Tom Renney has spent his first year or so as president and CEO of Hockey Canada getting reacquainted with fans' passion for the sport, and getting acquainted with the odd cup of coffee to keep going.
The longtime coach is still getting used to the trappings of being an executive and thinking on a big-picture scale about the health and the growth of the sport in Canada.
"Historically I've been able to look up at the scoreboard at the end of the night and know how well I did," Renney said Friday ahead of Hockey Canada's annual winter meeting. "This is a lot different. The results are a little more delayed, I suppose."
Renney sees some good elements to the first 16 months on the job, but it's the next several months and years that will be a challenge. Canada will again host the world junior championships in Toronto and Montreal in 2017, and the question of NHL participation in the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics is looming.
The NHL and NHL Players' Association hold the strongest cards in discussions with the International Ice Hockey Federation and International Olympic Committee, but Renney will be part of the forces lobbying for it to happen.
"As the national sport organization and kind of the governing body for amateur hockey, at least in Canada, we're all-in when it comes to the Olympic Games," Renney said. "There's no question the best players from Canada that play the game should be there. I can't suggest for a second that anything less than that is better."
Renney comes at it from a unique angle because he coached Canada at the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, the last Games before NHL players were allowed to participate. Back then, he thought the mix-and-match group of non-NHL players was a "dream team" because he always dreamt of coaching Canada at the Olympics.
In the 21 years since losing to Sweden in the Lillehammer gold-medal game, the 60-year-old has come around on wanting NHL players in the Olympics. He knows they want to participate.
Going back to piecing together an Olympic team from European leagues and elsewhere wouldn't be ideal, but if that's what happens, Renney may be the perfect guy to oversee that Plan B.
"Anything could happen — there's no question about that," Renney said. "I guess if it does I've had some experience with it. That being said, it's certainly premature to start to speculate as to how that might look, what it might end up being, but anything's possible."
There have only been preliminary discussions about the Olympics so far with so much of the focus being on the return of the World Cup of Hockey. That tournament is next fall in Toronto, and then the city will again co-host the world juniors with Montreal.
The 2015 tournament will be remembered for the star-studded Canadian team winning gold on home ice, but there were also concerns about ticket prices and attendance in Montreal. Renney took over only a few months before the tournament but assumed responsibility.
"You can suggest that 14,000 people in the Bell Centre isn't quite good enough for a world junior championships, but I'll argue it's better than 2,500 in a 10,000-seat arena in Europe, so I'll take that any day," Renney said
Handling the Montreal games better for 2017 is now one of Renney's top challenges.
"That's probably the biggest takeaway from the world junior is just making sure that we understand, respect and work with a culture that's huge to our fabric in Canada," Renney said, acknowledging that Montreal is more Habs country than Hockey Canada country. "I think the big thing is just recognizing how we can work together with the Montreal market, especially, and be better."
In the grand scheme of his job, Renney pointed to making hockey more accessible to everyday people and children as his top priority. For all the concerns about the price of playing the sport, he wants to make sure it's an enjoyable "cradle to grave" experience for Canadians.
But in following the highly successful Bob Nicholson in this job, Renney knew what he was getting into and what he'd be judged on by most fans.
"I was asked very early in my first year: There's a lot of pressure on you to win gold medals and repeat the great performance that my predecessor had had," Renney said. "I like winning gold medals, too. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be the best at something, nothing wrong with that at all."
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