Cardiff Devils new coach has a reputation for building clubs and delivering trophies both in the UK and Europe - now Paul Thompson aims to bring the good times back to south Wales.
For most clubs in any sport Cardiff Devils' 2024-25 season would have been a truly memorable one.
They had won their first European trophy and reached two finals in the Challenge Cup and Play-Offs.
But somewhat strangely, at the Devils it just did not feel like it had been a hugely successful year.
After lifting the Continental Cup in January, Cardiff won 11 and lost 14 Elite League (EIHL) games to finish fourth, their lowest league position since 2014.
The atmosphere at the Vindico Arena had become somewhat jaded and as brave and dramatic as the Devils' campaign in the Play-Offs was - losing the final to Nottingham Panthers in double-overtime - winning it might well have been seen as a victory that papered over some cracks.
Since the departure in 2020 of former head coach Andrew Lord, who won six trophies in five seasons, Cardiff have lifted just two out of the 16 titles they have competed for.
Almost before the dust had settled on last season, coach of two years Pete Russell had left the top job - and within a week managing director Todd Kelman unveiled the Devils' fourth head coach in four years, Paul Thompson.
There was a feeling that the new man at the helm had something of a rebuild on his hands.
When asked whether that is correct, Thompson pauses and says: "Maybe from the outside."
The experienced 60-year-old adds: "When a new coach comes in, he has a rebuilding job anyway because you're going to be bringing in new totally different players to the group that left, but there were already some great pieces here."
'I felt a crack...that finished the whole thing'
A look at his 35 years as a coach shows building - and rebuilding - is something that Thompson has done consistently.
Not just with teams, but his own life and career.
He may well be one of the most successful hockey coaches Britain has produced, but it certainly has not been easy.
Paul Thompson was born in Singapore, his father, Gerald, having being posted there with the RAF.
The family moved to the West Midlands in the late 1970s when his dad took up a job in the motor industry with British Leyland.
About half a mile from where they lived in Solihull there was an ice rink - and that is where his journey into hockey starts.
"I went to meet a friend to go skating and there was a hockey game on and I fell in love with it," said Thompson.
"There was no junior system at that point, so aged 11 or 12 if you could skate and were good enough you went to the Solihull Barons or the B team."
The young forward found himself playing men's hockey as a teenager but the physical nature of the game in the 1980s was to get the better of him.
"It was tough in them days, let me tell you. There wasn't so much hockey going on back then, it was a tough sport.
"I got a nasty injury when I was 16, I kind of broke my back."
With no plexi-glass above the barriers around the ice surface in Solihull, Thompson was seriously hurt.
"It was just netting and I got hit and went over a barrier backwards and broke vertebrae and cracked discs.
"I was in a corset for nearly two years and they wouldn't operate because I was still growing.
"I eventually came back with the Barons team and maybe wasn't the athlete that I was before so went on the back-end as a defender where I could see the game a little bit more."
It was another accident – this time an industrial one – that finally put an end to his playing career for good.
"I was working as an installer rigging phone lines up telegraph poles," remembered Thompson.
"One morning I was pulling some ladders off a van in the winter and it was all icy and snowy and as I was pulling them down my hand slipped.
"I tried to stop them falling and as I did it, I felt a crack and shooting pains down my legs and that was what finished the whole thing."
And so at the age of 24 Thompson started a coaching career.
"It's been a long journey," he added, "but it kept me in the sport I love."
'Great teams' and 'great times'
It might not be an overstatement to say that this was the start of Thompson becoming the father of professional ice hockey in Coventry, leading to one of the most successful franchises in EIHL history.
"I took over the under-14s and then I moved up to the B-team, Solihull Knights and from there to the first team, the Solihull Barons," recalled Thompson of his early steps in coaching.
"In 1996 when the Solihull Blaze was formed, we finished second behind the Swindon Wildcats and then there were money troubles, and we dropped down to the fourth tier.
"We won that and then we won the third tier, ended up winning the BNL (British National League) and then we went up to the top division as Coventry Blaze."
In 2000 the Blaze moved to the new 3,600 capacity SkyDome Arena in Coventry.
From a few hundred fans in the opening matches, by the end of the season there were over 2,000 attending regularly.
Under Thompson Coventry won five league titles, two Challenge Cups, the 2005 Play-Offs and a British Knockout Cup.
"It was a brand-new rink in a city that had never experienced hockey before," said Thompson.
"I had some great teams, and it was a great time, so I have very, very fond memories of that period of my coaching life."
In 2013 Thompson decided to expand his horizons and develop his career - with mixed success.
It started in Scandinavia with trophyless spells at Sweden's Troja-Ljungby and Aalborg Pirates of Denmark.
He then returned to the UK in 2015, winning the Elite League in his first season at Sheffield Steelers before a double-overtime win over Cardiff in the 2017 Play-Off final which prevented the Devils from winning the treble.
"We were the team during my period there that stopped the whole thing being Cardiff, Cardiff, Cardiff," said Thompson.
However early in the 2018-19 season Thompson made the surprise announcement that he was resigning from the Steelers.
"I'd been coaching 27, 28 years straight at that point and I was tired, I was a little burnt out. It's a big job, a lot of pressure.
"I just didn't feel it was it was right for me at that point, I needed a break from sport to re-group."
'It gave me my mojo back'
However, a month later Thompson was back behind a bench, taking up the sizeable challenge of coaching in the Deutsche Eishockey Liga (DEL) - one of Europe's toughest.
After a last placed finish in his first season with Schwenningen Wild Wings he was fired in December 2019, with just six wins from 26 games in his second term.
"I think I was the 21st coach in 21 years to be fired by Schwenningen so they had a track record of that, but I don't regret it, I loved the experience of coaching in the DEL," said Thompson, who found himself without a job just as the coronavirus pandemic was hitting.
"I came home, and my agent called me and said, 'Look there's a job opportunity in Italy' and I didn't want to go from the DEL to the Italian league at that time.
"And he said, 'Well listen no one's moving right now, nothing's happening, Covid's here' and I'd had two really big jobs in Sheffield and then Schwenningen and it was really nice to get to Unterland Cavaliers and just coach again.
"I got back with these group of guys, half of them spoke Italian, half of them spoke German, and we had a really successful year winning the 2021 Coppa Italia and I loved my time there.
"I felt that it gave me my mojo back a little bit after a few tough years."
Then came an offer to go back to Denmark to coach Odense Bulldogs, who in 2021 were in a bit of a sorry state.
"They had finished in last place [in the Metal Ligaen] the previous season and had missed the play-offs for three, four years running.
"We made the semi-finals in year one and we really shouldn't have with the team that we had at that point,
"I had a good hungry bunch of Danish boys that we brought pretty much all the way through, and they've grown into these really experienced players."
Thompson's talent for building championship winning sides delivered for the Bulldogs in 2024-25.
Last season the Odense club won their first ever Danish championship taking the final series 4-1 against the 16-time winners Herning Blue Fox.
"For a team that doesn't have anywhere close to the highest budget in that league I think that everybody associated with the club did a great job," reflected the much-travelled coach.
Thompson is modest about his role even after just being named Denmark's Coach of the Year.
"Coaches don't win those awards if they don't have the players to deliver the championship. It was a total group effort," he said.
"The honour was the team, I just got it because I'm the coach. Last Thursday, when I got it was a nice time to reflect on it a little bit."
'You can't sprinkle fairy dust and just hope'
Thompson could have stayed with Odense. He also had offers to coach in Austria and Slovakia.
However, the now 60-year-old says that Cardiff Devils had a special interest for him - and was the only club in the UK that he would have come to.
"I remember when they were formed in 1986 and I saw them as a kid. Cardiff Devils is a great name in British ice hockey without any shadow of a doubt," he said.
"This is a club with great pulling power and reputation. So, people want to be part of that.
"I think this ownership model has done fantastic things with this club and I wanted to work for Todd Kelman who I have known now for a long time."
Through the summer Thompson steadily built his 23-man squad that includes nine new players. As the weeks rolled by, one by one the club announced a new signing.
"We're pretty happy with the make-up of the team and more importantly the character of the team.
"I think we have some great leadership here, some great personalities, people that have won here.
"You can't sprinkle fairy dust and just hope you're going to win, it's a lot of work."
Thompson though is also aware he needs to give supporters something to get excited about.
"I hope we can entertain our fans because we're in the entertainment business and the icing on the cake is lifting a trophy, as it is for the other nine teams in the league.
"My first job here is to try and get our captains to lift trophies, that's the business.
"That's the remit and that's what I'll be endeavouring to do every day."
Cardiff Devils begin the new campaign with a Challenge Cup game at Nottingham Panthers on Saturday, 13 September - their opening EIHL game is at home to Thompson's former side Coventry Blaze on Saturday, 11 October.
Category: General Sports
