Veteran coach Bill Bestwick has seen it all in his many seasons of coaching junior hockey, including rebuilds. It’s all part of the game. But he admits there has been no task quite as daunting as turning the fortunes of the Nanaimo Buccaneers of the Vancouver Island Junior Hockey League.
The Bucs over the past three years have twice finished with a lone win on the season — 1-47 last season, 5-41-2 in 2022-23 and 1-43-4 in 2021-22. The Bucs were a mind-numbingly combined 7-131-6 heading into this season but have engineered one of the greatest turnabouts in league history under Bestwick. Nanaimo was 11-6-2-0 heading into Wednesday night’s game against the Westshore Wolves (15-3-3-0) at The Q Centre.
“It’s been the biggest turnaround in my career and very gratifying,” said Bestwick.
“But nothing happens without hard work.”
Bestwick had been out of hockey since the pandemic and wasn’t really sure he was up to the challenge. But Bucs owner Nicole Brandenburg, who moved from Germany to pursue her dreams of owning a Canadian hockey team, was persistent.
“I was not looking to do anything again back in hockey and said ‘no thanks’ when first asked. I was retired and thinking very much I don’t want to meet with [Brandenburg],” said Bestwick, who was also formerly on Nanaimo city council.
“But I’m happy I did. Nicole is such a nice lady with her heart in the right place and is genuine, caring and passionate about the players and this project — and so a couple of requests later from her — I said ‘OK.’ We live here. This is our team.”
Bestwick, a former WHL/BCHL scout for the NHL St. Louis Blues, does not lack for hockey connections. Certainly not after coaching and managing the Nanaimo Clippers, Victoria Grizzlies and Cowichan Valley Capitals over a combined 1,140 games in the BCHL with two league championships and two BCHL coach-of-the-year awards.
“The first thing I did was reach out to a couple of my old Clippers players [AJ Gale, Tyler Gow and son Brett Bestwick as assistant coaches],” said Bestwick.
And they got busy retooling the former moribund Bucs, both on and off the ice.
“These things take time to turn around, and time and resources were invested, in finding sponsorships and working on making the whole atmosphere an appealing, price-sensitive evening out,” said Bestwick.
The concurrent recruiting effort to find fresh player talent speaks for itself with the head-spinning improvement on the ice.
“It’s great to be around these 23 kids who care,” said Bestwick.
