Now that Mike Babcock has filled his Team Canada coaching staff with four NHL head coaches, Team North America will have to fill its staff as well. Look for an announcement on that early next week.
It’s expected that North America general managers Stan Bowman and Peter Chiarelli will meet in Chicago this Sunday, when Chiarelli’s Edmonton Oilers visit Bowman’s Blackhawks.
They’ll talk players — St. Louis defenceman Colton Parayko has barged into the conversation — and finalize their coaching staff for the U-24 team under head coach Todd McLellan.
It’s a lock that Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper, who many thought would get the head job, will be on the staff. Same with McLellan’s long-time right hand man Jay Woodcroft, an assistant in both San Jose and now Edmonton.
The other spots? Undoubtedly McLellan will have his pick of the rest of the NHL head coaches, after Barry Trotz (Washington), Claude Julien (Boston), Joel Quenneville (Chicago) and Bill Peters (Carolina) all signed on to work under Babcock for Canada.
Think coaches who work well with young players, like Dave Tippett this season in Arizona, ahead of an Alain Vigneault, an excellent coach but a guy who has always been slow to trust younger players.
One dynamic that’s popped up: The coaches asked to join Team Canada may have to miss as much as two weeks of their club’s training camp, assuming Canada plays in the best-of-three final on Sept. 27, 29 and Oct. 1. That’s a huge chunk of training camp entrusted to a coach’s assistants back home.
With the North American team, let’s face it: if they make one of the two single elimination semi-finals (Sept. 24 and 25), it will be a good tournament. That means missing only a week of camp, and if the U24s don’t make the playoff round the coaches will be back running their own teams’ NHL training camps from Day 1.
Players, meanwhile, will get some time off at the start of camp. After playing in the World Cup they won’t need as many preseason games as usual.
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So Long Northlands Coliseum
Eastern teams coming through Rexall Place this fall are doing so for the final time — assuming Edmonton doesn’t advance to the Stanley Cup final — with the Oilers set to move into their new rink for next season.
There will be an old style organ in the new rink — the team just hasn’t decided if it will be like the one in Chicago, or a smaller version.
Meanwhile, as the Oilers celebrate the history-laden rink on the fair grounds in Edmonton, people like Pittsburgh GM Jim Rutherford have memories of their own.
“There was a four-goal performance from Gretzky in there,” chuckled Rutherford, a NHL goalie for 13 seasons from 1970-83.
What does he remember from that night? “Probably what most goalies remember,” he recalls. Fishing the puck out of his net.
The Islanders have moved out of their old rink at Uniondale, and Detroit will move out of Joe Louis Arena in a couple of years when the new rink is built closer to the baseball and football stadiums in Motown. All the old joints are closing down, and with them go the memories.
Rutherford played his first NHL game in the old Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, and his final one in the Boston Garden.
“Talk about ice surfaces, they both had the real shallow corners,” he said. “I think what you miss about the old buildings is that, you don’t necessarily have the same home ice advantage. The ice surfaces — especially the corners, which were cut differently in different places — became an advantage. In the new buildings, basically, the ice surfaces are all the same.”
Gone are the stories of Encil (Porky) Palmer, the longtime Buffalo Sabres trainer in the days of the old Aud. He would stand at the Zamboni gate, which was just to the side of the visitors’ net for two periods, and when a Sabres player would ring the puck around the boards, Palmer would give the door a well-timed kick, sending the puck right out into the slot. Every now and again he’d hit an onrushing Sabre right on the tape for a goal, or so the legend goes.
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The Grate Bob Hartley
No quotes on this one, but the whispers out of Calgary are starting: head coach Bob Hartley is wearing on his players.
This is one of those situations that reminds of the old quote from baseball manager Leo Durocher, who knew that a third of his players liked him, a third couldn’t stand him, and the other third was undecided.
“The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided,” he explained.
Nobody was complaining about Hartley in Calgary last season, when the Flames were having that magical season that defied everyone’s expectations. Now things aren’t going so well, and the coach suddenly got dumb?
Hartley can be a tough coach. Ask former Colorado tough guy Scott Parker, who felt used and abused by Hartley in Denver.
“He was always just degrading me. Not to be a (wimp), but he was a bully,” Parker once told the Denver Post. “And he could be because he was in a position of authority. What was I supposed to do as a rookie? Go tell him ‘(expletive) you’? I was just a chess piece to him.”
Hartley defended himself: “There’s not a player I’ve coached that I didn’t try to make better. I’ve never bullied anyone,” he said. “I can be a demanding coach. But I want the best for my players. For me, that’s the end of the story.”
It’s a tough gig being an NHL coach. When you win, players appreciate being pushed to play their best.
When you push just as hard but the team loses? Ask Bruce Boudreau in Anaheim. He’s going through it right now.
Or Patrick Roy in Colorado? He’s off to a 4-8-1 start after a disappointing season last year. That makes for a hot coaching seat in Denver.
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Sid Knows All
Before he went down with that broken collarbone, I asked Connor McDavid when he first met Sidney Crosby.
“I was just 15,” McDavid said. “I’m sure he doesn’t even remember, he does so many of those.”
“I remember,” said Crosby this week, without an ounce of hesitation. “Had a picture with him and Mario (Lemieux). He came into the gym, we walked around a little bit… I remember. I’d heard about him.”
Remember, Crosby was McDavid 10 years ago, the face of hockey coming out of the lost season of 2004-05. He’s had the same pressures for the past decade and has handled them with grace. As it turns out, that’s the foremost quality of Crosby’s that McDavid hopes he can emulate.
“You never hear anything bad about him. You never see him doing anything wrong. Everyone makes mistakes, but for some reason he just seems to not (make any),” McDavid said. “He’s the perfect role model for someone like me who has been brought up in this media crazy world these days, social media and whatnot.”
Before McDavid was hurt, Crosby marveled at his game. “His ability to buy time,” he said. “To know the difference between that time when you really need to buy some time, or when you should open it up. He’s got the speed, and he can recognize when he’s got a guy flat-footed and can expose him. And he’s also got the awareness to say, ‘There’s not much going on here. I need to slow up and wait for some help.’”
Unfortunately, Friday’s McDavid-Crosby matchup isn’t the only one that will be put off by this injury. Edmonton plays its only other game against the Penguins on Nov. 28 In Pittsburgh.
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Kane and Stable
Patrick Kane might be off the hook as far as a Grand Jury investigation goes. However, the 21-year-old female complainant could still file a civil lawsuit seeking monetary damages from Kane.
The same way Ron Goldman’s family did against O.J. Simpson’s case, where they and Nicole Brown Simpson’s family were awarded $33.5 million by a judge. (Sadly, Simpson is out of money, in jail, and the families have reportedly seen next to no compensation.)
Also still on trial is Kane’s reputation. You can rightfully say that Kane deserves a presumption of innocence after the D.A. refused to go ahead with the case, but inside the Blackhawks organization they’re asking themselves: “Why do these things never happen to Jonathan Toews, or any of our guys for that matter, but Kane keeps finding trouble?”
I don’t see Kane being traded. But any currency he’s built up for straightening up his party lifestyle is out the window inside the United Center.
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Suckin’ It Up
One more McDavid note: People around hockey are talking about how an 18-year-old kid didn’t even stay down long enough for a trainer to hop the boards, despite a snapped clavicle Tuesday night.
“He wasn’t whining,” Rutherford noted. “He got up, and actually picked up his stick, then he went and sat on the bench. If that doesn’t tell you something about a guy, aside from his ability… That was so impressive.”
McDavid took the injury the way a rugby player would, staying on the Oilers bench until the intermission.
Can you imagine if McDavid were a striker for Arsenal? “He’s still be out there rolling around,” a bystander said 48 hours later.
