On the nights they did that, it was the most gratifying
experience one could imagine. Other nights, well, maybe not
so much gratifying as it was intensely challenging. That, however, is the magnet pull of coaching. If it was easy, they would
call it being in the media.
Now, getting players to execute all of that with any degree
of consistency? Well, that's something else entirely and, boy,
did I
find
that out the hard way in my
first
year as a head coach.
19: Tough Love and Learning Our Lessons the Hard Way
I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN my
first
year as head coach was
going to be a challenge when I ran afoul of the Whitby Minor
Hockey Association before the team had even been picked.
Tryouts were in April. The WMHA rule was a coach couldn't
release any players until after the second tryout.
My problem was that the second tryout ended exactly
thirty minutes before I was scheduled to be on the air at TSN.
Not at TSN, on the air at TSN. It was going to be a play at the
plate just to
finish
the tryout, never mind release players after
it, and get to work on time.
Now, I am nothing if not a practical man. I had to
find
a
way to cut ten or twelve kids instantaneously after that second
tryout. But the association also had fairly
firm
guidelines on
how releasing players could be done-one-on-one meetings;
letters; or posting helmet numbers (never names) assigned during tryout registration. I didn't have time for any of that. So
I came up with my own idea, which, quite frankly, I thought
was ingenious.
With about twenty minutes left in the ninety-minute try-out, I divided the kids on the ice into two groups. One was
larger than the other. I took the smaller group at one end; the
other coaches took the larger group at the other end. I ran a few
drills and then gathered the kids at my end, explained my time
constraints and how this may be unconventional, but they
were being released. They went to the dressing rooms, where
they got changed while the remaining kids
finished
the tryout. As the kids who were cut left the dressing room, I had Ron
Balcom, the team manager, give them a letter saying I would
be happy to meet one-on-one with any parent or player at any
time to explain my decision, but not now, not at this moment.
Personally, I thought it was just about the best way to cut
kids. None of the boys seemed to have any problem with it
(kids rarely do, but more on that later). They were able to get
changed and leave the rink without having to deal with those
kids who didn't get cut. And I got to work on time. Barely.
But someone didn't like it. I caught hell from the association and was told in no uncertain terms not to do it again. All
right,
fine
, although it only underlined what I have often subscribed to in life-it's easier to get forgiveness than permission.
Nothing came easy in that minor peewee (twelve-year-old)
year, for me or the kids.
It was the year body contact was introduced for these players. While there is always great debate on when is the best time
to introduce contact in minor hockey, I can only say from
personal experience that it's
definitely
not when the kids are
twelve. Yet that is the standard in minor hockey in Canada.
It's been my experience that at the age of twelve, the size
difference, in both height and weight, between the
biggest
players
and smallest players is greater than at any other age. So
I would say the potential for injury is far greater at twelve. It's
also the age when many of the kids are going through puberty
and their hormones are absolutely raging out of control. I personally prefer bringing in contact at age ten, the way it was
done with Shawn's age group in a pilot program. But that's
just me.
Bill Carroll, the former NHLer who won four Stanley Cups
with the New York Islanders and Edmonton Oilers, would
agree. Bill is a good friend. His son Matthew (who plays for
the Toronto Rock in the National Lacrosse League) is the same
age as Mike, and Bill's youngest son, Marcus (who plays for
Owen Sound of the Ontario Hockey League), is the same age as
Shawn. Our boys played lacrosse together and hockey against
each other. I coached against Bill in minor peewee as he was
behind the bench of the Ajax-Pickering Raiders and former
NHLer Bobby Lalonde was one of his assistants.
Bill and I used to joke that in minor peewee they should
change the name of the game from "hockey" to "hit" because
that's all the kids focused on. Some games you could have
played without a puck and the kids wouldn't have noticed.
Well, that wasn't quite true of my Wildcats. Remember
that part about puberty? The kids on my team, for the most
part, were very late to that party. This group of '86s had always
been fairly competitive within their age group. But it became
apparent early in the minor peewee season that wasn't going
to be the case. Our kids-including Mike (maybe especially
Mike)-appeared to be physically overmatched in just about
every regard.
Bill Carroll's Ajax-Pickering team steamrolled us early that
season. They were so much faster and physically stronger. They
ran us out of the rink on repeated occasions. As an NHLer, Bill
was the quintessential defensive specialist but he coached the
kids exactly opposite to the way he played. His team played run
and gun and, boy, did they run and gun us. We even lost the
Rum Cup that year. That was just a little inside joke between
Bobby Lalonde and me. Both of us like a sip of the demon rum
now and again, so we talked about putting a bottle on the line
for each game. Hence, our games against each other became
known as the Rum Cup.
Puberty apparently wasn't an issue in Peterborough. The
Borough Boys, who used to be the league doormat but were
now a dominant team, had all grown up. They were huge. And
mean. They looked and played like a men's team and, believe
me, it was like men against boys in our games with them.
I never saw any of this coming, neither did the kids. Their
reaction, as twelve-year-olds, was understandable but not
what I would necessarily deem acceptable. They basically shut
down-mentally, emotionally and then physically. Once they
realized they were, for the most part, physically overmatched,
the attributes they did possess (puck skills, hockey sense, team
play and a decent scoring touch) went right out the window.
They quickly lost their
confidence
. Once a kid's
confidence
goes, it is a long, slippery slope. They became rather timid and
skittish, if not downright scared at times, and that, folks, is
no way to go through minor peewee AAA and the
first
year of
body contact.
Were we having fun yet? The losses were piling up. The
margins of defeat were not pretty.
As the head coach, I had two choices. I could accept
what was happening, try to keep the kids' spirits up as best
I could and we could all take our lumps. You know, relax,
it's just a game. Or I could try to come up with a plan, painful as that might be, to
fight
through the adversity and offer
some pushback. The choice was obvious for me-I love a challenge-but in order to do that I was going to have to push the
envelope a little. Or maybe a lot.
Competing is a skill, the same as skating or puck handling,
but it's a lot harder to teach because to do it, you have to be a
hard son of a gun. You have to get in people's faces, you have
to push them and grind and take them out of their comfort
zone over and over again so that they eventually become conditioned and
confident
enough to push back and push back
hard. No one likes to go through that learning experience. It
isn't fun. So I knew what had to be done, but I also knew it
wasn't going to be pretty. Remember, these were twelve-year-old kids, not professionals.
But you know what? I really thought these kids were worth
it. I liked them. They were a good bunch of boys from good
families and they liked each other and playing hockey together.
I don't want to create the sense the kids had no fun. We
still had social outings for them. They still had their mini
games at the beginning of each practice. They still had lots
of horseplay at the rink. As hard as we pushed them, the kids
knew we liked and respected them. The fact I knew so many
of them and their families so well, from our years of minor
hockey and lacrosse together, helped immeasurably. This was
one case where being a parent-coach and having familiarity
and relationships outside of the rink with a lot of the families was a real
benefit
. In fact, I couldn't have done it if there
weren't already a high level of trust between me and many of
the parents.
Man, did those kids get pushed in practice. Hard. There was
lots of skating and even more battling. The three-on-three battle drills down low became unbelievably intense and a regular
staple. There was lots of yelling and screaming, most of it
from
me
. Our practices became harder than the games, and that was
the idea. These kids simply needed to get much tougher-mentally, emotionally and physically. I don't think anything I ever
did was out of pure anger or frustration as much as it was calculated, but that doesn't mean there weren't some times when
people thought I was a little, or maybe a lot, nuts.
In a tournament in Kitchener, we fell behind 6-0 in the
first
period against a very good Team Illinois squad. They
scored a couple of soft goals early and our guys just folded.
The ice resurfacing was to be done at the end of the
first
period,
but I didn't allow the kids to leave the bench to go to the dressing room for the intermission. I made them all stay seated
there, watching the Zamboni go around and around. I literally walked up and down the bench while I
fi
guratively went
up and down each player with some really pointed criticism.
All of this unfolded in front of the spectators, and their parents, in the stands. I don't doubt some of them thought I had
gone too far.
Immediately after that game, though, I went even farther.
I took the rare step of meeting with a couple of parents and
reading them the riot act. It was my infamous goalie rant. Our
goalies, like the rest of the team, had been performing poorly
but in this game, they were particularly bad. As anyone in
hockey knows, if you don't get a save now and again, it doesn't
matter what else you do, you're toast.
One of the goalies was Kyle Clancy, whose parents, Sue and
Dan, were friends of ours. Kyle was part of a group of
five
or six
kids who played AAA hockey together in the winter and rep
lacrosse in the summer all the way up. Kyle was a very good
lacrosse goalie and a good hockey goalie, too, but like all the
kids, his
confidence
was shot at this point.
I remember telling his mom, Sue, and the other goalie's
parents, as well as the goalies themselves, that what I was about
to say wasn't fair, I understand that, but that life wasn't fair. I
told them that if life were fair, a goalie's equipment wouldn't
cost more than every other player's. I told them goalies get too
much credit when a team wins and goalies get too much blame
when a team loses. I then told them their kids weren't mentally prepared to play the games, they weren't working hard
enough to get better and that if the team had any chance of
competing, we needed better goaltending. I told them if their
kids didn't prepare better and work harder, I would have to
find
new goalies in mid-season.
The part about
find
ing new goalies was a total bluff. I am
one hundred percent philosophically opposed to any minor
hockey team making a personnel change in mid-season just to
get better. That's just not right.
But for my purposes I had to get our goalies out of their
comfort zone and I didn't mind telling a white lie to do it.
And I also told the goalies and their parents that night that
we would get them some specialized instruction to help them
out. Right after that tournament, we got ourselves a very good
goalie coach, Bucky Crouch. It's all well and good to rant and
rave at kids and parents that they need to be better, but the
onus is ultimately on the coaching staff to provide them the
tools to do it.