Randy Carlyle could tell you. Of course, but then he’d have to…
Well, you know the line.
Back in the saddle again, renewing a quest to become the first man to both play (1,055 games) and coach (704 so far) 1,000 games in the National Hockey League, Carlyle is like a line out an old Frank Sinatra song.
Regrets? He’s had more than a few.
“Oh yeah. There are a couple of things I’ll never do again,” he said, harkening back to his time spent behind the Toronto Maple Leafs’ bench.
Do tell, Randy.
Was it your relationship with Jake Gardiner? How you handled a young Nazem Kadri? Was it a management team that gave you a loser of a roster, but you told them you could win with it?
Was it allowing yourself to become beholden to a fan base that inexplicably saw Nikolai Kulemin and Mikhail Grabovski as cornerstones of a winning lineup?
Was it the Jonas “The Monster” Gustavsson experiment?
What was it, Randy, that you’ll never repeat?
“I can’t tell you.”
Well, that’s no fun.
Not so ironically, being ‘no fun’ has always been a knock that Carlyle would consider unfair. The stony exterior. The gruff approach to youth.
The story from one Ducks player is that the two walked into the breakfast area, toasted bagels next to each other, dressed them in butter and jam, poured a coffee, and walked out without a “Good morning,” being uttered by the coach.
“I don’t think I got enough credit for the relationships I did have with people. There are some people…” said Carlyle, changing tracks when he didn’t like where his words were taking him. “Nine years ago (in Anaheim), to say I didn’t have a good relationship with Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf as rookies is incorrect. I had a stormy relationship with Dustin Penner (as did every one of his future coaches). But I had great relationships with Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger.
“I do demand a lot from people, and that is warranted because they are a talented group and teams need structure.”
That quality is what makes Carlyle the right man for this job in Anaheim. The same job he was fired from 24 games into the 2011-12 season when his team only had seven wins. And the one he held in 2007, when Anaheim — and Carlyle — won their only Stanley Cup.
If ever there was a “right now” team in the National Hockey League, Anaheim is it. The Ducks best two players are Perry and Getzlaf, a couple of 31-year-olds who are at the apex of their careers.
We won’t predict when their games will begin to drop off, just that it is inevitable. Last season Getzlaf had one goal at Christmas time, while for the first time in years Perry was left of Team Canada at the World Cup. He was later named an injury fill-in, where it must be said he played every bit like a national teamer.
“The window is short; it’s closing,” 35-year-old defenceman Kevin Bieksa, a former Vancouver Canuck, told the Orange County Register recently. “If you look at the way the core is set up, a lot of guys are in their prime right now. This is the time. I’ve seen an organization in its prime and it’s a lot harder to win when guys aren’t in their prime.”
So Carlyle returns after a summer in which he interviewed for every available job: in Minnesota, Ottawa, Calgary and Anaheim. The fact that Anaheim GM Bob Murray re-hired him after the way it had ended in 2011, the circus he’d left in Toronto, tells you that he was not hiring the same person who had lost those jobs.
“You’re a different person,” said Carlyle, 60. “I would say I am softer now, not as hard-line. I know I have made mistakes, and I have things I would change. And I know I won’t let that happen here, what happened in my Toronto situation.
“And this was part of the interview process. This organization has to evolve. The things we did seven, five, three years ago are not the same things we’re going to do today. From ownership, through the coaching staff, right through to the players. The game is played differently now.”
Anaheim’s playoff exit last spring was a familiar one, losing a Game 7 at home to Nashville. For a Western powerhouse, the fact they’ve made it to the Conference Final just once since ’07 — and never to the Cup Final — chafes at Ducks management, who have handed Carlyle this project with folded arms and tapping feet.
The only current Ducks players who have ever played for Carlyle are Getzlaf, Perry, Andrew Cogliano, plus Bieksa and Ryan Kesler when they were in AHL Manitoba under Carlyle. This time around, it’s going to be a buckled down game plan meant to win, not to entertain.
“This team is going to have to play more of a possession game. It won’t be a rush team. It will be a cycle team. This team is built for that,” said Carlyle, who knows his veterans well. “They want structure. They want accountability.
“Now we have to live it.”
