Dave Cameron a more seasoned coach in return to Canadian junior hockey team’s bench

Canada is scheduled to open the 2022 world junior championship Sunday against the Czechs in Edmonton's Rogers Place.

Ottawa 67’s general manager James Boyd was bouncing potential coaching candidates off his longtime friend Dave Cameron when Boyd took a flyer.

“All of a sudden I asked the question, ‘Would you ever be interested in this?'” Boyd said. “There was a pause and Dave said, ‘Let me think about it.’ I thought, ‘This might be happening.'”

It previously hadn’t occurred to Boyd that Cameron and his wife Kelly would be interested in leaving Vienna, where Cameron had coached the Austrian League’s Capitals for three seasons.

Head coach of the 67’s and the Canadian junior men’s hockey team simultaneously opened up in early summer when Andre Tourigny vacated both to step behind the bench of the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes.

Boyd also leads Hockey Canada’s under-20 management team, which had less than a month between Tourigny’s departure and summer evaluation camp to replace him.

Boyd said antennae went up at Hockey Canada when he was informed Cameron might be the next 67’s coach.

Returning to Canada quickly became a package deal for Cameron with the offer of the national junior job as well.

“I never applied for it,” Cameron told The Canadian Press. “When they asked me, I made sure I said ‘yes’ before they changed their mind.”