The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2024-25 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.
In this edition, Paul MacLean, former coach of the Ottawa Senators and assistant with the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim, Detroit Red Wings, Columbus Blue Jackets and Toronto Maple Leafs, discusses how to get a team refocused for the stretch drive of the NHL season following the 4 Nations Face-Off.
Anytime you play for your country, it brings out so much patriotism and a willing to do whatever it takes, and you do whatever you are asked to do.
When it comes to playing for the national team and your country, everybody does just what they're asked and there's no complaint. There's no argument. There's no discussion about, "What I do and what I don't do. I want to play. If you want me to play goalie, I'll be goalie, I'll fill the water bottles." That's true for all those teams, that once you play for your country, it's a little bit different than playing for your city.
When you get players back, wherever you are, you have to spend the time with them, discuss it with them, let them wind down and try to get it out of their system as soon as you can by talking to them, because everyone is going to be talking to them about it.
I try to get them on to the next page and that might take some time. Everybody is going to be different but the most important thing for those players returning right now, if they're not injured, that's great news. If they're injured, you have to deal with that and it's going to leave you shorthanded. You might not have them for a game or two.
I know in Detroit we missed two or three of our Swedes because they ended up going back to Stockholm to celebrate the Olympic gold medal in 2006, which was great, so we played a couple of games without the guys on the Swedish team. Those are things you have to do. You have to make sure when those guys come back, they get an opportunity to get some rest. That means moving forward with a few practice days off and a few other days off, so they get recuperated.
I think that the most important thing players get out of these types of events is confidence. You just get confidence knowing that you can play in that circumstance, and you're asked to play maybe a different role than you have with your regular team. That opens your eyes to the game a little differently. It gives you a little more respect for your teammate that maybe has to do that job on your team.
I think it just opens your eyes and opens your mind as a player and a coach for that matter. You're around some of the best people all the time and you watch their habits.
You read about how everybody is amazed with Sidney Crosby and his day-to-day things and how he does it. It's not easy being good, it's not an easy thing to be the best, it's really hard. It's something you have to work on every day. Once you're actually there and sitting in the room, you can measure yourself. "What's this guy doing that I'm not doing and what can I steal from them? Can I get something that works for me and make me a better player?"
The answer for that is, "For sure."
Even Crosby is taking something from somebody, because that's the way he is. He's always trying to find out information and trying to make himself better.
When you go into those situations as a player and a coach, you're trying to absorb as much as you possibly can and learn how to be a better player, how to be a better you. You can't become that other player, but you can take some of the things that he does that maybe you don't do as well and that decides those things in your own practice schemes moving forward.
That's going to make you a better player. A better you will be a better player. That's a big opportunity to give players a chance to play for their country, be around the best players in the game and learn what makes them the best players.
For the players who didn't play in the tournament, when they first come back, you skate them, because their toes are full of sand wherever they went, but today's athlete, they didn't go away for 10 days and not do anything. That's a rarity now. I think most of the players would have done something, not necessarily a structured practice or anything, but they would have done something. They're in such good physical shape that if you're gone for 7-10 days, you're not falling way down below level of when you left.
It's also about getting your mind right. If you're a team at the top of the division you're looking to get off to a good start, so you want to get up there and get ready. If you're in the middle, you really want to get off to a good start and work on your game and execute the details of your game, the face-off plays, defensive, offensive and neutral zone play, defensive coverage and your forecheck.
It's like a training camp. You have three-day window and if you look at your schedule, you're not going to have three days of practice from now until the end of the season. That was the time to work on whatever you needed to work on, to get some kinks out and make sure that players understand what you're looking for moving forward.
To me, what's more important than the physical was the mental break. If you're sitting on the beach with sand in your toes, you're not thinking about the forecheck and what you have to do and where you need to put your stick. The details of the game are so important in the NHL now that it's hard on the brain. It's really hard on the player and the lower you are in the lineup the harder it is, because you have to work that much harder to be there and to stay there.
The mental break, I think, is more important than the physical break, because the physical part of it, you can just do, but the mental part of it, is important to have that break. Now you have to get back and get your head on straight and use the time that you had to analyze your game possibly and come up with things that will make you better so that the coach keeps putting me on the ice.
Self-evaluation is important. Are you the player the coach said he needs? The sooner you become that player the more you're going to get on the ice and the more opportunity you're going to get. There's a lot of soul searching that I think would go on with the players and when you come back, you want to make sure you're up and running and get off to a good start.
