No Exaggerating This Fish Story

PALM DESERT, CA – When Coachella Valley head coach Derek Laxdal was filling out his coaching staff for his first Firebirds season, he set up a call in the summer of 2024 with the promising young head coach of the Western Hockey League Saskatoon Blades, Brennan Sonne. Along with talking power play tactics and how to develop players at the professional level, the two hockey men traded fish stories. Literally.

“It was a great connection,” said Laxdal about that first phone call. “I thought, this guy is a lot like me, a younger version of me. He’s an outdoors guy. He’s a family guy. I was up north fishing in Manitoba, sitting at a picnic table by the side of a lake, going through my systems of play with him. He sent photos of walleye he had caught.”

Laxdal and Sonne are part of a Firebirds coaching staff readying for the franchise’s fourth straight appearance in the American Hockey League’s Calder Cup Playoffs, the last two with Laxdal as boss and Sonne overseeing the forwards and the power play.

Sonne as an outdoors guy? Check. Walleye are Sonne’s favorite fish to eat and they are plentiful in northern Saskatchewan, from where he was returning while on the phone with Laxdal.

Family guy? Check and check.

“My in-laws live here [in Coachella Valley],” said Sonne (pronounced “SONN-ee”). “We only had Lowen [older daughter] at the time. She was really colicky. It was difficult for my wife, Kaleigh, us being from British Columbia and me coaching and living in Saskatoon. It’s not easy raising a colicky baby alone. We had great help from neighbors and friends. But having grandparents nearby was a different thing. I told my agent, if anything comes up in Coachella Valley, I’ll be a stick boy, anything. I knew family-wise how much it would mean.”

Full stop. Sonne, who played for WHL Everett over three seasons and then served as an assistant coach with the Silvertips after his playing days for the University of British Columbia, was on a roll as head coach for Saskatoon. He posted a regular season record of 136-54-14 over three seasons, leading the Blades to the playoffs each year and winning five postseason series overall. His agent likely had other feelers from hockey franchises, but Sonne only had eyes on Coachella Valley.

“I think most of us dads would all do the same thing,” said Sonne, now proud papa of two young daughters. “I was raised like that. My dad took professional opportunities in places where his sons would have more opportunity hockey-wise. I think it's just what being a dad is. You adapt career for your family, not the other way around. That's what you always have to do – what's best for your kids. That's our main duty in life as dads.”

Firebirds Focused on Home-Ice Advantage in Playoffs

Sonne and Coachella Valley are looking to clinch home-ice advantage for the first round of divisional playoffs that start April 26. The team has two games remaining, Saturday at San Diego and Sunday at home versus Abbotsford (BC). Securing one point of the possible four  at stake in those games would clinch home-ice advantage in a best-of-three series with the first game on the road and Games 2 and 3 (latter if necessary) at home. The final seeding will be determined once all Sunday games are complete.

Sonne brings intensity along with his humanity to the workdays down in the southern California desert. The work of the Firebirds coaching staff links directly to the Kraken as a bevy of young forwards have made NHL debuts and earned spots on the Seattle roster. While former CVF head coach Dan Bylsma and his coaches are due development credit for the likes of defenseman Ryker Evans and center Shane Wright, Laxdal and his group, including Sonne, have been hands-on with Kraken forwards Ryan Winterton, Jacob Melanson, Jani Nyman and Ben Meyers, plus 21-year-old Oscar Fisker Molgaard’s recent rise to play 13 NHL games.

Fisker Molgaard, who returned to the CVF roster Wednesday along with Melanson with both contributing primary assists in a key home victory that night, said Sonne is both upbeat and demanding.

“He’s obviously skilled,” said Fisker Molgaard about the coach everyone calls “Sonner.” “He always comes to the rink with a smile on his face. He wants us to get better every day. We've done a ton of video meetings, but he also allows us a lot of freedom to go out there and play and have some fun with it.”

On game days, the power play units gather in the CVF coaches' room (home and road) to watch video and receive the night’s strategies, formations and exhortations from Sonne. The meeting is fast-paced and full throttle in a rapid six minutes with copious comments such as, “If we’re into it on faceoffs, we’re gonna score,” and“Your decision, Juggy” and “Their PK is wildly unpredictable, might  be 1-1-2 or 2-2 box or 1-3” and “Go with an attack mindset.”

“Sonner brings good energy,” said Laxdal. “He’s in tune with our group. He presents well [including in front of the entire squad]. He's well prepared. He puts the work in.”

From BC to Hong Kong to France to SK to CVF

As a third-year student at the University of British Columbia, Sonne knew it would be his final year of playing hockey. By his fourth year, he decided to gain work experience in his social sciences field of studies, starting at a nonprofit youth center as part of career plan to work with at-risk youth. Then he got a phone call from a junior hockey friend asking if Sonne wanted to coach a youth hockey team. Sonne obliged and considered it a way to give back to the sport he loves.

After that season, another hockey contact asked Sonne if he might want to coach a spring season team. The answer was yes then and was again the same when a University of British Columbia friend reached out after Sonne finished his degree to inquire about his interest in working at a youth hockey academy in Hong Kong for a year.

“I was already with Kaleigh at the time,” said Sonne. “We just felt like it would be a great post-university experience. I didn't think hockey would be my career, but it was a cool way to see some of the world. The following summer I got my first real coaching gig with Everett [as assistant coach]. That's when a career path started taking place.”

Following three seasons with the Silvertips, Sonne took on a role as head coach of the Ducs d’Angers hockey franchise in Angers (about a 90-minute drive from Paris), playing in France’s top professional league. His teams over four seasons included plenty of players with American Hockey League experience and some with NHL games played. The role helped fortify his confidence to take on the WHL Saskatoon head coaching job.  

“Those first three years in Everett was me learning how to coach,” said Sonne. “The next four years in France was how to be a head coach, because they're completely different. The same stumbles and mistakes I made in Everett were very similar stumbles and mistakes I made as a head coach in France. It’s all learning lessons.

“The junior circuit is its own learning curve. You have to navigate a four-year, five-year window with the kids. Then it’s navigating that along with management and Saskatoon as such a great hockey city. There were more steps for me there.”

While family life motivated Sonne’s landing in the southern California desert, it happily is a perfect fit for his coaching career. Making the playoffs for a second straight season with Laxdal and assistant coach Stu Bickel further heightens his enthusiasm.

“I love our staff,” said Sonne. “Massive respect for everyone here, from Lax to the rest of the coaches to the equipment crew and trainers. The players are excellent. Having such good human beings, it drives me to never stop looking to get better. I love watching these young players grow. It is wildly rewarding. When I see guys like Mel and Oscar and Wints and Jani get called up [to the Kraken], that is the cherry on top.”

“It’s been six country moves over the last 11 or 12 years,” says Sonne, whose coaching career was preceded by 149 WHL games played. “But, I think it’s all been invaluable; the personal growth and experiences. I’m a big believer in travel, and it’s been amazing to see these other cultures, try their food, see how other people live. Because there’s a lot of cool stuff out there.”

Following a year coaching in Hong Kong (“All the rinks there are in shopping malls, so that was interesting,” the coach smiles), Sonne was in France for four seasons (2017-21) as head coach of the  Angers team.

“We were southeast of Paris; about an hour-and-a-half towards the Atlantic Coast,” Sonne recalled. “‘The Valley of the Kings,’ as it’s called; so, if you think of the castle from Beauty and the Beast, it’s about 45 minutes away. Just a beautiful place with so much history, and the food . . . oh my God.”

After his time abroad, Sonne returned to his native Canada, where his three seasons as frontman of the WHL’s Saskatoon Blades resulted in a 136-54-14 mark and a trio of postseason appearances.

His bench star rising, Sonne began seeking familial grounding as much as hockey hardware. Referencing a stretch last season when he was an assistant coach of Canada’s gold-medal winning U-17 World Hockey Challenge team and the Blades then put him on the road for over a month straight, the new dad took a closer look at his family whiteboard.

“Even though my Blades’ team was the best in the league and we won that U-17 gold medal, I mean, I’d never felt lower,” Sonne candors. “It was really difficult being away for that long from my daughter. I mean, what do we want to do as people? We want to be good dads; we want to be good men; and, as a coach, we want to teach the players we’re working with and model that behavior.”

Such modeling was soon to find an ideal coalescence. Sonne’s in-laws have been longtime desert snowbirds, and when opportunity arose to pair family grounding with flying ‘Birds, the coach was fast to answer the call.

“My wife’s parents have had a place in Desert Hot Springs for a number of years,” Sonne says. “And I’ve been down here multiple times, probably three or four times during Christmas.” 

Word of the ‘Birds has fluttered across the family tree since the team’s ’22 debut.

“Oh, yeah, my in-laws go to games, people in their neighborhood are season ticket holders,” says Sonne. “The Firebirds are something that’s been chatted about around our house a lot.”

His own holiday-time experiences in the desert alerted Sonne to the allure of a desert ecosystem’s peak-season.

“We came down here two years ago for Christmas, and I was playing some golf on December 22,” he recalls. “And, where I was coming from, in Saskatoon, there was snow on the ground from October until the end of April. So, going from minus-40 (Celsius) to being on a golf course . . . yeah, pretty special.”

Not that the trip was all birdies. Says Sonne with a half-grin:

“When I was here two years ago, I was trying to finagle some Firebirds’ tickets, and that didn’t happen.” 

Combining quality-of-work with quality-of-life finds Sonne on the family forecheck.

“As a family, it’s almost like a dream,” he smiles. “Even if you take out the hockey side, I mean, my daughter is almost 16-months old and has lived in Saskatoon; but all our family is from the west coast (of Canada), and we’ve moved all over. And we’ve talked about: ‘How often in my daughter’s life is she gonna’ get to live in the same place as her grandparents, whether it’s my parents or my in-laws?’”

As his third Firebirds’ postseason gets underway, Sonne is finding new balance being the leader of grown men and being an ever-present father.

“As a dad, my top priority is being a dad – and it always will be. Family first,” he says. “So being here with my wife and having this support system and my daughter having her grandparents – it’s so rare in the job I’m in. It’s important to have that grounding. For it to come to fruition, it’s almost like a dream for me to be pursuing my goals and values and to also feel like I’m being a good dad.”

No longer in need of Acrisure tickets, Sonne eyes a season of family in the stands. Well, most of the brood, anyway. “My wife will come to games, and one grandparent at a time,” he concludes. “Somebody’s got to stay home and put my daughter down for bed.”