VANCOUVER — To reach Powell River from Vancouver by car requires ferries across Howe Sound and Jervis Inlet and, if the traveller is lucky, about 4½ hours to cover the 120 kilometres between the largest city in Western Canada and the remote lumber town of about 20,000 people on the Sunshine Coast.
“They were a huge part of growing up for me,” assistant general manager Richard Seeley says. “I remember going to the old Coliseum at the PNE. To be honest, like it was yesterday, I can still see in my head Jeff Brown hitting Pavel Bure for a stretch pass through the Calgary D and going forehead-backhand on Mike Vernon. That ’94 playoff run… you understand the significance and how important the Canucks are to, obviously the City of Vancouver, but the province as a whole. I grew up a Canucks fan, for sure.”
Seeley was 14 years old when Bure scored the most famous goal in franchise history to sink the Flames in Game 7 overtime and launch the Canucks towards the 1994 Stanley Cup Final against the New York Rangers.
Born and raised in Powell River and hired last week by Vancouver general manager Ryan Johnson to be his National Hockey League assistant and run the Canucks’ American Hockey League team in Abbotsford, Seeley says one of the great benefits of his new job is coming “home.”
“It’s lot but it’s exciting,” the 47-year-old says of the move. “I was with the Los Angeles organization for a long time, 10 or 11 years (in coaching and management), and playing before that. Now, I can finally have my son wear the Canucks jersey he would get at Christmas every year from his grandfather, and not give him a hard time.”
Vance Seeley is 11 and plays minor hockey. He grew up with his dad and mom, Crystal, in the Redondo Beach area of Southern California, near the Los Angeles Kings’ offices in El Segundo where Richard worked as GM of the Ontario Reign AHL team.
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As a player, Seeley graduated from the B.C. Junior League’s Powell River Paper Kings to the Western Hockey League, where he spent most of three seasons with the Prince Albert Raiders and became in 1997 a sixth-round draft pick of Los Angeles.
A shutdown left-shot defenceman who captained many of his teams, Seeley spent seven seasons playing in the American League — Bruce Boudreau was his coach for the first five in the Kings’ system — before a five-year tour of Europe included hockey stops in Germany, Austria, Croatia and Northern Ireland.
In all, he played professionally for 10 teams — and not one of them in the NHL.
The manager now entrusted to oversee the acquisition and development of minor-league players to feed the Canucks’ NHL rebuild never played an NHL game.
But Seeley’s career-long struggle to make the NHL, and his own experiences on a sometimes tumultuous development path that never quite took him where he wanted to go, actually make him an excellent choice to oversee the Canucks’ minor-league team.
Well, that, and what seem like pristine credentials for Seeley as a smart, progressive, successful AHL GM in California where his all-time points percentage as a manager was 57.5 and the Reign averaged 41 wins (in a 72-game schedule) over the last five seasons.
“As you go through and have experiences, I call them kind of lenses, you know?” Seeley says. “I’m able to reflect back and I have a lens; I feel like I can relate to players and understand how hard it is to go into the American League, how hard it is to play against men, how much work goes into being a pro.
“I was fortunate enough to have some good leadership groups that I’ve played with and around, and kind of took the lessons I’ve learned from them: how to contribute to a team, (handle) adversity. When I look back, there were so many incredible life lessons. That lens has helped me to relate and have an understanding when you’re having conversations with young players and trying to develop them. Being able to relate, I think, is a valuable part of being able to communicate with the players today.
“I have absolutely no regrets (as a player). I know the work I put in, I know how I prepared, how I played. Sometimes you get close (to the NHL) but you just need a break or a bounce, and I’m okay with that. It happens.”
Seeley’s playing career ended in 2010-11 after an 11-game stint with the Belfast Giants. But he stayed in Northern Ireland and went to school and eventually earned a Masters degree in sports management from Ulster University.
He went to work for the Kings in 2015 as coach and manager of their East Coast League team in New Hampshire before taking over the AHL team in Ontario, Calif., in 2018.
Seeley remembers introducing himself to Johnson, who ran the Canucks’ farm team until his promotion in Vancouver last month. When the two began sharing ideas, it was clear they shared a vision, too. Seeley says he was excited when Los Angeles general manager Ken Holland approached him to say the Canucks had asked permission to speak with him about their NHL AGM-AHL GM position.
Having helped the Kings re-tool their NHL team, he understands what he is getting into with the Canucks’ rebuild.
“I’m really excited about the challenge,” Seeley says. “There’s a lot of work to do, but there’s a lot of great people involved. I think that’s a big portion of making it successful here — having some patience, doing things the right way, trying to look at all aspects. Ryan’s forming his group and trying to get the right people on the bus in the right spots, and I couldn’t be happier to be a part of it and getting to work.
“It’s an opportunity to grow with the group, lay a little bit of a foundation and some structure, how we want to navigate this. And it’s especially exciting having an opportunity to work with, I would imagine, some pretty high-end talent like I had in my previous organization. Helping them reach their dreams, that’s pretty rewarding.”