Coaches deal with situations face-to-face. So there should be no surprise to how Ron Wilson dealt with a question he thought challenged his integrity as a coach.
I've seen a lot of Toronto Maple Leafs coach Ron Wilson over the years and it's fair to say that challenging him in a public forum is almost always going to get you some kind of public rebuke.
Sometimes it gets heated. I know of at least one time when Wilson, angered to the point where he refused to reveal when and where his team would practice during the 1998 Eastern Conference Final, was fined for his actions. For the most part, however, it's just a match of wit or wills. Most reporters don't mind and, for the record, it goes that way quite often and with quite a few coaches. Having spent years in a daily give and take with coaches like Scott Bowman, John Tortorella, John Muckler, Rick Dudley and others, I can tell you this goes on almost every day.
But Wilson deserves a little credit after his little post-game go round with Fan 590 reporter Howard Berger.
Now to be fair to both him and Berger I thought he overreacted to Berger's question about why he didn't challenge the size of Ottawa forward Jason Spezza's stick in November "when the points mattered."
Berger is adamant in stating that it was not his intention to challenge Wilson's integrity and Wilson could have defused the situation simply by stating what I assume to be true, that he didn't know for certain in November that Spezza was using an illegal stick but suspected and later confirmed it prior to making the call in the most recent meeting between the two teams.
But integrity is an issue and Wilson has earned the right to hold his in high esteem and to defend it from threats real or imagined.
That he can be combative at times adds to the impact, but that shouldn't be a factor this time around.
There have been times in my career when I suspected a coach was under orders to tank a season, but on those decidedly few occasions the coaches didn't like it and I can testify to one where the coach may have been complicit simply because he was a coach not in good standing with his bosses and was trying desperately to keep his job. He doesn't work in the NHL any longer and that could well be part of the reason why.
That happens; any GM or coach who says it doesn't isn't being truthful.
But Wilson isn't that kind of coach not now (armed with a multi-year contract) and not ever. He's a career coach who holds to his principles no matter how good or bad the situation and he is 100 percent correct in saying that it is both his desire and obligation to try and win every game. Not just for himself and his bosses, but for the people who are nearly as dear to him as family: his players.
Any good coach, especially a career coach with over 1200 games to his credit, wants his players to succeed. A coach cares for them as people as well as players. He wants them to succeed simply because they got to the level of the NHL by working hard to succeed and they want to stay at that level and have success as players and as a team at that level. It's his job as both a person and a coach to do everything in his power to help make that happen.
Every coach knows the feeling of having helped a player succeed and has suffered with the ones that have failed. It's a human thing and despite the way they are sometimes portrayed in the media (and in the ways they sometimes portray themselves) the good ones want that as much as they want to win.
They also believe that winning, at least winning over the long term, is a direct result of striving to win at every opportunity and that winning the battles in the corners, the front of the net or the faceoff circle even when the game appears out of reach is all part of winning the game and that you can't win the game without winning those battles and the battle not to give in.
This is a lousy season for the Leafs in terms of wins and losses and truth be told they've turned in more than a few clunker games, but on the whole Wilson's Leafs haven't given up on trying to win just like Paul Maurice's and Pat Quinn's Leafs. Players do quit on coaches and it's fair to say we saw that this season in Montreal with Guy Carbonneau behind the bench and in Ottawa with Craig Hartsburg and maybe even in Carolina where Maurice replaced the fired Peter Laviolette.
But I would argue that it hasn't happened with Wilson's Leafs at least in part because he refuses to let it happen. I would argue that if you asked Doug Wilson, the GM in San Jose, that it didn't happen when Wilson was coaching there either and that he was fired there not because the team gave up but because expectations weren't met. I would argue that was the case during his stops in Anaheim and in Washington as well.
Wilson knows he's demanding and not every person or player appreciates that. I suspect he realizes that he can also be arrogant and, at times, condescending. I suspect, given his statements the day after his confrontation with Berger that he may have realized he overreacted to Berger's question and that the issue might have been handled better behind closed doors.
But the Ron Wilson I've seen over the years doesn't work that way, not when his pride or his team is involved.
In the moments right after a game coaches are seldom at their emotional best. Wilson clearly felt his integrity was under attack. He defended it the best and perhaps the only way he knows how. He stated the facts as he saw them without regard to anything else. He framed his answer to a reporter the same way he would do it to a player: upfront, no spin and directly into his face.
I respect Berger for asking a tough question, a question that fans would likely be asking if they had a chance to confront Wilson after a game. I respect Wilson for answering it in the way he saw fit.
That's the give and take of the coach-reporter relationship. Both men did their job.
