The Insider Interview – Forbes MacPherson

The Texas Brahmas' former assistant coach talks about his year with the team and his decision to leave

Texas Brahmas fans were surprised recently to hear that Assistant Coach Forbes MacPherson has left the team. MacPherson, 36, has decided to leave hockey for a new opportunity and will be returning home to Prince Edward Island.

MacPherson joined friend and former teammate Dan Wildfong last season as they fulfilled a long-time dream of coaching their own team, their own way. In their championship quest, the Brahmas finished the regular season with a 40-22-2 record and reached the CHL playoffs for the first time since the 2000-01 season. They defeated the Mississippi RiverKings in the Semi-Finals and swept the Governor’s Cup champions, the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs in the Quarterfinals. In the Northern Conference Finals, they forced the defending President Cup Champion Colorado Eagles to the final minute of the 7th game before the season concluded, just one goal short of the finals.

Over his 10-year professional career, MacPherson recorded 642 points (225 G, 417 A) in 621 regular season games and 79 points (25 G, 54 A) in 94 post-season contests. He spent his last six seasons with the Bossier-Shreveport Mudbugs where he was selected as CHL All-Star in 2002 and was a member of their championship squads in both the 1998-99 and 2000-01 seasons.

I spoke with Forbie recently about his year with the Brahmas and his decision to leave hockey.

Q: After 10 seasons as a professional, the opportunity came up to be an assistant coach for the Texas Brahmas. How did this come about?

A: I was in the process of moving back to Prince Edward Island and Fonger had called me a couple of times on the phone during my travels. I never got to any of his phone calls so we didn’t even have a chance to talk. My wife and I were fully set on going back to Shreveport to play for another year. Then, when I got home, we were unpacking and my Mother said that Dan had called a couple of times. So then I thought, well maybe something’s up because he called me a bunch of times. So he called one more time and Mom said you’ve go to take this; it’s Dan and there might be something wrong. So then I kind of got a little worried and wondering what was going on. Anyway, he presented me with this opportunity. He said that he was going to be moving on and he was given the opportunity to be the head coach of the Brahmas and asked me if I’d join him and come along. That’s basically how it went down.

Q: So prior to that, you were under the impression that the two of you would be playing together again in Shreveport?

A: Yeah, I mean, I had no idea at all that he was going through the process of interviewing for the coaching position. As you know, Dan and I are best friends and we were roommates on the road in Shreveport for a long time. During those road trips we often talked a lot about how, if we had our own program, what we would take, the ideas that exist in Shreveport and the things that we would tinker with and change and add to our own program. At one time, it was our dream to have our own program. It was kind of crazy when it came into fruition. We were lucky enough to get the opportunity, so we took advantage of it.

Q: After such a long rivalry between the two teams, did you find it odd that you would be coaching with the Brahmas?

A: It’s funny because when they used to play downtown, the visiting team hotel was downtown so we used to walk back and forth to the rink after a pre-game skate or before the game or when we were in town practicing. We had a vision and we always used to say, Man, this would be a great program to get a hold of. We always just thought that this place would be an unbelievable program to be a part of. We thought if we ever got our hands on this, it would be almost like a dream situation.

Q: You had a short amount of time after accepting your positions as coach and assistant coach to put your vision and your team together. What was it like trying to get everything in place last summer in time for the 2007-08 season?

A: It wasn’t easy, that’s for sure. Both Dan and I believe that in order to win, you have to have the horses, as we say. Right away, I think, the most important part was getting our goaltender. David Cacciola was the first person signed and goaltending is the most critical position, so getting that sewed up right away, it really hid a lot of rookie coaching errors that we might have made. When you have a goalie back there and he’s making all the saves, it really makes our job easier. We were lucky when a couple of older guys jumped on board, guys who had been in the pros and had played many years like Blair Manning and Craig Minard. Our team started coming together and we started putting pieces of the puzzle together. We finished up with 19 guys on the roster and that’s what we started the season with but I can tell you we talked to hundreds of players last summer. Our roster changed numerous times. It’s not easy to get players to commit when you’re trying to sell them your program because every coach has the same pitch and they’re all trying to sell their program, so in the end, our roster changed quite a bit over the summer and we were fortunate to put together a real good team.

Q: The season started out pretty well but getting into mid-December thru the first week or so of January, the team kind of hit a slump. Some changes were made and Brett Jaeger was brought in and did really well splitting time with Cacciola. Then in mid-January, it seems like everyone came together and things began to steamroll. What do you think changed the direction for the team?

A: I think you touched on a couple of reasons. I don’t think it was one specific reason. We made a couple of changes in the lineup, Scott (Sheppard) was injured and he got back into our lineup. We added Brett Jaeger, which solidified our goaltending and gave Cash the opportunity to rest a little bit more. It also provided somebody to push Cash a little bit harder. Then just along with being a new team and gelling together and guys stepping up, we had maybe one or two guys that didn’t show up quite in the best shape. By that time, they started to get their legs underneath them. It was just a bunch of things that really came together. But that’s really what makes a season and makes a team. A lot of times you can go through those rough times and the season just kind of fizzles away after that. You’ve got to give credit to everybody associated with the hockey operations from the coaches, the players, the staff, everybody. We stuck our noses to the grindstone and together we really changed everything and turned the season around.

Q: Were you surprised that things overall went so well last season?

A: To be honest, No. I think that is the reason that Dan ended up getting the job because he believed that he could put together a winning team. From what I heard, some of the other more experienced coaches that were interviewing for the position thought it would be a two or three year process. Maybe Dan was naive, maybe he was inexperienced or maybe he was just confident. I don’t know what it was but right from day one he was preaching that this team was going to be successful and our goal was to win this year. We were used to winning in Shreveport. We believed we knew how to make that happen here. When I came on board, I bought in real quick. I believed that we could win right away also. From there it just went through each player. It’s not fair to yourself or the program if you sell yourself short. In order to be fair to the players and in order to recruit, players want to win and you’ve got to sell them that, listen, we can win this year, and you get those players that want to win.

Q: The playoff series with Shreveport was fantastic. Of course, they had a lot of injuries in their defense, so it wasn’t like playing them at the beginning at the season. Was it a pretty satisfying victory against your old coach and your old team?

A: First of all, we dealt with injuries during the year too. I mean when they beat us a couple of times, we were missing Scott Sheppard and we didn’t have Cacciola playing at his best. We had other guys that had the flu and were sick. That’s part of hockey. It happens every season. It’s just how you deal with it. You have to be able to deal with those things otherwise you just won’t win in the end. The second part of the question, it felt no better to beat Musky than any other team. There’s no bitterness there and no rivalry or hatred. I take that back, there’s definitely a rivalry. I wanted to win because basically, he stood in the way of what we wanted. We wanted to win the cup. To be honest with you, the second the game was over, game four, and we won the series, it was almost a little bittersweet. I still had a lot of good friends on that team and there’s guys that I played with that haven’t won a championship but have been real close on a number of occasions. They believed last year was their year. When they lost, I felt for them a little bit. Obviously we were ecstatic to be moving on. I didn’t feel any more special beating them than I did anybody else. I felt the same way when we beat Memphis. We just wanted to keep winning. We didn’t care who it was.

Q: The series against Colorado didn’t start out the way you would have liked. Anyone can go back and say what might have been done differently. Outside of the obvious disappointment in losing game 7, did you still feel good about what the team accomplished last season?

A: In the beginning, for the first few days, it was just complete disappointment. But after we got back to North Richland Hills, we started getting tons of feedback from the fans and the community and the ownership and the staff. It wasn’t until then, when it sank in that we did have a very successful year. We didn’t achieve the goal that we set forth to accomplish but in the end only one team does win a championship. When you take all factors into consideration, it was a very successful and very gratifying year.

Q: During the off-season an opportunity came up and gave you an option to move on and do something different. Can you tell a little bit about how that came about?

A: It came up in the middle of May. To be honest with you, at the time, it was actually a Sunday afternoon and it was totally unexpected. It just kind of blind-sided me. I was presented with an opportunity that is not hockey-related. It’s not in the hockey world at all. It was just basically something that I couldn’t turn down. It’s something that my family, my wife and I are really excited about. Obviously, I’m very passionate about hockey – it’s something I’ve done basically my whole life. This is going to be a new experience for me. Hockey puts you in a position as it doesn’t have a lot of security and it’s not a very stable profession. This opportunity is going to be kind of the opposite. It’ll provide me with a lot of security and stability. In the end, that’s basically why I decided to go in a different direction. You never know what the future holds. I could be back in hockey. Maybe the attraction to hockey will be too strong and I could be back maybe in a year or two, but for now this is the direction I’ve decided to go in.

Q: Do you find it hard to walk away from hockey?

A: Because this opportunity is a new challenge, it’s very exciting for me and I’m really ready to jump into this. I’m really comfortable making the transition right now. I’m actually really excited about it. It’s just something that’s different, something that will take a lot of my attention and that’ll help me kind of forget about hockey and will make the transition a little bit easier.

Q: The news of your leaving the team came as a surprise to the fans and some of the players. In closing, do you have anything to say to the players that are coming back and to the fans of the Brahmas?

A: To the players, something that Dan and I expressed to the players before last season’s team is that we obviously appreciate that they took a chance with Dan and I and they bought into what we were selling. A lot of these players have a lot of opportunities to go wherever they want in hockey and they were all willing to jump on board here and make things happen in North Richland Hills. We couldn’t have done it without them. That meant everything to us, that the players were really committed to what we were selling last year. To the fans and the Brahmas organization, my wife and I would like to thank everybody for everything they’ve done. We felt so welcome here and we loved it here so much. We are moving away right now but it’s only for one year. A year from now we will be back in this area and we’re going to make this place our home.

Photo Credit: Robert Keith