CanucksArmy’s Interview With Utica Comets Head Coach Trent Cull After His 100th Win as an AHL Head Coach

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4 years ago

Interview With Trent Cull

Back in 1989, the Guelph Platers (soon to become the Owen Sound Platers) drafted an underaged defender from Georgetown, Ontario with their first pick, (7th overall) in the OHL draft. They also selected a forward named Steve Parson in the second round, along with some guy named Kirk Maltby in the fourth.

You have probably heard of Maltby. After all, he is a four-time Stanley Cup Champion. You might not have heard of Steve Parson, but believe me when I tell you that the man is a legend in small towns scattered across Ontario. I grew up with Steve and his older brother Mike in Elmira Ontario. Mike was the goaltender on that Platers’ squad when Cull was drafted.

That defender who was taken with the seventh-overall pick of the 1989 OHL draft was none other than Utica Comets head coach Trent Cull. Trent recently picked up his 100th win as an AHL bench boss, so I thought it would be a great time to check in with him to discuss the Comets’ season to date.

There are certain people in the Comets organization that I feel a bit of a bond with as they joined the team at the same time that I started covering the club for CanucksArmy. It’s pretty clear that Zack MacEwen is one such person, but there are others like Guillaume Brisebois, Jalen Chatfield, and yes… Trent Cull.

I have seen every game that Trent has spent as a head coach at the professional level and I have watched as he has made adjustments and adapted his style, depending on which players happened to be available to him at a given time. I have also seen him evolve in how he deploys his players on the ice.

In his first year, he didn’t have many rookies to work with and the prospects that were in the system were not quite at the level of the prospects that he has to work with today. In his rookie campaign behind the Comets bench, Cull didn’t exactly have a who’s who of Canucks prospects at his disposal.

Guillaume Brisebois was the biggest name in terms of draft pedigree as a third-round pick, but aside from him, Cull had undrafted overagers on his list of rookies, including Zack MacEwen, Jalen Chatfield, Griffen Molino, and Alex D’Aoust. He would get Kole Lind, Jonathan Dahlen, and Lukas Jasek for a handful of games at the end of the season as well.

MacEwen, Chatfield, and Brisebois earned the trust of the coaching staff early on and had solid rookie seasons. D’Aoust and Molino did not make the adjustment to the pro level as well and have since moved on.

In his second season, Cull saw defender Olli Juiolevi for 18 games until he went down with a knee injury, but Olli was mostly getting top-pairing minutes until that injury. Dahlen, Jasek, Lind, Jonah Gadjovich, Petrus Palmu, and Adam Gaudette, (briefly) were also in their rookie campaigns last season.

As we all know by now, the rookies didn’t have the best of luck last year as Jonathan Dahlen and Petrus Palmu both asked to be relocated in one way or another, while Jonah and Kole both had difficulty with the adjustment to the pro level and as such, had a difficult time getting traction and regular minutes from the coaching staff.

Gaudette quickly graduated to the NHL, while Jasek quietly had a steady season as a utility player who was used at all three forward positions at times and moved up and down the lineup.

Cull leaned on his vets more than some liked last season, but as someone who has seen this man coach this team from the get-go, I could understand why. Some of those younger players were just not ready to play a regular shift, while others tended to freelance rather than sticking to team systems.

So, now that we are into year-three and the team has provided the coaching staff with a bit more depth, and last year’s rookies have that season under their belts, how have things changed for Trent Cull and his staff?

The first thing that I wanted to do when I heard Cull’s voice on the other end of the phone was to congratulate him on his 100th win as a pro bench boss… and then we dove right into the Comets’ season.

It turned out that Cull didn’t even know that he had recorded his 100th win until after the game ended. I wanted to know how Trent felt that he has evolved or grown as a coach over those 100 wins.

That’s not something that I keep track of, (how many wins he has) so I was happy… but I was just happy for the team to get the win, you know what I mean?
But to answer your question, I think it’s been good. There’s been some trials and tribulations over the last two and a half years, and you know what, I think it’s probably just a maturing factor for me.
I was a head coach before in junior, but I’ve been in the American League for a long time, but now, to be the head coach here and learning about the different adjustments… for me, you know, with the players, I think in time you feel a little more secure and I think it’s been a better year of just keeping perspective. It’s a long haul, it’s not just an immediate thing every night where I will see an immediate result that will happen… or the immediate play, etc.
I think that’s probably the biggest area that I have grown in.

It’s not just the rookie players who grow their game at the AHL level, coaches can clearly take steps as well and it sounds like this one is doing just that as he takes the lessons that he learns each season and makes adjustments of his own.

One of the stories that came out involving the Comets recently was that of veteran goaltender Richard Bachman being loaned to a club in Sweden for the remainder of the season. I had the opportunity to speak with Bachman at Canucks training camp in Victoria this year and he was legitimately one of the easiest dudes to talk to. I have never heard anyone associated with the team have anything but good things to say about Bacher and what he has meant to the young players who go through Utica.

I asked Trent for his thoughts on Bachman during his time with the team.

He’s just a consummate professional. He was not handed an easy situation this year and his attitude was outstanding. Whenever called upon, he was ready and played well for us.
You know, almost in a way… it was kind of a mixed bag. I was sad for him, but I was also actually excited for him because he can go play, and it’s a loan situation, so we can have him back here as well, which is fantastic.
It’s like sending a guy to go play to get sharp and hopefully we can have an extended season and he can come back and be a part of that.

With Mikey DiPietro picking up five of the team’s six wins in January, I wanted to stick with the goaltending situation and asked Trent if DiPietro had earned his confidence and if we were seeing him starting to take the reigns as the club’s number one man between the pipes.

DiPietro has started 29 of the team’s 53 games so far this season and shows a record of 16-9-2 for his efforts. He has 16 of the team’s 28 wins this season.

Yeah, he does have my confidence, to answer your question.
I thought he had a really good start to the season and then went up (to Vancouver on a call-up) for a month or so and probably accumulated some rust over that time. He came back and I think it took a bit of time to find his game.
I think that ever since Christmas… that he’s kinda been settling in through January and now we don’t have a lot of games here in February, but he’s been playing really well… and you know what, the team has been playing well in front of him as well.
It’s just one of those situations where you get to this timeline where because you are playing fewer games… it’s probably no different than Vancouver… you want to put your best foot forward in those games and I think Mikey has been giving us a really good chance every night to win.

I mentioned earlier about how the Canucks provided the Comets with more depth this season. That is a stark contrast to previous campaigns where the Comets have had to go through a ridiculous number of players on PTOs, (professional tryout offers). For reference, the Comets blew through 19 PTOs last year, this year, they have needed to use just one.

I asked Trent how much different it has been for him this season to have players at the ready who already know their systems and not having to work so many ECHL level players into his rotation.

Well, you know what? I think that the team went out and got some more players, so we’ve had a little bit more depth to start with, for sure, as opposed to a couple of years ago… and the other side of things, even with Ryan Johnson and Jim, (Benning) allowing us to make a trade to bring in John Stevens… Here’s a guy who was somewhere else in the American League and we ended up moving along another AHL contracted player who we had in the East Coast League, (ECHL) for him.
I think there’s been some really good moves that have helped us, even though I still feel like we’ve had a lot of man-games lost between injuries and call-ups, but it has helped. We’ve kind of got the same rotation of guys who are in or out, or guys popping down to Kalamazoo… Nick Bootland does a great job in KZOO with their guys there as well.
It’s nice to have that familiarity. Players are walking through the door and guys know who they are, they’ve played with them before and there’s just that really comfortable feeling with each other.

I’ve had the chance to speak with Trent a few times now and wanted to pick his brain about how he splits up the duties of his staff, but had forgotten to ask. This time my brain managed to remember to ask who runs the PP and who runs the PK.

Jason King is my power-play guru… Gary Agnew runs the PK.
We’re going through a little bit of a stretch here with our PK, but it was outstanding against Laval, (the game the Comets played before this interview…they went 4/4 in their most recent game against Rochester as well).
Over the years, our specialty teams have been great. You know, I want to give these guys power. Everybody needs their own niche and their own “team” so to speak, to coach… so I give those guys control over that. We talk about personnel and situations behind closed doors and they go out and do a great job of following up with it and coaching both of those specialty teams.

I wanted to stick with the special teams for a minute as Lukas Jasek has taken a big role on the penalty kill this season and I wondered what went into the thought process behind getting the younger players some responsibility on the kill and if we might see Kole Lind get a look there this season.

A lot of the time it’s sharing roles. Everybody’s got a piece of the team. I want everybody to have a role. At the start of the year, Lukas wasn’t on our power play and I really wanted to focus on him on our penalty kill, so that’s what we did.
Gary worked with him, we went through a lot of video with him and I thought he did a really good job and looked like a natural kind of guy in that role… and that’s what we said to him… probably for you to make the NHL, you’ll be a guy who can play center, can take faceoffs… those are huge, key components to the penalty kill and I think he’s done a great job of that.
With Kole, if we feel like he’s needing more ice time and can handle more ice time… we feel his reads are good and his positional play is there… we’ve talked about it and we’ve actually practiced with him in those positions. We’ve given him some shifts of cleanup duty near the end of a kill… that’s all part of it. It just depends on who we have in the lineup and what holes we need to fill.

As a side note, Kole was out killing a penalty with Reid Boucher in the final three minutes of the very next game with the Comets down a goal.

Brogan Rafferty has been having a fantastic rookie campaign with the Comets, but as a player who is right out of college hockey, he isn’t used to a 76-game schedule. I wondered if there was anything that the team is doing to help Brogan or any other players with that second-half adjustment.

We’re very fortunate right now. We’ve talked a lot about this. With our Christmas break, the All-Star break, and now heading into a very opportunistic February. What I mean by that is that we played a lot of games early and teams are kind of catching up to us in games played, but we are averaging almost two games a week for last week, this week, and next week.
It’s been a great time to get some practice days in, take a day off when we need it… and then we just openly talk about it… hey, you know what? It’s a big load, take some time to make sure that you’re taking care of yourself. We talk openly about it… it’s a marathon, there’s certainly no sprinting to this season or any season in hockey.
If we make everybody aware of it… it’s no secret and we have to understand there will be good and bad days and we just kinda go from there.

Looking at the Comets schedule shows that all but five of their remaining games in the regular season come against divisional opponents. With such a tight race for playoff position in their division, I asked Cull if this presented any unique challenges for his coaching staff.

I mean, we tweak things from night to night a little bit, depending on who we are playing and how we’ve had success in the past against them, but you know what? It seems like we’ve been playing teams in our division all season, you know, we’re in that loop in this division where we bus and we’re usually home the same night.
We’ve been playing these teams all year, so it probably doesn’t feel much different for us to be in that situation. We just try to take care of the things we’re in control of and go from there.

When I had the opportunity to speak with Justin “The Gentleman” Bailey recently about some of the perks of playing for the Comets/Canucks organization, one of the first things that he mentioned was the fact the Canucks send Glenn Carnegie to Utica as often as they can to work with the players. Bailey gushed about this support from the big club as something that he didn’t necessarily see in the other organizations that he has been part of.

I asked Trent about Carnegie and the support from the Canucks and what that means to him.

Well, it comes in more shapes and forms than Glenn, that’s for sure. He does a great job and tries to get here about once a month and we try to give him some real time with the guys too. We let him have a voice, try to have at least one day that is completely run by him and then give him some time before and after practice.
We also have MacKenzie Braid who comes in who is a skating coach and he gets the same kind of timeline. Ashwin Patel comes in, (mental performance coach, stay tuned for my extensive interview with him) and he gets a similar timeline.
It’s great to have that support from Vancouver, and Ryan Johnson has been leading that for us. We’re trying to do more to get better results and it’s been great. We’ve got a full staff of different guys… Curtis Sanford, our part-time goalie coach is here way more often than those guys and does a great job.
I think that we’re all trying to do the right things to get the right results and I think it’s great that Vancouver is affording us those luxuries.
It makes my job harder, which is great. Because I have more people around, that’s good preparation. I’m sure Travis has got the same situation where he’s got a ton of different figureheads who kind of report to him… same with Jim. But for us, it’s great.
Ryan Johnson and I are in communication every day, sometimes multiple times and we will talk about our staff and how to get the best use out of everybody… because that’s the other thing, there’s no point in having all of these guys if they’re not playing a role and as you can see by what I said earlier, we want everybody to have a role… whether it’s players, coaches, etc.
I think that’s how we’ve been having the success that we’ve been having and I think it’s been beneficial for us.

As I mentioned earlier, some of the Comets’ rookies had a tough time adjusting to the pro level last season, and as rookie defenders, Josh Teves and Mitch Eliot have played just 26 and 23 games respectively this season, I asked Trent if they were this year’s “Gadjovich and Lind” in that respect.

I think the guys are moving along and that’s what you want to see, progression from the start of the year to the end of the year… but we’ve talked about this too. It’s such a difficult jump and it’s not easy for everybody.
Last year there were a few guys who didn’t make it. There’s a funnel effect as you move on from college, junior, or wherever… you know, you start to get to the American League and it’s a difficult jump. We’re patient with the guys and we’d like everyone else to be patient with them.
There’s a plan in place, we’re working the plan and there’s a process. It’s a process for the young players, it’s a difficult league to jump into. We’ve got some great guys doing great things… you know, Brogan Rafferty, etc, etc… Olli Juolevi, etc.
I think that Josh and Mitch are getting better all the time. It’s one of those situations where we want to make sure that we are developing the players, but we also want to make sure we aren’t just looking at the development of one player, we want to develop our whole team as well.

I really enjoyed my conversation with Trent Cull, as I have each time that I’ve had the opportunity to bend his ear about all things Utica Comets. Not unlike his charges on the ice, the coach has had to make adjustments and develop his gameon the fly as he grows and learns new things about what he can and can’t get away with.

I have seen prospects under his watch grow and develop and I have seen similar things from the coach.

He is leaning on some of his younger players in roles that they were not accustomed to last season and the team as a whole has benefitted from that. Now don’t get me wrong, those players still had to earn extended minutes in those roles, but the coaching staff seems to be trying players in different roles and might be showing that trust a touch more quickly than we saw last season.

Rookie stopper Mikey DiPietro is the team’s number one goaltender, after all.

Just like players navigating their way through their first couple of seasons of hockey at the pro level, Trent Cull has had to do the same and has adapted, changed, and grown along the way to his first 100 professional wins. It will be interesting to see the growth that comes over his next 100 games in the W column.

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CanucksArmy’s Interview With Utica Comets Head Coach Trent Cull After His 100th Win as an AHL Head Coach

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