'A dream come true,' says Austrian world junior coach on returning home to N.S.

Kirk Furey boarded a plane at age 16 with the knowledge his hockey journey — his dream — would likely take him far from home.

Nearly three decades later, that path through leagues on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean brought him right back to where it started.

The Glace Bay, N.S., product, whose playing resume reads like an alphabet soup, was asked in the fall if he would take a break from leading his Austrian club team's development program to coach the country's entry at the world junior hockey championship.

The task was daunting. The tournament's location made it a no-brainer.

"A dream come true," Furey said. "I don't think it could really have matched up any better."

He isn't kidding.

A small hockey nation, Austria finished 10th at the last two men's under-20 showcase events, but didn't have to deal with relegation because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Austrians have also, at least in the short-term, moved away from homegrown coaches, while Russia's invasion of Ukraine meant that country lost the right to host the 2023 tournament.

In stepped Halifax and Moncton, N.B., to fill the void — and provide Furey a scenario he never envisioned.

"The one beauty of East Coast people is when they embrace a situation or their own people, they do it 100 per cent," said Furey, 46, some 20 years after Halifax first held the world juniors. "I don't think people really understand the magnitude and what it means to the East Coast.

"Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Couldn't have written the script any differently or any better."

His own script, however, has included plenty of twists.

A defenceman on the smaller side at a time when bruising blue-liners were the norm, Furey left Nova Scotia in the mid-1990s because there was no major junior