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 the importance of coaches keeping their teams focused approaching the Christmas break.
Heading toward the Christmas break, the most important thing for a coach is to make sure everyone is ready when the puck drops.
Everything that is going on around it, as far as there being family in town, who is planning the Christmas party, when is the Santa Claus party for the kids? All those things that are going on can't be a distraction.
You also have to be mindful of the roster freeze coming up, because it always seems with every team there are rumors out there as to who is getting traded. The worst possible thing would be to have someone traded at this time of year.
So as a coach, you're trying to balance all that and communicate with your team. You spend a lot of time communicating with your captain and your leadership group to find out what is going on. You don't want to stop anyone from doing anything, but you don't want to be surprised either.
So if you know about things coming up, you can prepare for them and have the right things in place for what you need to do. So communicating with your core group and your leadership group, and all the players individually as well, is important.
You also are communicating with your medical staff in terms of who needs certain things because these points in the standings are really important at this time of year and there are a lot of teams out there who really need them.
The standings are really close. There are only maybe eight teams in the League who you would say are eliminated from contention for the Stanley Cup Playoffs right now after getting past U.S. Thanksgiving. So there’s a lot going on. There are eight teams on each side that still are in the wild card hunt and those are all important points that teams are playing for.
As a coach you're really trying to find a way to have your team prepared and give them an edge going into every game and every period of play, and be sure you have them prepared the right way and they're ready to go out and do what they have to do.
Everybody can't wait until the break, but you have to wait for the break.
As a coach, you want to get to the break too because you would like to have a couple of days off. But at the same time, if you as a coach have your team playing at a good level, you can't take the two weeks off before the break.
You have to make sure you're in there preparing every day as a team, and sometimes you have to bring the hammer down on some players.
Having the team ready to play is the coach's responsibility. Once the puck drops, then it's in the players' hands for the most part. As a coach you have to make sure you have the right people on the ice.
A coach's job is to make sure you have the information you need and you're prepared, so you can't be lagging in either. If you're expecting the players not to be lagging, then you can't be lagging either in your preparation.
There is a lot of responsibility on the assistant coaches as well to make sure that's not going on and everybody is doing the things they need to do.
Players still have to have their time in the gym, they have to have their time in the video room. You can't skirt any of the things that have made you successful to this point. You have to almost over-focus on it and really make sure you are really nagging the players about getting this stuff done so they are ready for the games.
It can be a tough time of year for a coach.
As a coach, we all know that we have a certain amount of shelf life, and when it comes to being let go there are reasons for it. It's not always technically your fault, but it's easier to get rid of one person instead of 21 players, that sort of thing.
The coach of a team that is struggling is working on trying to find solutions. He's trying to solve problems. There has to be some kind of a key where there is a key player or a key adjustment in the system, something that you're missing, something that you're not seeing.
You really have to talk and put some pressure on your staff, or go outside of your staff even, to people that are in your circle that you trust and ask them what they see.
I was always trying to search to try and find out from anybody what they thought about our team and see if I agree with them or not and see if I can make that adjustment. It's a never ending search to find that consistency in your game when your team is inconsistent.
On the other hand, you also have to give them the opportunity to be the team that they are and not constantly be making adjustments every game and every period.
You have to find the right way for your team to play and stick to it. Most times that's the solution, to be adamant about the fact you have to play a certain way and tell everyone the way we're going to do things and that we all have to do it together and that's how we’re going to have to get out of this.
You want to try to avoid making multiple changes all the time, because that doesn't breed confidence; instead it breeds insecurity. Yes, your are trying to find combinations that work, but players need to play together consistently, which is how you are going to learn to play with each other, and not by playing with four different players every other game.
