‘All roads lead to Swift Current’: Broncos’ new head coach, GM excited for new chapter

The Swift Current Broncos have named Travis Crickard head coach and general manager. Here's how he feels about the task before him.

It’s been a long journey for Travis Crickard, but the newly named Swift Current Broncos head coach always felt it would lead him to the southwest Saskatchewan community.

Crickard spoke with media Monday for the first time since being announced as head coach and general manager by the team last week.

He recalled a conversation he had with his wife more than a decade ago while he was an assistant with the Kelowna Rockets.

“I remember speaking with [her] about my dream to be a head coach in the CHL and I told her we may need to move somewhere else for me to achieve that goal,” Crickard said. “And she asked me, ‘where?’ And I remember I had [our] team’s magnetic calendar in front of me and my eyes were on Swift Current. I said, ‘it could be Swift Current.”

“She first asked me where that was, where’s Swift Current and then it kind of became a thing between us where we used to kind of say, ‘all roads lead to Swift Current’.”

Originally from St. John’s, N.L., Crickard previously served as the head coach and general manager of the Saint John Sea Dogs of the Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League for four seasons.

He originally joined that club as an assistant coach during the 2021-22 season, becoming the GM in 2024. In February, the team announced he was no longer serving in those roles.

“Although the roads took me to a couple other places along the way, we finally figured out where exactly Swift Current is. And we finally made it,” he told reporters Monday. “We’re really excited to move to Swift Current and become part of the community.”

According to the Broncos, Crickard has been heavily involved with Hockey Canada, serving as a head coach, assistant coach and video coach across several U-16, U-17 and U-18 programs.

Crickard helped Canada earn three International Ice Hockey Federation U18 gold medals, a Hlinka-Gretzky Cup Bronze medal, and two U17 World Challenge Silver medals.

Junior cycle

Swift Current is coming off a season in which they recorded just 15 wins in 68 games, finishing the 2025-26 regular season with a 15-44-4-5 record – the second worst in the Western Hockey League (WHL).

While the Broncos did reach the playoffs the two previous years, including appearing in the Eastern Conference semi-finals in 2024, the team is in a clear rebuilding mode.

“Once I spent some time speaking with Liam [Choo-Foo] and Trent [McCleary] and [have] got to learn a little bit more about what they had been doing this past season to develop new values and develop a sense of a mission and a vision,” said Crickard.

“The thing that spoke to me the most was the alignment piece. They had a lot of conviction about being aligned [in] hockey operations, business operations and the board of directors — but they also had a number of processes in place already and will continue to use to ensure communication stays consistent, regardless of the time of season, regardless of results.”

Crickard is the organization’s third head coach in three years.

In January, the Broncos announced a third-party review of its organization after losing two head coaches following league investigations into misconduct.

Last month, Broncos’ general manager Chad Leslie stepped down from his position and transitioned to a scouting-focused role with the team.

Crickard hopes his previous experience will help bring stability to the club as it retools.

“When I took over in Saint John, despite having kind of gone through a rebuild for [three] or four years already, we were still very thin on draft picks … we had a first round pick and then nothing again until a seventh round.” he explained.

“Whereas coming into Swift Current, they seemed to be pretty flush with picks over the next few years. That’s a credit to Chad Leslie and the scouting staff to ensure we’re in a position where we don’t have to kind of hold on to every single one of those.”

Crickard added that Swift Current could use some of those picks to acquire more competitive and or more talented players.

The new Broncos head coach believes the hockey landscape has altered with the allowance of CHL players to play US college hockey.

He says the opening and closing of windows is tighter and can change year-to-year, even if a team is near the bottom of the standings – like Swift is.

“What you have to do is create more of a sustainable, competitive model rather than going through super high highs and super low lows,” he said.

“It’s more of a matter of, ‘how can we make our team as competitive as possible each year?’ And if we’re in a great spot, maybe that’s the year that we we push for a championship.”

“On an annual basis, you have an ability to make your team maybe a little more competitive than you would previously when you’re in those long five-year cycles,” he added.

Crickard has little time to settle into his new role.

The WHL Prospects draft is set for May 6.

Swift Current has 11 picks total, including two in the first round with picks 22 and 23.

-With files from David Prisciak.