Shannon Hope walked into a locker room full of Devils. He wasn’t there to grab his skates. His playing days were over. He was there to ask a question. An important question. He knew he would get one of only two answers: Yes or No. It wasn’t complicated. The Devils gathered before him.
Hope broke the silence and asked the question he needed to. It wasn’t the type of question that he wanted to ask. But he had to do it. Things had gone too far. He needed to know. He expected a response in a good old fashioned show of hands. He got it. But only one hand went up.
It belonged to Jason Stone.

Since it all began in 1986, almost everything about the Devils has changed. The rink, league, logo, players, coaches, intro music, jersey, sponsors, owners and the game itself have all changed. Everything’s changed.
And Jason Stone has seen it all unfold in front of him. He’s seen it all and been through it all.
But most of what’s changed hasn’t really affected him.
The league’s changed? They’re still playing hockey. The jersey’s changed? Still playing hockey. Team-mates have changed? Goodbye Hilton, Hello Brad – still playing hockey. Music? Logos? Super/Elite/Sekonda? City Centre/Bay Arena? Still playing hockey.
The changes that we see on the surface don’t really change a thing. Whether the Devils have Comms Direct plastered on their jerseys and are playing an Elite League game in the Bay or whether they’re riding the bus to Durham to play the Wasps, if they’re going to the Nottingham Arena or Wembley Arena, it’s not going to affect Jason Stone’s decision to play the puck along the boards or take a different angle towards an attacking forward.
But if the coach changes - things will definitely change.
Ice time’s not going to be affected by a brand new logo, but it is if the new coach has different ideas. The coach determines how much you play, where you play, when you play and who you play with. He can change your game like nothing else can. He can help you improve, he can make you worse. You might be his go-to guy or you might be his no-to guy.
Not everyone is affected to the same degree though. If you’re Steve Moria and you’ve got a new coach it’s no big deal – you know what your value is and you know you’re still the best player in the league, regardless of who’s calling the shots.
If you’re Jason Stone, a British defenceman and not quite as secure, and you’ve got a new coach, then who knows?
Might be good for you. Might be bad.
Change brings uncertainty. And nothing brings uncertainty like a coaching change to a British hockey player in a league dominated by foreigners.
That’s why Jason Stone raised his hand. He doesn’t like change.

Stone’s first coach was the man himself, John Lawless. But let’s be realistic, how much coaching did Lawless have to do when he had a team featuring some of the best imports in the league and the Cooper Brothers?
Nowadays you talk tactics and say, ‘This guy can stay high, this guy can go across there... left wing lock or to stay along the boards,’ but it was different then because of the players we had,” says Stone.
We had Steve Moria, who at the time was one of the most skilled imports in the league and as long as we had the Cooper Brothers at the time they were just as good as some imports. Back then all I can remember Lawless saying is: "Get on with it". They all knew what to do.
I can't remember any game plans. You'd have shootouts with games finishing 15-9 and the goalies weren't to the standard that they are today. They were one or two good goalies like Jason Wood and Martin McKay and one or two others, but the rest of them weren't as good and there were more shots on goal too. I can't remember him saying, ‘Go out and do this tactic, that tactic,’ it was just a case of, ‘Go out and enjoy yourselves.’”
As the Lawless years passed by, the nature of the league changed. Instead of skating circles around the other team, Doug McEwen was just skating a circle around them once. The league was about to undergo a huge development and the team talks were about to take on much more importance. The old fashioned, “Go out and enjoy yourselves guys,” wasn’t going to get the job done anymore as the names of teams were preceded by big time sponsors. When Lawless left the Devils to take the reins in Manchester, Stone found himself taking orders from a new man at the helm. Paul Heavey was named coach of the Devils and at first Stone found it tough to accept that a former team-mate was in charge.
At first I was thinking here's somebody trying to tell me how to do something and I'm not sure he could have done that himself,” says Stone.
But because he was very professional and threw himself into it you couldn't knock what he did. It wasn't like he didn't care and was doing a half-assed job. He was reading books and going to coaching seminars too. At first it was a bit weird, but he had respect and he was the coach and you could see the effort he was putting in. I accepted that he was my boss, my coach and he was professional and wasn't bad at what he did.
He knew his career was over and wanted to be the best coach he could be. He was one of the only British coaches at the time and was a minority so he did his homework and tried to be meticulous. There were many more imports in a team back then so he would go to them to get their feedback. That's the time when I remember it changing to Xs and Os and, ‘He's going here and this play...’ and that was when the Super League arrived in 1996.”
The stakes were higher in the Super League and hockey was much more intense than it had been in preceding years. Nobody was putting up 150 points per season anymore. Rosters were packed with imports who had played at a higher level in North America and strategy and coaching took on more significance. Heavey worked hard to try and develop his skills as a coach and while Stone grew to respect him, there were times that he could barely manage to stop himself from laughing at him.
I remember two times that a coach went ballistic and twice it was Paul Heavey,” Stone says.
One of those was when he was assistant to Lawless. We were losing two or three-nil and Lawless came in and had a real face on him. Then Heavey came in and he was so mad he kicked a plastic bin and his foot went through it.
He's mad and frustrated and after he kicked this bin he couldn't pull his leg back out of it. We were sat there trying to keep a straight face, especially with Heaves because he was a bit of a nutter and if you laughed he would probably come over and punch you. He was walking round trying to get his foot out of this bin. I just looked down and tried not to laugh. At the time the dressing room was different and it was like a castle with turrets, which you could hide in without him seeing. How I didn't laugh I don't know.”
Another time we were up in Sheffield and he was the full-time coach. He got mad again and came in and punched a hand dryer on the wall. He obliterated it, but he cut his hand and it had to be put in plaster and he had this thing on his hand for six weeks.”
Despite Stone’s long ties with the club, his seniority in the locker room and how much his contribution to the Devils has been respected by fans, coaches have rarely looked on him as a leader. With new imports coming and going every year, Stone was often one of the last to know.
The import coaches, and I don't think it matters about my age, just normally seek out the imports” he says.
They haven't gone overboard to respect my opinion. Now and then there have been some little things, but nothing major. Sometimes I think it would be nice to be respected, but at other times I think I'm not an import, I'm not a Canadian and they probably don't value my opinion and that's the way it's always been too. Sometimes it's been like: "What's going on here, why is this happening?" But it's never really been an issue; I've never let it bother me.”
There was one season when Stone had the coach’s ear though. And it wasn’t the easiest of times.
I think the only time it happened was when we had no imports in the BNL season when Mark Hazlehurst was in charge,” he says.
We were getting spanked every week and won the occasional game which we had no right to. It was frustrating because I'd been in Guildford the year before and we had the best team, winning three out of four trophies then I came back and we were getting hammered every week.
It was frustrating, but I had to take a little pause and think, ‘We're only playing with kids who have just started playing and have just come through and don't have any experience.’ Matt Myers played that year and came on leaps and bounds and a few other players - Paul Sample, Stuart Potts. I think that was the only time a coach has asked for my opinion.”

When Shannon Hope walked into the Devils locker room in 2003, he needed an answer. He needed to know.
Glenn Mulvenna’s future as coach was in jeopardy and Hope wanted to know if he had lost the locker room.
Mulvenna had an argument with Bob Phillips and said, ‘I can't work with Bob anymore,’ and walked out,” Stone recalls.
So Shannon Hope came in and tried to calm it down and asked us, ‘If Mully came back would anyone be willing to still play for him?’
I think I was the only person who said yes! Everyone else was mad at him because they figured he'd walked out on them. When Glenn said that he'd come back, Shannon said: ‘Don't worry about coming back as the guys don't want to play for you anyway now.’ I honestly think I was the only one who said yes. I was having a good season and was confident. Mully used to play me quite a lot as well and I don't like change. I was happy to play for him, but nobody else was.”
Stone begrudgingly accepted the outcome. Mulvenna was out. And a new man was coming in.
Then Dave Whistle came in,” says Stone.
And because he'd played for so long he was good at coaching and knew all about it.
He was good at man-management and was pretty relaxed. I think he only went crazy once, and I wasn't there for that game, against Coventry when we got blown out something like 7-1. That was the only time he got real mad and he had the players in the following day and just skated them.
That wasn't Whistle’s style. So it shows how mad he must have been. You could have a laugh with him and he was a good guy to be around. With a lot of coaches, you don't feel comfortable enough to have a joke with them and spend time off the ice with them, but he was just a good all-round guy.”
Stone’s initial scepticism regarding the new coach began to wane. The form he had been showing under Mulvenna continued with Whistle, whose knack of being able to push the right buttons helped him to one of his best years as a Devil.
I need a coach to have confidence in me,” admits Stone.
If I know a coach wants me out there and is basically relying on me being out there I used to feed off that. And Whistle was one coach I liked in particular. He didn't really care if you were an import or if you were Brit as long as you were playing well and doing your job for the team that's all he really cared about and you played.
At that time he came in I was pretty confident, enjoying it and was playing well. I think he noticed that and I was playing regularly on the penalty kill and I just responded to him having confidence in me. I'm the sort of player who just needs that really - for somebody to show they've got confidence in me and play me on the powerplay or penalty kill and I used to take pride in it.
If it was a close game and the coach needed someone out there to rely on and not be scored on and I was the guy out there I would get a buzz because the coach has shown faith in me and thinks I'm good enough to be out there. I used to feed off that. If nobody showed confidence in me and I'm not feeling the best then I'll be on eggshells out there. I won't have the same confidence and won't be relaxed and I won't be playing my best hockey then. I'd probably be half the player I could be, I'm the kind of player who needs my coach to have a quiet word and say, ‘Have some confidence, relax don't worry.’ If someone's just shouting at me that doesn't do anything for me and just makes me switch off.”
Unfortunately for Stone, Whistle didn’t continue coaching the Devils as long as he might have. He was replaced by Ed Patterson in a move that set the tone for another coaching change in the future.
I was disappointed when Whistle left,” says Stone.
Ed Patterson was playing at the time and, I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I heard that Ed went into see Bob and said, ‘I can be player-coach.’ And Bob could see that rather than having a player and a coach he could combine the two, save a bit of money, and that's what he did. I think Whis had to sort out some stuff in Canada for a couple of weeks and he was going to come back. By that time Bob knew he had the cheaper option and went down that route.”
I think Ed fell out with Bob too, arguing about the budget. He might have promised players a certain amount of money if they came back and I don't think Bob was happy with that. They were at loggerheads and couldn't work together.”
After two decades playing competitive sport in big rivalry games and playoff championships, you would expect Stone to remember a moment before a game when a coach delivered an Al Pacino “Any Given Sunday” style speech that shook the locker room. No such luck.
There's nothing I can really remember,” he says.
There was no Winston Churchill moment. There was no, ‘We'll fight them on the beaches’, or something like that. Nothing that sticks out. They've just been run of the mill. Go out there and beat these... Maybe I wasn't listening!
If anything it was more a case of the music that was being played beforehand.
I remember Mike MacWilliam playing with us at the time in the Super League and he was well into his music and had one of the new Minidisc players that had come out. He had a set up with an amp and two speakers coming off the side and you could hear it outside the dressing room - it was that loud. He used to pump out the Prodigy - "Firestarter", "Smack my Bitch Up". I liked that type of music and that would get me going more than any type of speech would.”
If Stone had to turn off the stereo and deliver an inspirational pre-game speech himself, could he do it? Would he want to? Does he want to put over twenty years of hockey together and use his experience to be a coach? Does he want to be the man who pulls a player aside and says, “I’ve got confidence in you?”
I'd like to think I would be a good coach, but you never know until you get into it,” he says.
I did do a little bit of coaching about 4/5 years ago when Jeff Burgoyne did it. He used to take the under 10s to the under 19s. When he went back in the summer I stepped in to do it. Sometimes the under 10s were tough to coach, it seemed like their parents wanted them to be hockey players more than them.
It was tough trying to teach a kid, who to me didn't want to be out there. But there were other kids in the 12s, 14s who really did listen and I like to think that if you're going to do a drill you have to do it properly, no taking shortcuts because in a game you're not going to do the right thing. So I like to think that I would pull someone else and make sure they knew what they were doing, keeping it more technical, which in turn would hopefully make the people you're teaching better.
If something came up I'd consider it, but I don't think the opportunities are there, especially in Cardiff and leaving is not realistic. But never say never. Though, I'm not sure if I could take the pressure. I might end up kicking a bin like Heavey.”

Article written by Neil Chiplen