Hockey Canada President and CEO Tom Renney announced that he will be stepping down as president later next year.
Renney will be replaced as president by Scott Smith, the current COO of Hockey Canada, as of July 1, 2017. Renney will remain the CEO of the organization. Smith has been with Hockey Canada since 1995, and was appointed COO in 2007. He will be taking on a more public role, according to Hockey Canada.
Renney believes that he and Smith have “very complementary skillsets and approaches,” which will benefit the organization’s mandate to grow hockey in Canada and around the world.
The chair of the board, Joe Drago, told the media that Renney approached them with the plan to promote Smith. Renney was hired by Hockey Canada in July of 2014 to replace Bob Nicholson, who had held the position since 1998. Nicholson is now the CEO and vice-chair of the Oilers entertainment group. Incidentally, Renney has previously served as the coach of the Oilers from 2009 to 2012.
Tom Rennie is a greedy man. His vision of grass roots hockey is to line the pockets of corporate sponsors at the expense of local communities. This is evident by Hockey Canada heading to corporate rich NHL cities instead of grass roots centres like London, Windsor, Kitchener in the Ontario Hockey league Ronnie needs not only to step down but also out of Hockey Canada. His vision is not about growing the game it is about lining his pockets with corporate money and then gain in personal wealth . When Hockey Canada reaches out to the small true hockey locations not named Vancouver Montreal Toronto Calgary etc then we will see hockey grew in Canada. By the way Tom the ticket prices for the world juniors are 300 % to high.