In a follow-up to his thoughts on the controversial offside call on the Colorado Avalanche’s Gabriel Landeskog and how it could’ve been prevented from earlier this week, Don Cherry shared more hockey-bench door etiquette Saturday night.
Teeing up his segment with shots of the Landeskog play, Cherry then implored up-and-coming hockey coaches to assert their power on the bench and insure there’s a designated door-opener.
“The big thing for me for you young coaches out there, when you’re on the bench, you’re the captain, you’re the king. That’s your bench. The general manager can’t do anything, you’re the king,” Cherry said during the first intermission of Game 1 between the San Jose Sharks and St. Louis Blues. “When I used to coach I always had someone opening the door.”
The reason why Cherry is so insistent about having a designated door-opener on the bench is because, as he cited, it has a real effect on winning and losing.
“He hurries because he sees the door [opening] and if he doesn’t hurry this goal doesn’t count and they’re not here now,” said Cherry as video of Blues forward Ryan O’Reilly hustling off the ice in St. Louis’ series with the Dallas Stars plays. “When you’re getting off the ice you’ve gotta get off the ice fast and you’ve gotta have that door ready.”
To Cherry’s point, on the play shown, the Blues had a man at the ready keeping the door open so O’Reilly doesn’t have to fidget with a lock to get off – like what Landeskog had to do – and just as he did, Oskar Sundqvist managed to score a goal that couldn’t get called offside.
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