Jonathon Brodie - Recorder & Times

The Brockville Braves are wasting no time in moving on from this season.

Less than 24 hours after losing 2-1 to the Ottawa Jr. Senators on Thursday and getting knocked out of the quarter-final of the CCHL playoffs, Braves management announced they were reassigning the team's first-year head coach Colin Birkas to being a scout with the organization.

Birkas could not be reached for comment before publication.

A new head coach has not been announced.

The coaching switch is just one thing Braves management are hoping to change for next year.

Since taking over the Braves with Hani Greiss, owner and general manager Dustin Traylen has preached compete level and culture amongst his players. This year he believes those qualities may have digressed a bit from the previous season.

"I would like to see a change in philosophy and a change in culture that we got away from this year," Traylen said. "Next year it's all about compete and desire to evolve."

The 2016-17 season is described by the GM as a disappointment on and off the ice and he's not just pointing the finger at his former head coach.

Brockville went into this season with relatively high expectations after the team's moderate success in 2015-16.

The Braves only managed to win one playoff round the previous season, but it was the best result the team had put up in five years and they did it with a handful of off-season issues regarding staff and drastically overhauling their roster.

This season, despite the Braves doing a complete roster makeover again because of a lot of players moving on, the expectations were greater with more calm going into training camp.

By keeping the likes of goalie of the year Henry Johnson and key defensive pieces like captain Andrew Jarvis and Cameron Crotty, as well off-season acquisitions like Corey Caruso and Colin Tonge, the club fell short of their regular season goals of separating itself as an elite club.

Brockville never seemed to find their scoring touch this year. Their defence was one of the best in the league, while the offence had trouble filling the net on a regular basis.

The biggest problem, though, was they just never seemed to click. Hopefully a year of CCHL experience under some players' belts will steady the ship.

Expected returnees next year include goalie Yaniv Perets, Jarvis, Noah Jordan, Chad Varney, Eric Faith, Jacob Sutton, Mack Hancock, Blake Coffey, Matt Halle, Jack Gill, Jonathan Hill and Domenic Della Civita. Brockville had just seven returning players on this year's opening day roster and that same amount the year before that.

"We had expectations much higher than what happened. Was (this year) a complete failure? No, we learned a lot and we developed players here for the coming years," Traylen said. "We talk about building for the future and there's some great pieces coming back."

Traylen gave a nod to the Senators as being a top-notch organization from top to bottom and as a potential championship team. He, however, isn't sure how much his returning players could have learned from this recent series because he doesn't believe his team played well.

Traylen also felt theBraves could have been conditioned better with their weakness showing in a Game 2 when the Braves lost 2-1 in double overtime and although Brockville had chances to put the game away, Ottawa had a lot more as they out-shot the Braves 34-15 in the sudden death periods.

"These guys are here to get scholarships and if you're not working hard everyday and trying to get better everyday then what are you doing?," Traylen said. "I think a lot of guys over the summer have to decide where they're at in their careers and what they want to do because a repeat performance like this?"

Original Story at Recorder.ca