Rangers represented at World Juniors
Posted Dec 17, 2010 02:56:18 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
The Kitchener Rangers will be represented at the World Junior Hockey Championships this Christmas.
Head trainer Dan Lebold will return to Team Canada’s staff as Equipment Manager.
“To represent your country at any level you can participate at is outstanding and it’s an honour to be asked to come along again and head up the equipment staff,” says Lebold, who was also with Team Canada’s gold medal winning junior club in 1997.
Now into his 17th year in the OHL, and his 15th with the Rangers, Lebold laughs when asked whether a young boy from Wellesley grows up with aspirations of becoming a hockey trainer.
“I think to work in the game is what does it and the satisfaction that comes with seeing players achieving their goals,” Lebold tells 570 News. “Especially in junior where the players come in at such a young age, seeing them drafted to play in the National Hockey League or going on to get a university education out of it. I think that’s what motivates me to do the job.”
While Lebold is a fixture behind the Rangers bench he’s more than happy with a role that is quite often spent in the shadows, doing the sort of invisible work that fans rarely see, like tending to jersey and equipment repairs and managing a locker room and other staff.
“I’m the person that nobody wants to see on the ice,” Lebold laughs.
Obviously, if he is on the ice, that means a player has been injured and requires the immediate medical attention that the head of a hockey team’s medical staff is asked to provide.
In Lebold’s absence, you’ll see his spot behind the bench filled by Surinder Budwal, the Rangers’ “go to guy” when it comes to filling in.
As for Lebold, he’s excited to be representing Canada at the junior tourney again and he says Hockey Canada leaves you “wanting for nothing” in terms of what it offers both players and staff.
He’s also coy about what has become a tradition that started with the 2002 Winter Olympics — the lucky loonie.
That year, when both our men’s and women’s hockey teams won gold, a Canadian ice-maker had buried a loonie at centre ice in Salt Lake City. Since then, the “lucky loonie” has turned up in the padding beneath the crossbar of a hockey net, in the floor of the hockey venue at the 2010 Games before the concrete was poured and even at both ends of the curling rink at the 2006 Winter Olympics.
In each instance, Canada would strike gold.
So where will the lucky loonie be placed in Buffalo?
“We’ll probably sit down as a staff and talk about possible situations (where it might work),” Lebold says slyly. “Everyone has their own little tricks and I guess that story is to be continued.”
Team Canada’s first game at the 2011 World Junior Hockey Championships is Boxing Day versus Russia. Our team features seven Ontario Hockey League players but Lebold is the lone Rangers representative.
Kitchener, with Budwal behind the bench, is home to Guelph tonight.
