It was 1992 and Todd McLellan was weighing his options. He’d just won a championship while playing hockey in Europe, and had a contract offer to return, but a shoulder injury made it too painful to continue. The Melville, Saskatchewan, native was considering the path many of his friends and family took once they hung up the skates -- becoming a firefighter or policeman.

And perhaps that would have been the next step if he hadn’t noticed an ad in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

The North Battleford North Stars needed a head coach and put a notice in the local paper to drum up interest. At 25 years old, McLellan wasn’t much older than the players competing in the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League, but figured he’d give it a shot.

He sent in a résumé. Less than a week later, his phone rang and it was Bob Sheppard, a member of the North Stars' board of directors. They had a conversation and McLellan hung up the phone.

He turned to his future wife, Debbie, and told her the news: He was now the head coach of the North Battleford North Stars.

“She goes, ‘Now what?’” McLellan said on Wednesday. “I had no idea where to start.”

He brought in Blaine Gusdal, a former teammate with the Saskatoon Blades, to be his assistant coach and a pair of 25-year-old coaches got to work.

“He was brilliant at 25,” Gusdal said of McLellan during a Wednesday phone conversation. “He was mature beyond his years and I soaked it all in.”

The two would sit in the cramped little North Battleford coaches office. They drew up plays together, while making tweaks to the team’s system. They realized that the way they played growing up and the way they were coached wasn’t going to work in an evolving game. They also worked the phones together at the trade deadline to bring in the kind of players they felt they needed to win.

They did anything they could to change the losing culture in North Battleford. They won 16 games that year.

“We took it on the chin,” Gusdal said, with a laugh.

To the best of everyone’s recollection, it was also the last time a Todd McLellan team missed the playoffs.