders traded Cameron and Bob Lorimer to the Colorado Rockies for the Rockies’ first-round pick in 1983, and the Islanders used it to select some guy named Pat Lafontaine. Cameron spent the 1981-82 season with the Rockies and then two more after they moved to New Jersey and became the Devils.
As for Cameron’s coaching path, it’s taken him from PEI Junior B to the Colonial Hockey League, the OHL, AHL, NHL, and a two-year stop in Austria.
His NHL coaching experience lies primarily with the Senators, and that connection began all the way back in 2001.
That was the year Eugene Melnyk bought the team Cameron was coaching, the OHL’s Toronto St. Michael’s Majors. Cameron stayed in the role for another three seasons.
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A year after Melnyk bought the Senators in 2003, Cameron shifted to Binghamton to run the Sens AHL bench for three seasons. In 2007, he moved back to Melnyk’s OHL team, now called the Mississauga St. Michael’s Majors, and spent four seasons there.
When the Sens hired Paul MacLean as their head coach, Cameron got his first NHL coaching work as MacLean’s assistant in 2011-12, which was also the season Melnyk sold his OHL team.
When MacLean was fired mid-season, three and a half years later, Cameron got the job and guided the Senators to the playoffs that season via the famous Hamburglar Run.
As he did with so many good people in this town, Melnyk then threw a grenade on his relationship with Cameron the following year.
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The volatile owner didn’t just fire Cameron in 2016; he told the media a few weeks before that one of Cameron’s opening night lineup decisions was “stupid.” Cameron’s firing was the first official act of Pierre Dorion, who had taken over as GM a few days earlier.
“It was hurtful,” Cameron said about Melnyk’s comments. “I didn’t think there was any need for it. I felt like I was fired for three weeks, every day,”
But that was ten years ago, now water under the bridge. And as Dave Cameron begins to think about a 16th season as a coach in the league, life in the OHL today suits him just fine.
Steve Warne
The Hockey News
This story was originally published at The Hockey News Ottawa Senators site. Click on the latest headlines below to read the latest stories there:
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