Pursuit is a sports feature series highlighting Athletes, Coaches and Staff and significant sporting events from North Bay and the surrounding area.
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It was Canada Day 2022 and Peter Goulet was driving to North Bay, hoping that the following meeting was going to go well.
“I was looking for a job, I was no longer in Trenton,” says the Head Coach of the Powassan Voodoos.
“The team had been sold but they wanted me to stay on and help out for the season, they treated me very well and they were very professional during the whole process. But I didn’t want to just take a job to take a job, I wanted to have the right people around me.”
Goulet met with Team Owner and President Jim Bruce on that Holiday Friday and says he liked everything he heard from Bruce. “Everyone I talked to about Jim had nothing but good things to say about him,” says Goulet, adding he had known General Manager Chris Dawson for the last 14 years “The opportunity to work with him in Powassan intrigued me,” he says. And it was Goulet’s good friend Marc Lafleur who was leaving the Head Coaching role with the Voodoos, opening up the vacancy Goulet was looking to fill.
“He let me know that he was leaving and there was a job opening. He also said nothing but great things, and I feel like I got very lucky to be here and that they wanted me to be here and I’m forever grateful to everyone involved in how that process played out.”
It was a match that was seemingly meant to be.
“I was in the market to buy a team. I had talks with the group in Espanola but that didn’t work out, and then NOJHL Commissioner Robert Mazzucca called me and said there might be an opportunity here and now I get to become part-owner with Jim and help him out,” says Goulet, who has been announced as the prospective next owner of the Powassan Voodoos. “Jim can go to Florida, and he doesn’t have to worry about things. He knows I work hard and that I’m passionate about what I do and I’m passionate about these kids and making sure they have success.”
It is the next step in what has been a two-decade foray into hockey coaching and management for Goulet.
“I started coaching about two years after I graduated, but it was hard to keep up with it because I was too busy working and earning a living,” recalls Goulet.
“At 31 years old, I had a friend who asked if I wanted to help coach his seven-year-olds Triple-A summer team. I said yes, went to my first practice, came home and said to my wife, ‘I know what I want to do for the rest of my life, I want to coach,’ and I have never looked back on that.”
Goulet says he started to do whatever he could to make it happen, taking whatever coaching jobs came his way while balancing it out with other jobs to earn an income. Goulet says he was then lucky to meet a man named Greg Rosen in Kingston.
“He gave me an opportunity to coach for him for my first full-time coaching job. If he didn’t open that door for me, I never would’ve had the opportunities that followed and I’m forever thankful he took a chance on me.”
That started Goulet on the track to what has now become a 20-year career behind the bench in various leagues throughout the province claiming two championships; One with the Nepean Raiders in 2012 in the CCHL, and another with the Kingston Voyageurs in 2009 in the OJHL.
“Obviously winning is the ultimate goal but there are so many ways to have success in hockey. If winning the championship was easy, everyone would do it,” says Goulet.
“Winning is the hardest thing to do and it’s the ultimate reward, but that’s why combining hockey with education is so important and it is really exhilarating to see a kid who gets to go spend the best time of his life playing hockey somewhere at a school and a program that they are going to find so much other success in.”
Goulet has placed players at NCAA D-1 schools such as Cornell, North Eastern, Clarkson, Union, Providence, Uconn, as well as seeing many players move on to Major Junior Teams in the Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League including current Calgary Flames defenseman Mackenzie Weegar.
“Weegar was in Triple-A as a 16-year-old 7th defenseman. I loved him and drafted him, but he didn’t make our team,” says Goulet. “He went to Junior-B, wins the Rookie of the Year Award and was a top prospect but didn’t get drafted to the OHL. He comes back to me and makes Team Canada East and wins a silver medal at the World Junior A challenge in 2012. Put up 51 points and wins a championship with us in Nepean. Just tough as nails. Got passed over by the OHL again and it would’ve been easy for a young man like that to give up on hockey at that point,” he says.
Weegar wound up playing with the Halifax Mooseheads of the QMJHL the following year and has never looked back, winning a Memorial Cup Championship and being drafted by the Florida Panthers.
“Being a professional athlete is something you get one shot at. You must take that chance when you are young. You can’t just wake up as a 35-year-old and decide you’re going to become a professional hockey player. There’s maybe one in a billion people on Earth who ever get the chance to leave the game and then come back to it and find success,” says Goulet.
“I was 22 and I was the top scorer in Canadian College Hockey, never played Major Junior. I got a tryout on the East Coast and I just never decided to go, and I think about that every day. It’s the one decision I regret every day,” he says, using that as his passion to motivate the young players he coaches at every level.
“When you go into a camp you have a bunch of 16-year-olds whose dream is to play in the NHL, and they should all have that dream and then when they don’t make the team, they get so disappointed, but you have to encourage them to never give up. If you quit, it’s over. But if you keep pushing and you give it all you’ve got, why can’t it become reality. If you give 100 percent and you don’t make it, well at least you tried your best,” says Goulet who says promoting education through hockey is something that can’t be overlooked and that point was proven with more than a handful of players on the 2022-23 Powassan Voodoos moving on to play at NCAA schools next year.
“It’s the best feeling in the world to watch a kid who has played hockey his whole life and now they get to get educated through hockey. No matter what sport it is, if you can get educated while continuing your athletics, you’re far ahead of people because businesses and CEOs want to hire people that play team sports and show they can work with a team,” says Goulet.
Putting a team together and finding the right players to mix into the lineup is an on-going process and Goulet says it’s something that can be incredibly difficult.
“Every team changes. New players come in and friends get traded out. Having to do that is not easy. I traded Josh Hardiman who is now my Assistant Coach, but that wasn’t an easy thing to do when he was a player. Telling a player ‘sorry it’s not going to work out’ is the toughest part of your job and you try to let them down as easy as you can. For us and these players, hockey is everything,” he says, adding there has never been a bad relationship with a player, even if that player was sent to another team.
“I tell all my players that I’m there to help you. If you need a job resume, or you’re having a bad day in hockey next year, you can call me anytime just to talk. I say all the time that this isn’t just a one-year commitment with these players, this is a commitment for life. I know that if I needed something, these players would be able to help me.”
Off the ice, Goulet says the toughest part is having his family five and a half hours away.
“I made it home six times throughout the year. I got a nice break at Christmas time; I was home for nine days, but it’s definitely the toughest part. I couldn’t do this full-time without the love and support of my wife Shannon and my daughter Casey,” he says.
“They came up Easter weekend and caught the Sunday game and they loved it while they were here. Without family and their support, this wouldn’t be possible. It’s been an unbelievable experience and I’ve made unbelievable friendships and my wife and daughter deserve huge applause for that. We adopted our daughter, and my wife hasn’t worked since we adopted her. We are a single income family, and we don’t have the luxury of a double income and that’s why I work so hard. I tell the players that I work so hard because if I lose my job and I don’t get paid for six months it wouldn’t be pretty. My reputation is everything and my hard work is all because of my wife and daughter.”
Goulet says overall his expectations have been exceeded over this past year and he’s looking forward to being here for the long haul.
“I knew I wanted to be here because of the ice fishing,” he says with a laugh. “Fishing is my outlet, and I went out and got to meet some great people, people who are friends with Jim and we had a great time right from the get-go and it just felt right. It’s been an unbelievable experience, I haven’t had one bad experience with anybody, from the team to the fans, to the billets to working with the guys on the Frontline Podcast – I've fallen in love with this place, and this has been one of my best years I’ve ever had in hockey.”
