Dave Lowry was on the golf course when Ryan Huska called.
And while Lowry has been a hockey lifer, a longtime NHL player and now a longtime coach, this Calgary resident was admittedly warming to the idea of chasing birdies until the snow started to fly.
At that point, the 60-year-old didn’t have a training camp to attend.
That changed in a hurry, with Lowry returning to the Saddledome for his second stint as an assistant coach with the Flames.
“Husk called me and it was right out of the blue,” Lowry told Postmedia. “I actually saw him in July in Canmore, at the Hockey Alberta golf tournament, and we had a coffee in the morning and small-talked and all that. At that point, I wasn’t even looking. I was enjoying mountain-biking and playing golf. I was wrapping my head around that. When he called me (in late August), he just said that unfortunately one of his coaches wasn’t coming back for family reasons. You don’t like to get opportunities like this, but sometimes this is how things are presented.
“I was fully prepared not to be working, and that was something that was partly by choice. I wanted to make sure if I was going to be working, it had to be the right fit. It had to be with the right people, and it had to be the right place. And this checked off everything.”
Huska’s call to Lowry came shortly after a conversation with Brad Larsen, who delivered the news that he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his assistant-coaching duties due to a family matter.
It’s hardly ideal to be filling out your bench staff toward the end of summer, when most of the could-be hires are committed, so Lowry’s availability was a bit of a lucky break.
“For a couple reasons … ” Huska explained. “One, he’s got experience, both as a player and coach. So when he walks into the room, people notice. He has a presence.
“Two, I didn’t know him all that well, just to have conversations that we would have around the rink — ‘Hello, how are you doing?’ type of thing — but everybody that I called on him basically said, ‘If I were to get another job, he’s the first phone call that I would make.’ And that was consistent, and I did a lot of phoning around when we were trying to find someone to bring in. So those two factors were enough for me.”
Huska’s boss didn’t need any convincing.
“Dave and I were roommates, so personally I know what type of person he is and how much he cares about this organization and how excited he would be to be back,” said Flames general manager Craig Conroy. “I think he’s going to bring a wealth of knowledge to the team and really help us here.”
The Flames continued their pre-season prep with Monday’s matchup in Seattle, where Lowry worked for the past three winters as an assistant with the Kraken. A couple nights earlier, he was on the visiting bench in Winnipeg, where he’d been named interim head coach after Paul Maurice’s surprise departure in 2021.
With no disrespect to his friends in Seattle, Winnipeg, Los Angeles or anywhere else, there’s no place that feels quite as much like home as the Saddledome.
Lowry capped his 19-year playing career in Calgary, spending his final four campaigns in the Flaming C logo. The hard-nosed forward joined the NHL’s silver-stick club during that stretch. In addition to being Conroy’s road-trip roomie, they were also co-captains for a spell.
Lowry started his coaching climb with the WHL’s Hitmen before Brent Sutter asked him to move down the hall to the Flames’ offices as an assistant from 2009-12.
Coach Brent Sutter (L) chats with his assistant Dave Lowry from the Calgary Flames as they play the New York Islanders in NHL action at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary on Jan. 3, 2011.
While one of his current co-workers joked that Lowry might have the exact same desk as he did all those years ago, the new-but-not-so-new-guy insisted that’s not the case.
“The flood wiped out the last one,” he deadpanned.
For Lowry, the familiarity isn’t limited to the best route to the rink or the faces he sees while there.
“I coached against Husk in the Western League,” he said, a reminder of his past posts with the Hitmen, Victoria Royals and Brandon Wheat Kings. “His teams always played the exact same way that the teams that I coached did. They played hard, they played in-your-face, and they played with a lot of detail and discipline.
“It was pretty easy to watch them and know that they’re extremely well-prepared and well-structured, and that’s how you like to coach.”
He likes to golf too, of course.
But that call from Huska — they’d meet for a more formal chit-chat two days later — led to an offer that he was too good to pass up.
This now marks two decades for Lowry in the behind-the-bench business. If you totalled up all his NHL games, either in skates or suit-and-tie, you’d be not far shy of 2,000.
“To bring someone like that into our coaching staff, I think it’s going to be seamless for us,” Huska said. “And selfishly for me, he will be a really good sounding board because of the experience that he has, both as a player and as a coach. I may have an idea in my head that we’re going to do this, and he can say, ‘Hmmm, maybe we should rethink that.’
“That’s something that I feel like I need as a head coach. I need someone to push. I need someone to challenge. And with his experience and his background, I think I’m going to get that from him.”