So, imagine this scenario.
At age 52, you get your first chance to lead an NHL team as a head coach. It’s something you’ve been dreaming about your entire life, and you want to do everything you can to make sure you excel at the job.
There has to be an undeniable impulse to prove your worth by winning quickly, but you also know the teams built for success are not fly-by-night organizations. Learning how to win is a process; you don’t flip a switch and become one of the best teams in the league overnight. And you have to take every step to inform the journey along the way.
So it would be easy for Pascal Vincent to want to skip steps two and three to get to step four. He's in a job he’s coveted for a long time, and the best way to keep it is to win right off the bat and keep on going from there.
And yet, deep down at heart, he’s a process guy. He knows to sustain success, you have to build a winning culture, and one of the biggest pieces of that is having to go through the ups and downs to get there.
“If I wanted to hit the fast-forward button, we would be missing a few steps along the way,” he said Tuesday. “It’s going to take some time. It’s a culture improvement. I don’t want to say change, but we want to improve on the culture. We want to get to a point where those winning habits, they are just habits. …
“We’re going to get there, but it’s a process and it takes time – even more so with a young team. And it’s OK to face adversity. It’s not about the adversity, it’s what we do with it.”
As he said, Vincent knows that what he’s trying to build is going to take some steps, which is one reason he’s very clearly set expectations for the Blue Jackets from the get-go, from hard practices to making difficult roster decisions.
It’s not personal, but like the winningest coach in franchise history, John Tortorella, Vincent believes growth comes from handling difficult situations head-on and then applying that newly gained experience to take on the next challenge.
The most recent example of this came Monday after the Blue Jackets lost 5-3 in Dallas on Monday night to fall to 3-4-2 on the season. It wasn’t the worst performance you’ve ever seen, as Columbus entered the third period against one of the hottest teams in the NHL with a chance to win in a 2-2 game, but the consistency in effort was not what Vincent expects from every member of his squad.
As a result, the Jackets were put to work Tuesday afternoon in Nationwide Arena. Vincent acknowledged he had wanted to give his team the day off, but the performance Monday meant there would be no free pass. The last 15 minutes of the 45-minute practice were spent in battle and skating drills, with players in a rotation going one-on-one to fight for pucks before skating laps at the whistle. A look at players slumped in their stalls afterward said it all.
“Today, we had to practice because of the performance last night,” Vincent said. “It’s not everyone. Some guys worked their (tail) off last night. They did. And those guys are paying the price. We’re going to celebrate as a team, we’re going to be in the trenches as a team, we’re going to have fun as a team, we’re going to cry as a team, we’re going to be (upset) as a team. Because we’re a team, and that’s what we need.
“So today, a lot of guys paid the price for some individuals. And I’m not saying the guys that didn’t work hard enough last night, that’s what we see consistently. But we can’t afford it just once in a while.”
Wednesday, though, was a different story. As a big believer in turning the page to the next thing, Vincent wasn’t going to put the Jackets through another meat grinder. Coming off the team’s Tuesday night Halloween party, spirits were much higher, and the practice had a much different vibe.
“Yesterday, we did our laundry together,” Vincent said. “We said what we had to say, and it was honest and to the point, and today, it’s a new day. … The feel is different today. They’re having fun, they’re smiling. That’s what we want. We don’t want to live in the past; we want to learn from it.”
It’s all part of the process, one Damon Severson watched in New Jersey. He was on a Devils team that broke a four-year playoff drought last year and now thinks it can contend for a Stanley Cup, and he’s helping that process work itself out again here in Columbus.
"It's a hard league,” Severson said. “Everybody's trying to win, and it takes a lot to win in this league. I've been through a lot of tough years, but last year is one where we really buckled down. Now we're trying to kind of pattern that formula in Columbus here.”
Roslovic, Bemstrom Step Up
I think sometimes we all fall into the trap.
We make a decision about a person and decide that’s all they are, forgetting about the human capacity to improve or adapt. It’s a complicated world, so it’s easy to see categorize things in black and white, without shades of gray.
It's also the wrong way to go about things.
“Too often, we put a stamp on somebody and we put an identity on somebody,” Vincent said. “We’re all guilty of that, all of us. … And that’s wrong.”
It’s a particularly bad trait to have if you’re evaluating or coaching hockey talent. There are so many factors that go into how a player performs on a given day, or even for weeks or months at a time, and one must always consider what can be done differently to help an elite athlete reach his potential.
And if there are two players on the Blue Jackets who have been most frustrating to fans the past two years, you’d probably say they’re Jack Roslovic and Emil Bemstrom.
Bemstrom lit up the Swedish league as its top goal scorer at just 19 years old in 2018-19 and came to Columbus with the thought he could be a game-breaking offensive player. Roslovic was believed to potentially be the breakout piece of the Patrik Laine/Pierre-Luc Dubois trade, the Columbus kid with a ton of talent who could put it together in his hometown.
While both have certainly had excellent moments the past few seasons, the general feeling among the fan base was potential that existed for each had not been reached.
So far this season, it’s been a different story. Both were healthy scratches early in the season but since then have become among the most productive players on the squad, with Bemstrom sitting tied for second on the team with three goals and Roslovic leading the forwards with six points.
It just goes to show you what can happen when things like playing style, confidence and luck line up for a player – and if you keep working to help them reach their potential as well.
“They showed up in camp, they were kind of in a bubble position,” Vincent said. “And they’ve shown us so far that they can be good players. We know their potential, but potential is like, you can't grab it. But once they start doing actions over and over and over, it creates consistency, it creates trust.
“Yeah, the potential was there, but we didn’t see it yet. Now we’re seeing it more consistently. And I think the perception – if they keep doing it, perception becomes reality.”
So what has changed for each? For Roslovic, a move to the wing appears to have helped as it takes advantage of his speed and his work along the wall, and he’s consistently created scoring chances all season with his ability to skate and win battles. It’s what Vincent saw in the youngster when he was coaching Roslovic in the minor leagues back in Winnipeg, who drafted the forward in the first round of the 2015 draft.
"Just trying to bring energy and like you said, bring pace, bring speed, skill,” Roslovic said recently of his improved game.
For Bemstrom, the simple answer might be confidence. He’s always been a fundamentally sound player and has boasted solid defensive numbers in his career, but that final piece of finishing and making offensive plays was hit or miss. This season, seeing three power-play goals go in the net in the early going has made him feel like a different player.
"Yeah, I feel pretty confident out there,” Bemstrom said. “I think I've been doing this this whole season so far. So I don't know what's the difference, but it just feels good right now and I just gotta keep doing what I'm doing.
What’s In A Lineup?
Through nine games, the Blue Jackets have played 16 forwards, four more than the minimum of 12 that teams skate in each game.
Two of them are no longer on the roster, as both Eric Robinson and Liam Foudy were placed on waivers (Robinson cleared and is in Cleveland, while Foudy was claimed by Nashville). That doesn’t include Yegor Chinakhov, who began the season with an injury and was just sent to Cleveland – where he has three goals in three games – after finishing his rehab.
It’s been a bit of a revolving door, and it’s led to such players as Bemstrom, Roslovic, Kirill Marchenko and Kent Johnson to be healthy scratches at times. The reality, though, is the Blue Jackets have a glut of forwards at the moment, as they’re relatively healthy (other than Patrik Laine) and more than 12 players probably deserve to be dressed on a given night. And it says a lot about the team’s depth that such players as Robinson and Chinakhov have returned to Cleveland rather than stick on the main roster.
Vincent has admitted there’s tough decisions each night, but he does have a plan on how he and the coaching staff will attack them.
“The league rule says 20 players,” Vincent said Saturday. “We had a good chat with our forwards today. It’s crystal clear. We can only dress 12, so we’re going to make some hard decisions. We told them this morning that it’s all about performance. It’s the NHL. It’s not great for some of them because sometimes we are going to make decisions that they don’t deserve to sit out.
“But we’re healthy. We have guys in the American League that are pushing. We have guys that are producing right now, so we met with all of them, and it’s going to be about practice habits and gym habits and being a good teammate and performance in the game.”
For example, today, Vincent acknowledged that Mathieu Olivier doesn’t deserve to be a healthy scratch against Tampa Bay, but he is expected to be. That’s because another guy who didn’t necessarily deserve to be out – Marchenko – goes back in.
It’s a balancing act, and there will be some unhappy players at times, something Vincent will keep an eye on.
"We have to make decisions here, and that's the position we're in,” he said after morning skate. “It's not great for Olivier right now, but it's a good problem for the organization. We want to stay in that position where we have to make decisions and it's gonna be tough on us, because if it's not hard on us, then we have bigger issues."
