Mendes on Sens: Improved relations
Posted January 31, 2012 8:59 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
At the All-Star weekend in Ottawa, there were strong suggestions that Paul MacLean should win the Jack Adams award as the best coach in the National Hockey League this season.
There were also whispers that Jason Spezza should be considered among a large group of players in the running for the Hart Trophy as the league’s most valuable player.
It has taken nearly a decade, but the Ottawa Senators have finally found the right coach for their star centre. But that’s not to say that the relationship between Spezza and MacLean is always rosy. In fact, both of them told me that they have passionate – and sometimes heated – debates about how the game should be played behind closed doors.
“Paul has helped out my game a lot. There’s dialogue between us,” says Spezza. “It’s not just him talking to me or me talking to him. We really hash things out and sometimes it gets heated and sometimes it doesn’t. But it’s all part of the emotion of the game and that’s what’s great. He’s an emotional guy and I’m an emotional guy.”
“We’ve had some good conversations between the two of us,” adds MacLean. “How do I like to play and how does he like to play? And we’ve tried to marry some of the things about how I want to play and he wants to play. Now some of the things I like to do, he doesn’t like. And some of the things he wants to do, I don’t like. But through communication and time, we’re able to accept a little bit of this and a little bit of that and come up with the player we have today.”
If you go back and pick out some key words from their quotes, you realize that Spezza and MacLean are forging a true relationship in Ottawa.
Dialogue. Emotion. Conversations. Marry. Communication.
These aren’t clichés that are often thrown around inside a hockey locker room. They are the words of two men who truly appear to be on the same page when it comes to winning and developing a star player.
MacLean is Spezza’s sixth different head coach behind the bench of the Ottawa Senators. When he first broke into the league, Jacques Martin did not trust Spezza’s defensive game in key situations. Spezza – a 22-goal scorer during the regular season in 2003-04 – was a healthy scratch in the playoffs that year, a factoid that still seems puzzling to this day.
Spezza’s offensive flair was utilized by Bryan Murray en route to the Stanley Cup Final in 2007, but has been largely absent since. Injuries certainly played a part in the reduced offensive numbers, but Spezza never seemed to be on the same wavelength as any of Murray’s successors – until now.
Craig Hartsburg wanted to win games 1-0, which certainly did not suit Spezza’s style. Communication was not Cory Clouston’s strong point and that seemed to play a role in Spezza’s lack of success. But now MacLean is on the scene and seemingly the perfect motivator for Spezza, especially when you factor in his own success as a player. In a very productive career, MacLean collected 324 goals in just 719 games – so he understands the pressures faced by an offensive star like Spezza.
And more importantly, the respect is a two-way street in this relationship.
“He’s played this game and I respect his opinion,” says Spezza of MacLean. “And he respects me; that I might see something on the ice that he doesn’t see out there. We’ve had a great relationship that way and he’s been able to push my buttons occasionally to get me going. And I’ve been able to vent to him about some things I’d like to do differently.”
MacLean has preached patience to Spezza and the result is a player who does not see the need to force the play on every rush. Instead, Spezza has become a more complete player under MacLean, playing in all situations. Nobody has won more faceoffs or taken more faceoffs than Spezza in the NHL this season, a testament to how the 28-year-old has rounded out his game.
“He doesn’t have to go out on the ice every night and try and do it by himself,” explains MacLean. “He doesn’t have to take the bull by the horn so to speak and try and generate all the offense by himself. The people around him are better.”
It seems as though the idea of trading Spezza has finally passed in the nation’s capital. It was less than two years ago that the vacillating fan base was booing the star centre on home ice during a playoff series loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
At the time, general manager Bryan Murray strongly suggested that Spezza wouldn’t mind a change of scenery. Spezza did not formally request a trade or demand one, but it was clear that if Murray could find a suitable partner, the centre would not be opposed to moving on.
Instead, Murray decided against trading Spezza and in hindsight, it was probably the best move he never made. Now the awkward relationship between the superstar and his most critical fans in Ottawa seems to finally be on solid footing. With the backing of a new head coach, Spezza is looking every bit like the future captain of this team. And when you listen to him carefully, he’s even starting to sound like the logical successor to Daniel Alfredsson.
“I’m the type of guy that wants to be part of the solution and not run away from the problem,” he told me when asked about leaving Ottawa two years ago. “I got that opportunity to stay here and try and be part of the solution. Things are going really well for us this year and I’m happy to be around this group of guys.”
