End of the ECHL Era for the Ontario Reign -- Jason Christie

There's always a little bit of information left over when you put together season ending stories. Here's some of the quotes that didn't make the paper in our Reign finale and the conversation with Justin Kemp. 

Coach Jason Christie is a general on the ice and behind the bench.

But even a general can have his cracks.

The Reign's coach the past four seasons, his future in Ontario immediately was changed when Ontario's move into the American Hockey League was made official. Where minor league coaches are just like the players in that they're always looking to move up, Christie had the double duty of keeping his team focused on the final two months also while knowing that when the season was over, the job he currently held -- that of ECHL coach in Ontario -- would no longer be needed.

Not that he ever let on.

"Obviously, I always felt like I was in a great community. I’ll sit down with Darren (this)week and we’ll go from there. At the end it wouldn’t be fair if I was thinking anything different from what the players thought. That it’s now. Any job, you can’t really look ahead any, you have to completely focus on the task at hand. Losing Harpo (former assistant coach Mark Hardy, who got a job in the American Hockey League) this year, and just solo, it was kind of a thing of keep moving forward, day by day. I had to approach it like that. It wouldn’t be fair to the players if there were any concern at all."

And he said he never saw his players attention waver during the final two months either.

"I have to give the guys a lot of props for that. There was no hesitation, there was no thought – they came to play for the Ontario Reign. And I have to give them props for that for sure."

Not that everything was wine and roses at the start for the coach, who started his tenure by cleaning house, earning some scorn. 

"When I first came in here, I let go some of the guys, I got a lot of backlash from it. (a different reporter) wrote a pretty harsh, one-sided interview that we just had to put aside. And Harpo and I put our nose down, and we just brought a great group of people in here to play the game. Hats go off to the players who showed up here each and every day."

But being in Southern California the past four years, Christie has seen the sport of hockey grow -- both across the region, and in Ontario, also thanks in part to the efforts of his players.

"I used to play against Long Beach and that. Anaheim Ducks winning the Stanley Cup, the LA Kings winning the Stanley Cup, and so it’s brought a bunch of success. My kids are in the game of hockey. They play, and they go to school, and there’s just as much LA Kings Anaheim Ducks as there is Dodgers and Angels. That says a lot for the game to hockey.

"But again, I think it’s different, because our fan base really rallied around us. I think they enjoyed how the team played. The group of guys we had that are in the community day in and day out. The school appearances, the going to meet kids at Dave and Busters and just those little things, a lot of shoulder to shoulder time with Ontario Reign players."