'Excellence is a Habit': Getting to Know New Ducks Coach Greg Cronin

Nearly two decades later, former NHLer turned broadcaster Joey Vitale stills remembers the phone call that would change his life.

Then a 19-year-old St. Louis kid looking to land a Division I hockey scholarship, Vitale had just completed his first season in the United States Hockey League (USHL) and had some options as to where he would continue his blossoming hockey career.

That's when the new head coach of the Northeastern University Huskies, a man named Greg Cronin, called.

"Northeastern? Does he mean Northwestern?," Vitale remembers thinking in the moment, still completely unaware of the small, private university smack in the middle of Boston that he would come to call home. "I had to go look up where the hell Northeastern was! I had no idea."

It's hard to fault Vitale for his reaction. At the time, Northeastern was far from the college hockey power it has become today. The Huskies, as part of the NCAA's Hockey East - widely considered the best conference in the sport - had reached double-digit wins just three times in the past decade and claimed just 20 combined victories across the prior three seasons.

Then Cronin showed up.

Over the next four years, helped by his first recruit and eventual two-year captain Vitale, Cronin completely revitalized the Northeastern program, going from a three-win season in his debut 2005-06 campaign to one of the best teams in the country and Northeastern's first NCAA Tournament berth in 15 years.

"You look at Northeastern now and it's a full-blown juggernaut," Vitale beamed proudly. "And truthfully, every person you talk to there will tell you the same thing: It all really started with Greg.

"He built the team from the ground up, from the culture on up."

To Cronin, culture touches every aspect of your hockey operation, and it starts with an attention to detail in practice. Things as small as finishing the drill through the end line or keeping your stick on the puck through a check aren't just helpful habits to Cronin, they're requirements.

So when Vitale, who never met a body check he didn't like, couldn't seem to keep his stick on the ice with the regularity his coach wanted, he found out the hard way just how important it was to Cronin that he pays attention to the details in the form of two five-pound weights.

"I come into practice after class and I have these two plates taped to the bottom of stick," Vitale recalled through a big laugh. "Right above the blade. So I went to ask what was going on and he said, 'You keep skating around with your stick in the air.' So I had to use it the whole practice, 10 pounds just taped above my blade. I couldn't even pass! But I think that was the point.

"He said, if you're not going to listen to me, we'll find a different way."

An aggressive, physical player by nature, Vitale thrived within the structure, with an intensity and passion that Cronin instilled throughout his program. Vitale went on to have a productive professional career, spending five seasons in the NHL and appearing in 23 Stanley Cup Playoff games. And he's 100 percent convinced none of it would have happened without Cronin.

"He told me early, 'Joe, you can play in the NHL and I promise you, if you come underneath me, I'm going to make you a better college player, but my goal for you is to be ready to be a professional by the time you're done,'" Vitale said. "And I remember when we lost my senior year, I went right to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (Penguins AHL affiliate) and in the first pregame speech, I knew right away that this is what I've been hearing for the last four years. The details of the game, the polishing of the game and the systems, I knew to a T. So I stepped in that first game and I don't think I was a healthy scratch at all my first year.

"Without a doubt, that transition was seamless because of him."

But that's not just because of Cronin's on-ice genius, instead more about the character of the man Vitale grew to know off it. When Vitale's grades slipped his senior year while he focused on his final collegiate hockey season, it was Cronin who talked with the school counselor to get his pupil back on track.

There were the times where Cronin took his team into underprivileged areas of Boston to give back to their community, or when he sent his players on a ridiculous scavenger hunt around the city, teaching them to learn, love and respect their surroundings.

"He's helped me more as a father and a husband than any coach I've ever had," Vitale said. "He taught me that excellence is not a spur of the moment thing. It's a habit...If you're going to be excellent in one area of your life, you're going to be excellent in all the areas of your life. But if you're a slop in one area, that's going to filter over into all of the other ones."

So ask Vitale, or any of the people who know Cronin well and they'll all tell you the same thing: The recently named 11th head coach in Ducks history and his new boss, GM Pat Verbeek, are two men cut from the same cloth.

"While the game has become more polished and fine, you never forget that, at the foundational level, what makes a team successful is having that grit, heart and overall resistance," Vitale said. "I think that's where Verbeek and Cronin are going to complement each other well. You can work on X's and O's as you improve the power play and those are all things to work on, but the game is still the game...Which player wants it more? Which team wants it more?

"Their internal competitiveness is going to be great for the players."

Tabbed as the behind-the-bench architect of Anaheim's rebuild, Cronin fit Verbeek's vision of a teacher first and coach second.

"What I really like about Greg is he has old school principles and new school methods of teaching," Verbeek said. "I think it's a great combination."

"What impressed me the most, and what separated Greg from the rest (of the candidates) were the intricate details he could show in a step-by-step process of the fundamentals. As a former player, I would crave that...The teaching part put him over the top."

Video: Ducks Head Coach Greg Cronin Introductory Presser

In terms of developing young talent, it's hard to match Cronin's resume. The Boston native, with an unmistakable accent to match, has guided countless players to the next step of their hockey journey. In the 1990s he made stops at Colorado College and the University of Maine, before leaving his post at the latter to co-found the United States National Team Development program, now a developmental powerhouse with nearly 400 NHL Draft picks to its name.

"One of the things we did with the U.S. National Program when we started was looking at different models," Cronin said. "We had actually identified from the ages of 13 to 15, that's when the motor skills start to ripen up and then after that, the margin for growth gets minimized as players grow.

"So I've always had that timeline in my head. What can you do with 19-, 20-, 21- and 22-year-olds? Pat and I are already talking about that a lot."

Since then, he's served under former Ducks Stanley Cup champion coach Randy Carlyle in Toronto, helping the Leafs return to the playoffs in 2014, and made a second stop on Long Island with the New York Islanders, where he coached Ducks forward Ryan Strome. In 2017, he took over as the first bench boss for the Colorado Eagles, the Avalanche's AHL affiliate with whom he spent the last five seasons.

In New York, under the Isles' system of player development, Cronin was tasked with overseeing the growth of a select few players on the team, one of those being Strome. It was then that the two developed a close bond that remained long after they parted ways.

"He's all business and very black and white in the way he approaches life and the way he conducts being a coach," Strome said. "You may not like what he says and you may agree to disagree, but you know you're always going to hear an honest assessment. From a coach, that is a great quality. He likes to make guys uncomfortable, push them and challenge them. That's what we need."

Cronin will be tasked with developing an exciting young core in Anaheim, including forward Trevor Zegras, Troy Terry and Mason McTavish, plus defensemen Jamie Drysdale, Jackson Lacombe and a stocked prospect pool soon on its way, but also re-engaging a group of veterans eager to overcome a frustrating season. The coach pointed to Strome, Cam Fowler, Adam Henrique and Jakob Silfverberg as the type of veterans he will lean on to deliver the message.

"I'm really excited for our veteran players," Verbeek said. "I think he's going to reinvigorate them and give them a brand-new perspective for the game moving forward."

"It's a bit of a process," Strome added. "I don't think it's going to be from day one, all of a sudden you're a playoff contender. But I think he will instill the habits that all the good teams left in the playoffs have. He preaches work ethic, compete level, structure and selflessness for the team. If you don't have that foundation, no matter how skilled you are, no matter how good your young guys and veterans are, you're not going to go anywhere. Those are the things we have to build from the ground up."