Spector on Leafs: A coaching conundrum
Posted February 29, 2012 7:26 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
At age 60 and more than 1,000 games into his coaching career, Ken Hitchcock has seen a mistake or two in his day.
There are certain ones, however, that speak to a greater problem. A bigger, environmental issue that, say, Toronto Maple Leafs fans might know something about these days.
Hitchcock wasn’t speaking to Luke Schenn’s miscue on the first shift of a loss to Florida Tuesday. In fact, Schenn’s name had not even come up when he was speaking with reporters prior to the St. Louis Blues game in Edmonton Wednesday night.
Yet, he was perfectly describing Schenn’s blunder, as well as the rest of the situation enveloping the Toronto Maple Leafs these days.
“When I see some of the mistakes that get made on the ice, those aren’t natural mistakes. Those are tension mistakes,” he said Wednesday morning. “You have to find a way at this time of year to not make your team so tight. And that’s not easy because there’s pressure on you (the coach), there’s pressure on the manager, there’s pressure on the players. But no matter how you do it, you have to create a bubble.
“This is the time of year where the coach has to be dug in with the players at all costs.”
So throwing the goaltenders under the bus, as Ron Wilson did last week in Toronto, does not fall under what Hitchcock would describe as acceptable, stretch-run coaching strategy. Nor would having the GM come out in relative agreement the next day, promising to investigate the goalie market prior to the trading deadline.
“You can’t play at this time of year with tension other than the actual competition. If there’s tension on top of that, it’s so hard to play,” said Hitchcock, who has never won the Jack Adams Award but will surely be on the ballot this year. “One of the things that happens is…whether it’s the market you play in, whether it’s the atmosphere, whether it’s the culture, when there’s too much tension, people freeze. You have heavy legs; you can’t catch your breath.
“I’ve always had the attitude that a coach’s job at this time of year is to make sure you do everything to protect the players so they can play the game.”
So, let us review.
One 1000-game coach does it one way, and he’s been hired and fired along the way.
Another 1000-game coach, Ron Wilson, does it his way. And he’s been hired and fired along the way.
The difference is trajectory. Hitchcock joined the Blues early this season and has them challenging for first overall in the entire National Hockey League.
Wilson can’t find the playoffs with an apple and a road map, and his home crowd is chanting “Fi-re Wil-son!” and booing the Maple Leafs off of the ice at the ACC.
St. Louis general manager Doug Armstrong had to make the tough call on Davis Payne back in November. It was perhaps his most poignant decision as a GM.
“Ken’s getting the maximum out of our players, which he was brought in to do,” Armstrong said. “We felt like, bringing in a guy with 1000 games, a winner – Stanley Cups, World Cups, World Championships, Olympics – the group knew that they had a coach who has experienced what they want to experience.”
We did ask Armstrong about making the late-season coaching move, the way Lou Lamoriello has in New Jersey a time or two before.
“You have to know the pulse of your team,” Armstrong said. “And you don’t know it from the outside. You have to be inside. You make hard decisions based on that.”
Over to you, Brian…
