Club icon Tyler Haskins stayed as assistant coach, with Mike Stewart (previously Cologne, Augsburg, Bremerhaven) and Gary Shuchuk, a new head coach joined the Grizzlys and another assistant coach. Gary who? Gary Shuchuk (that speaks: Schuhtschack). With him Wolfsburg has made a good catch, believes Adrian Grygiel (Krefeld), who played for the newly crowned German ice hockey runner-up in the 2012/13 season and is also one of Krefeld’s 2003 champions.
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Shuchuk was once a really good player, played over 150 NHL games for the LA Kings, among others, and was later active in Switzerland and Germany. In the DEL he played for the DEG (among others with ex-grizzly Boris Lingemann) and for the Krefeld Pinguine. And these penguins became the DEL surprise champions in 2003. They came from sixth place, had a miracle storm with Christoph Brandner, Patrik Augusta and Brad Purdie, with the young Christian Ehrhoff a defender who later became a great NHL player and with Robert Müller, who died much too early, a fabulous keeper.
And they had a leader, Grygiel recalls, who was also part of the Oenguins’ championship team. One of the “Unsung hero” variety. Shuchuk. “He wasn’t the big scorer,” recalls Grygiel, who played for the Grizzlies in 2012/2013. “But he was a worker, a fighter, an important outnumbered player, the kind of player you really need, who you want to win something.”
Workers, fighters – that’s the image that the grizzlies have, that’s the style they want to cultivate, which Tyler Haskins also stood for as a player. Shuchuk could fit in there. Grygiel: “Gary was the head of the team, I remember that he was always positive, but also ambitious. And: He was an excellent blocker, inhuman the number of shots he blocked.”
Grygiel only stayed one season in Wolfsburg in the course of his career, “although I felt very comfortable in the city and in the team”. He had some bad luck with injuries, hadn’t started rolling, the contract was terminated. He found shelter in Augsburg, where he showed that he can do better than what he did in Wolfsburg.
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Grygiel was promoted to deputy captain of the Panthers. Having grown up in Krefeld’s next generation of ice hockey, the striker then followed a forward-looking offer from home, became captain of the penguins, also gave an interlude in Crimmitschau, is now leader of the Krefeld’s junior league team and is involved in the organization.
If his impression is correct, then Wolfsburg did everything right in the coaching position, because: “Leaving Augsburg was damn hard for me,” says Grygiel. The perspective and the family made the difference, because he had really enjoyed it there in terms of sport. Because of the coach. In an interview about Shuchuk, the attacker interjects: “Wolfsburg has also got a top head coach. Mike Stewart. Humanly great, great as a coach, a compact coach, the best I’ve had in the DEL.” That means something, after all, Grygiel played 19 years in the House of Lords, played 921 games there. Including a championship. With teammate Gary Shuchuk.
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