By Dave Pollard, Guelphstorm exclusive. com

Every once in a while somebody comes along and proves an age-old saying wrong.

You know, the one about not being able to go home again, which came from the title of an old Thomas Wolfe novel?

Well, try telling that to Mike Kelly, who's come back to roost with the Guelph Storm, the very team that gave him his start in the Ontario Hockey League 20 years ago.

Kelly was hired late last month for a second go-round as the Storm's general manager, the title he held when he was hired to run the franchise after it moved to the Royal City from Hamilton in 1991, allowing previous GM Jason Brooks to concentrate on coaching.

So, yes, Tom Wolfe was wrong, very wrong.

"It does very much feel like coming home," Kelly said after a little more than a week on the job. "My wife, myself and my kids, we've lived more in Guelph than any other community. We've probably called Guelph home for 15 years. I can't imagine anywhere else we'd rather land at this stage in our lives."

The 58-year-old Cobourg native guided the Storm through some of its darkest days -- the team's inaugural season in Guelph ended with a record of 4-51-11, setting a record for futility that has since been eclipsed, and cost two head coaches their jobs -- and highest highs, including back-to-back regular-season championships and its first-ever Memorial Cup appearance. In his six years at the helm in the early to mid1990s, Kelly transformed the Storm from a struggling franchise to one of the most successful in the OHL.

Now, nearly 15 years after he left the Storm to take a position as coordinator of amateur scouting with the Calgary Flames, Kelly is back in Guelph with a similar mandate. He might have a little less hair and a few more wrinkles but he's much more prepared for the task this time around.

"I was the first employee and it was an exciting opportunity then but, gosh we weren't prepared for it," Kelly said. "We did not know how many draft picks we had. We started right from scratch without a whole lot of information. We didn't know who to call at the league office to give us various information. Quite frankly, I think the old staff in Hamilton took most of the paperwork and that with them. Talk about the blind leading the blind. And yet it was fun. We had some great people, the Alan Millars, the Jim Parcells, the ownership group. I look upon that first year very fondly despite the win-loss record. There's no question I made some mistakes out of inexperience but we also knew we had to go backwards to go forwards. In retrospect, I think that was the big reason why we had the success we had, not just the five years I was here. I think we left a lot in the cupboard, so to speak, for the three or four years after that."

Kelly has had plenty of hockey gigs -- interestingly, he's never been fired, an impressive feat for a man who's been in the business as long as he has -- in the years since he left to work for Calgary. He was hired away from the Flames by former Windsor Spitfires owner Steve Riolo in 1999 (as president and GM but, yes, he stepped behind the bench due to coaching changes) then left after six years, resurfacing as coach of the Mississauga IceDogs for the 2006-07 season. After helping to facilitate the transfer of the team to Niagara while acting as head coach, Kelly again left the OHL and signed a four-year contract as coach/GM with Hockey Club Alleghe of the top Italian league.

When the Storm ownership group approached Kelly about returning to Guelph, he was managing Alleghe from this side of the pond and doing some part-time scouting for the Carolina Hurricanes. Needless to say, Kelly jumped at the chance to get back into the North American hockey scene.

"We have four grandchildren two years of age and under," he said. "Spending the past two years in Europe was terrific but my wife and I had decided that we wanted to be back closer to home. Having the opportunity to scout with Carolina, as I'd been doing, and continuing to help manage the team in Italy was a pretty nice situation but it also positioned me so I got a chance to understand the OHL market again. I probably got to watch 70 games while scouting for Carolina. Without that opportunity, I'd be coming in here blind. I've probably got as good a feel for the OHL now as I did the six years I was here. I've had two and a half months of just looking at OHL teams."

With a depth of experience in junior hockey and scouting at the NHL level, Kelly probably wouldn't have taken long to get up to speed even if he hadn't seen the Storm play a handful of times early in the 2010-11 season. Simply put, he's a hockey guy. It's a description he doesn't shy away from.

"I'd have to say so," Kelly said. "I've flip-flopped back and forth between coaching and full-time scouting and that but, yeah, hockey guy is a pretty good way to (say) it. The thing I enjoy the most is building, looking at a blueprint for where you want to be in three or four years down the road. Then slowly and somewhat methodically work your way towards making that blueprint something that's pretty solid."

Kelly's model has worked in the past and he expects it will work again in Guelph.

The Storm has some assets (extra draft picks) that could be used in trades that would help the team immediately -- he's already made a pair of deals, bringing in offensive forward Richard Panik and steady, 19-year-old defenceman Kyle Pereira for disgruntled forward Carter Sandlak and import goalie Matej Machovsky -- but fans shouldn't expect a blockbuster, specifically for Windsor's Zack Kassian and Ryan Ellis. Both stars are said to be available to the highest bidder but Storm fans shouldn't get their hopes up they'll find a new home in Guelph.

"There is no magic formula. To build this thing really, really solid long-term it's going to require some patience," Kelly said. "I like the (1994-born players) that we have here and some of those extra draft picks Jason has acquired, we're going to hold on to and use to restock our cupboards. It's a little bit of a different dynamic but, as I've said before, my goal here is to get this team so that come playoffs, we're capable of upsetting anybody. But I'm not going to be able to (get it to) where we're that prohibitive favourite by making the Kassian-Ellis type trade. We've got a good club here but I'm not certain we're ready to sell the farm at this point in time. It's too costly and we're probably not quite close enough."

Drafting has been the key to his success over the years and that approach will not change now. Making a flurry of trades has never been Kelly's style, and probably never will be. Some teams might be willing to sell the farm for that one shot at a championship but Kelly has a different mindset when it comes to winning.

"I'm much better at trying to be good every year and have some extra assets in the bank so that if we're close, we can use them," he explained. "What are assets? Some players other teams want that we might be able to move to help ourselves and certainly draft picks. We always tried to have seven picks in the first five rounds. Obviously to acquire them, it meant drafting well before so you could get extra draft picks for one or two of your players. The draft is still important, draft picks are real, real important.But there's still players you can find in the fourth, sixth, seventh rounds, tremendous OHL players. That said, there's a lot that's changed, too. The player pools other teams are going into, the USHL, the U.S. development program, Europe. We're going to have to go into those pools as well. It doesn't mean we take our eye off the ball. Our primary player pool is the Ontario kids. I love small-town Ontario kids who come to Guelph and are just thrilled to be here."

And the fans, the ticket-buying public, seems just as happy to have Kelly back in Guelph. Most of the chatter on the Internet about his return to the Storm has been exceptionally positive.

It hasn't gone unnoticed by Kelly, either.

"Yeah, it's flattering, it really is," he said. "I get too much credit.I was one person in a cog but I guess I did provide a little bit of leadership. I think that's what my role is here, quite frankly. To be the leader and give everybody else in the organization the tools they need to be successful."