Dave Allison sat down at a table at the Memorial Sports Centre and proceeded to talk about his two passions—coaching hockey and living life.
His enthusiasm both fueled and excused his lack of focus. He quieted, his point distilled, and offered his purest opinion on coaching.
“It’s a [expletive] battle,” he said. “That’s all it ever is.”
Allison was vacationing in his hometown after his second season at the helm of the Iowa Stars. His team has won their first AHL playoff series, and their NHL affiliate, the Dallas Stars, had a number of call-ups from Iowa make a positive impact.
He was characterized as a gritty, hard-working defenceman in his pro career, spent mostly in the AHL but punctuated by a three-game stint in the NHL. Compliments he paid his players when talking about the playoffs hang on words like “character” and “resiliency.”
“It’s not just s—s and giggles, man,” Allison said. “You gotta dig in. You gotta dig in and work hard. And sometimes you exhaust your potential and you don’t play at the level you want, but at least you have no regrets.
“You just keep battling. It’s a journey. You enjoy it.”
His career in coaching has been a journey of its own. Starting with the Virginia Lancers of the ECHL in 1989, Allison has worked in the AHL, OHL, and UHL, in addition to a 25-game stint as head coach of the Ottawa Senators in the 1995-96 season—posting a 2-22-1 record.
He stepped away from the bench and moved back to his home of Fort Frances in 2002—only to be lured into coaching the Borderland Thunder to their only SIJHL championship that season.
His gig here led to a hiring to the new Iowa Stars’ staff in 2005, and he, his wife, and three daughters moved to Des Moines. Scott White was brought in at the same time as director of hockey operations, and their professions have since cultivated a strong relationship between the two.
White first met Allison when he was coaching the Lancers and White played for the opposing Greensboro Monarchs. He said there’s a difference between Allison coaching in his first job and his work with the Stars.
“I think there’s been some mellowing in his maturity as a head coach. I mean, he coached in the NHL,” White remarked. “Three daughters do that to you, as well.
“But he’s an intense man. Energetic. You certainly can hear him when he raises his voice.”
White stressed the importance of people to Allison. He said the coach is “a complete family man. Not only I say his immediate family, his daughters and wife, but I’m talking his brothers, sisters, grandparents.
“That’s one thing you get right away.”
It goes beyond family. “He has an uncanny ability to communicate, not only with people he knows, but as well strangers,” White added.
“Some people think of coaches as stand-offish. That’s not Dave Allison at all.”
Allison said his job as a coach is not just to train his players, but also “give them hope.”
“I have great empathy for them and what they go through, but I don’t have sympathy. They’ve chosen this,” he reasoned.
He conceded the AHL can be hard on some players who have been on the fast track through competitive hockey their whole lives.
“It’s usually the first time they’ve ever had somebody say to them that ‘You’re not ready right now to go to the National Hockey League.’”
His words were telling and deliberate when he spoke about his players, explaining just how important a job coaching can be.
“What we try to do is just try to teach them how to compete and build from there,” Allison said. “As coaches and even as parents, the three things we try to do is provide hope, direction, and confidence.”
Dave’s younger brother, Mike—himself a 10-year veteran of the NHL—attested to the responsibility inherent in coaching. They shared the bench when Dave became head coach of the Kingston Frontenacs in the early ’90s and hired Mike as an assistant.
“When you’re a coach, you’re held accountable for not only yourself, but the players, the fans, everyone’s on top of you,” noted Mike Allison.
“It’s amazing. And maybe that’s why I didn’t continue on.”
He said it can be difficult as a coach to make mistakes and negatively impact your players. And while he likes to be able to go home and leave work behind, he said Dave’s mind doesn’t leave the rink—and while he can be hard on himself for it, that dedication is what makes him special as a coach.
“You look at his career as a coach and he’s been from the highest level in the NHL to the lowest level, and he’s never given up on his dream,” Mike Allison stressed.
“He kept at it when a lot of us—and I’m sure myself—would’ve said to themselves, ‘Forget this! I don’t need this rejection.’
“I probably didn’t have the passion that he [Dave] did,” he admitted. “It’s a tough business, it’s a tough job, and I like a little more stability.”
Passion is both a way of life for Dave Allison and a staple of his vocabulary.
“It’s a privilege to play this game because you’ve got to love it like a man and you’ve got to play it like a child,” he said. “Because all it is, is a game. It’s not life and death.
“And you think it’s your right to go out to the rink and put on that jersey, but it’s not.”
He said he’s become more patient at this point in his career.
“I think now, I don’t need to be right, I just want to find the right way to do things,” he remarked.
Allison counts his passion for the game—and for coaching—as one of his greatest strengths, but acknowledges it can get in the way of his job if unchecked.
“One of things about really making solid decisions is you gotta take the emotion out of it . . . you try to find that balance,” he said. “I’m not there yet so I get it. It’s a catch-22.
“My strength is my weakness, but you acknowledge it and just try to get better at it.”
He said a big part of maturing as a coach was learning to look past the actions of his players and examine their intent. He’s learned to be more tactful at times.
“It took me a long time to figure it out. My mother said you get more bees with honey than you do with vinegar.”
Allison’s mother, Joan, said his emphasis on effort with his players comes from what he expects of himself as a coach. “He really, really works hard at it. He takes it very seriously,” she said.
“It’s something that he absolutely loves and works extremely hard at it, and has sacrificed a lot along the way to get where he is now.”
She said her son is always “willing to take a chance to try to make someone else’s life better.”
She recalled a story from his youth, when one winter he skipped classes at Fort Frances High School with a friend and saw a woman shoveling snow on Second Street.
The two boys offered to do the chore for the woman—unaware she was the secretary/treasurer of their school. They were caught playing hooky when she looked into who the good Samaritans were.
“He is that kind of kid even now,” Joan Allison added. “I shouldn’t say kid. Adult.”
Allison said one of his biggest challenges is “not worrying about what you don’t have and working with what you do have.”
“There’s a tendency to lament and say, ‘Geez, if only we had this and we had this.’
“You want to give every kid an opportunity to exhaust their potential,” he remarked. “And they’re not all going to make it, but that doesn’t mean they’re bad players or bad people.”
Mike Allison pointed to that attitude as a sign of his brother’s maturing as a coach. “So often I see people complaining, ‘We didn’t have this guy,’” he said.
“I think there’s an inner drive in Dave to be successful and, to be successful, I think one time early in his career, success was winning and losing. And now, success is getting better every day.
“It’s not always winning the championship, it’s kids getting better. And that’s maturity.”
Whereas many coaches would complain and try to shove round pegs into square holes, Mike Allison said Dave looks to emphasize players’ strengths rather than pine for a top goal scorer, tough guy, or star goalie.
“If you can turn a negative into a positive, life is so much more wonderful for you,” he reasoned.
Besides, the head coach is “just one piece of the puzzle” and a team will have a number of scouts working their best to bring in the top talent possible.
“You think they want to hear, ‘Oh, this guy you got me is terrible?’ They don’t,” Allison said.
“Everybody wants to win,” the elder Allison explained. “But it just doesn’t happen that way. Same as if my kids come home with an A-minus or a B-plus; just so long as they’ve done the best they can do, how can I not be pleased with them?”
Allison spends a lot of his downtime with his nose in a book, and can rattle off the books he’s got on his plate without hesitation.
“I’m reading about three right now,” he noted. “I’ve got ‘The Secret’ and I’ve got the ‘Essence of Philosophy’ up at the lake, and Rudolph Giuliani on leadership.
“I like to read. I like to have a purpose, man.
“I don’t know if that makes any sense,” he shrugged. “You know, I just like the search for knowledge. It’s just a wonderful journey. Just to open your mind and take it in, it’s just a wonderful journey.
“There’s trials and tribulations but at the end of the day, we’re all going to die. We might as well live,” he said, breaking into laughter.
He admitted reading often is his only escape from the long hockey season.
“I gotta find a better hobby—something you can disassociate yourself because it’s encompassing. You’re wrapped up in it for eight, nine months.”
Allison doesn’t think there’s much mystery to him.
“I’m pretty much an open book. I enjoy my job, I enjoy the lake, I enjoy my cabin, I enjoy the kids,” he said. “I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing myself.”
His mother had to think a bit about what surprising qualities her son might have.
“I think he’s very caring,” she said. “And I mean that not just from you know about his family, I think he cares deeply about the world, like everything. He’s always been a bit of a philosopher.”
White has a different word, referring to Allison as “a great story-teller.”
“The man can tell stories like no one’s business. Ones you can put in the paper and ones you probably can’t, but that’s Dave Allison.”
Allison doesn’t fight it when he’s told about the labels.
“Well, you know what, I think that I love stories. I love listening to stories and I think that you’ve got to learn.
“You’ve got to find a way to get better and the only way is to take other people’s experiences, and reading books about philosophy, and just trying to find what makes people tick.”
His joie de vive is infectious. When asked, he quipped his personal highlight is “waking up.”
“I got up at 5:30 this morning and I’m on the lake at 8:30 . . . there’s no more beautiful place in the world to me than Rainy Lake,” he enthused.
“You’re safe. It’s a safe haven. You can be yourself up at the cabin, no one else around. You can be yourself with your family.”
He wears these tell-tale signs of his Fort Frances youth like a badge of honour—earning him some ribbing from White.
“Oh yeah, I mean who goes home to an island back home these days?” he joked. “That’s as small town as you get.”
(White was quick to add that his hometown of Ornstown, Que. is smaller than Fort Frances).
Allison said he’s happy with his current job and that he enjoys the “culture” of the Dallas Stars. When asked about the future, he mused about the possibility of management after his current contract.
However, as a coach in what some consider the world’s second-best hockey league, the possibility of a promotion is obvious. Alluding to the next step means but one thing to Allison—and it made him bristle.
“Hey, I’d like another crack at the National Hockey League. Two-and-22 doesn’t exactly—it’s the only time I’ve lost in my life. I’m not exactly pleased with that blemish.
“But if it doesn’t come, it doesn’t come,” he added. “They know where I am. If it happens, it happens. And I’ll be a better coach for it. But I love my job right now.”
He said he’s not bitter, but won’t dwell in the past.
“I just don’t look back. It is what it is,” Allison stressed. “I played 10 years and I had played a couple games for Montreal [Canadiens], but probably the best momento I’ve got of my whole career is a picture of me and my brother [in uniform before an NHL game].”
He’ll be 50 in a few years and one day he’ll have to retire, but Allison insisted he still loves going to the rink. Besides, he still needs something to do to make ends meet.
“Yeah, it’s my passion, but it’s also one of the only things I can do right now,” he laughed. “And I have not exhausted that passion right now. I love my job, and that’s the bottom line.”
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
