Two things we know to be true about hockey: If a coach has his way he’ll coach the entertainment right out of the game.
And those Knute Rockne speeches you see in every hockey movie?
Yeah, they don’t happen nearly as often as Hollywood would have you believe.
Every once in a while, however, an intermission comes along that defies the norm. Every so often, a coach like Todd McLellan will throw the video out the window and appeal to his team’s emotional side. Pressing the right buttons, we in the business like to call it.
You can’t play that card very often, but McLellan did in the first period Tuesday and it worked to perfection.
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“It wasn’t technical, it wasn’t ‘adjust this on the forecheck, do that on the backcheck,’ net play or faceoffs,” said McLellan, whose re-jigged Edmonton Oilers had slumbered through the opening period and trailed 1-0. “We hadn’t won a lot of games (lately), and I didn’t feel like the group believed they were going to win tonight. I didn’t feel like they believed in their new linemates. We just talked about it.
“I reassured them. I told them they’ve been a top-10 team the last three months, and usually the Stanley Cup champs come from the top-10 teams. They kind of perked up. They’d never thought of it that way.
“Just tried to get them to believe a little bit again.”
Edmonton stormed out of the room, laid out a couple of Coyotes with some hard checks, drew a penalty or two and led 3-2 after 40 minutes. Then they scored twice in the opening 6:29 of the third period, and that was all she wrote in a tidy 5-2 victory.
They scored ugly and they scored often, a welcome sight for a team that had lost four of its past five games, scoring just four regulation goals.
“We’re a good team. We’ve been top 10 in the league for a while now,” said banger Zack Kassian, who did his job with a game-high six hits. “I’ve had some experiences in the playoffs where I’ve been on top seeds, but when we get in it’s an early exit because we think we can just flip that switch. We’re going to have to start playing playoff hockey now. You can’t just flip a switch come April 15.”
After two off days where the topic was scoring dirty, blue-paint goals, professional grinder Matt Hendricks shovelled home the 2-1 goal while wearing a defender on his back, 20-some inches from the goal-line. Pat Maroon would score from the same distance in the third period.
After a 10-game drought, the big St. Louisan now has 20 goals, a career high by some measure. It took a long look back at the film to remember how he’d scored the first 19, firing eight shots on goal Tuesday.
“What was I doing when I was scoring those goals? Going to the blue paint, outmuscling my D-man, and doing the little things right to get that puck,” he said, ecstatic to have notched his 20th. “It’s really cool — I’ve never (done) it before. My highest goal count was 12.”
Of course, for every comeback there is a letdown, and while McLellan was stumping inside the Oilers bathhouse, Arizona head coach Dave Tippett was warning his ‘Yotes that Edmonton had another gear it would employ in the second period.
“We talked about it after the first,” Tippett steamed. “We knew it was coming. It’s one thing for them to push. It’s another thing for us to put the push on a platter and that’s what we did.”
Backup Louis Domingue drew the start after Mike Smith had shut the Calgary Flames out 5-0 the previous night in Cowtown. Domingue waved off reporters after the game.
“Honestly guys, I’ve got no answer for you,” said Domingue, who was not at all bad. “I play once a month. It wasn’t good enough. So I have zero answers for the rest of your questions.”
Answers? The Oilers found theirs in a couple of work-bucket goals led by Hendricks, a role player who played his role to perfection Tuesday.
“(Hendricks’ goal) typifies exactly what we’ve been talking about for the last two, three days in here. Gritty, on top of the goalie, getting pushed into the net and bearing down,” said linemate Mark Letestu, who also scored.
“As the season goes on, those are the goals that are going to go in. The 20-footers under the bar, there won’t be a lot of those. It’ll be the ugly ones around the net.”
