Under pressure: Wolves GM Barclay Branch says Sudbury 'deserves a winner'

It's 8:30 in the morning on a sunny Friday in September, but inside the Sudbury Arena it could be a frosty Friday night in February.

For one, it's freezing cold inside the Sudbury Arena, which hasn't stopped some 100 die-hard hockey fans from giving up the last gasps of nice summer weather to watch the first scrimmage of the Wolves training camp.

The four dozen teenagers hoping to make the team are on the ice, the sound of pucks slamming into boards ringing from the rink to the concrete corridors in the bowels of the old barn.

But the man who picks who makes this team, general manager Barclay Branch, is talking on the phone. He's trying to make arrangements to get one of their players from Europe — where he was trying out for a national team — to Sudbury.

Branch's phone rings several more times before he's made his way through the arena concourse, grabbed his large Tim Hortons coffee and his notepad and climbed the painted cement steps up to the corner seat where he likes to watch the training camp.

Second season as GM

The 40-year-old, who has worked in the Ontario Hockey League since he was in his early 20s and is the son of long-time league president David Branch, is in his second season as GM of the Wolves, a job he's dream of having since he was eight years old.

Branch watches the game carefully and quietly, occasionally lifting up his coffee to glance at the list of names and numbers on the team roster on his lap.

More than once during the simulated hour-long game, complete with referees and public address announcements, Branch is greeted by passing fans.

"How do they look?" one man asks. 

"So far so good," says Branch. "They're looking good."

But to find out how good, you have to follow Branch out of the bleachers, back down the steep steps and into to a room on the side of the arena filled with empty folding chairs and tables. That's where — just days earlier — his new boss, real estate developer Dario Zulich, held a press conference announcing he had bought the Wolves.

Today, Branch opens the door to find the club's collective of hockey minds: four scouts, four coaches and two team executives, including the new vice-president hired by the new owner the day before.

They're here to talk about what they just watched and what kind of hockey team they might have.

Branch drags a chair to the front of the room, but stands anyway.

Many moving parts

"So guys, what are your thoughts?" he asks.

The staff go player by player and discuss everything from how a kid holds his stick, whether his skating is going to get better, whether he's polite, what his father does for a living and whether or not he seems likely to jump to the states to play College hockey.

"He's so smart," a scout says of one 16-year-old hoping to make the team.

"But I worry about his skating. Anybody else worry about his skating?" asks another.

"That and his durability," says a voice from the back of the room.

Branch quietly listens, makes some notes and flips over the page in his notepad and starts drawing up a chart showing the lines and who might play with you.

"Is that where you're putting him?" asks one of the scouts, with a surprised look on his face.

"No, no. I'm just throwing it around," Branch says.

The debate and discussion goes on for over two hours.

"Strength wise he's ready, but are those puck skills going to develop?" one of the coaches asks of a young defenceman.

"Well, that's our job right?" says another coach.

"We're never going to get it right 100 per cent of the time, right? But as long as we get it right more than we get it wrong," Branch tells the room.

"We were too easy to play against last year," he continues.

"There were too many nights last year where we were outworked, outgritted and embarassed."

"That's still fresh in my mind, I'm sure in all of our minds."

There are so many moving parts to assembling a hockey team. Finding a balance between the right hockey skills, the right personalities and the right mix of 19 and 20-year-olds whose careers maybe wrapping up and 16-year-olds who have nothing but potential at this point.

Building a team Sudbury 'can be proud of'

"It's not rocket science. We're not splitting the atom," says Branch afterwards. "But it does get very complex."

This is just the second day of camp, but decisions have to be made in the next few days. Branch says the toughest part of his job is cutting a player and looking at the emotion on the face of a teenager, whose dreams are changing.

"That's tough to digest," he says.

And Branch says he typically doesn't sleep very well during training camp, with all the possibilities for the season ahead doing laps around his mind.

"Some nights you can't turn it off," he says taking a sip of his coffee.

And always in the background, is knowing that it's his job to put together a team that will win more games, put fans back in the seats and restore the faith of a hockey town where loyalty to the home team is being increasingly questioned.

"The only pressure I feel personally is the pressure to put together a team that represents the people of Sudbury, a team they can be proud of," says Branch.

"They deserve a winner."