Beat the Opponent, Not the Fans

It’s hard to say that John Tortorella cost the Rangers their season - up to and including Game 4 of the first round he seemed to be the spark that ignited their late season run – but he made several errors during the last three games of the series. It was still up to the Capitals to claim the thin sliver of opportunity that they had been presented, which they did.

Early in the series, Tortorella seemed to focus on the officials and Sean Avery instead of New York’s outstanding play and Washington’s insecure goaltending situation. Whilst attempting to inspire his team late in Game 5, he pulled Henrik Lundqvist and it seemed to take the goalie another four periods to regain his form. Lastly, he lost his composure and chose to shine the spotlight on himself when he threw a water bottle into the stands and lunged at a spectator with a hockey stick. Consequently, he was not present to lead the team during the Game 7 (actually Game 6 which was held at Madison Square Gardens) because he was suspended.

Tortorella will always be a coach with negative characteristics that correspond to his positive traits. This year, his fiery personality proved to be a stark contrast to the cool and calculated demeanor of previous coach Tom Renney, inspiring the Blueshirts. Objectively, the encouragement of Bruce Boudreau better motivated the Caps, who won the final three games of the series and moved on to the next round.

"This Is Russia”

Dave King wrote King of Russia during the 2004-05 season when he coached Metallurg Magnitogorsk of the Russian Super League. The diary contrasts the professional hockey systems in Russia and North America and records observations about daily life in Russia. In post-Communist Russia, the country is modernizing from Moscow outwards but it is not quite there. Despite all best intentions, transportation and distributions quandaries occasionally arise and corruption remains a problem. King encounters some bizarre situations where it is best not to ask questions because “this is Russia.” Unfortunately, King is also able to chronicle how the Russian economy is distilling into two classes: the very rich and the destitute (a problem occurring in other cities and countries, including Toronto).

King often admires the work ethic of players at all levels of the club program (echoing Gladwell’s 10,000 horus theory) and the Russian/Soviet ability to mesh different sport tactics and training methods together in order to better their teams (Lloyd Percival’s The Hockey Handbook receives a shout-out). Russian players work on physical conditioning (especially quadriceps muscles) from a very young age and skill is developed over thousands of repetitions. An hour practice might be divided into only three drills. Despite this work ethic, King finds that the team finally hits its stride after Russians with N.H.L. experience model the way and lead by example on the ice.

Questions abound at first about how the Canadian will survive in the Super League but King successfully introduces North American ideas such as power-plays and penalty killing systems and line match-ups. Even in the K-League there is not a single answer to every problem.

Nurturing Nature

Last week, during a Cleveland win over San Antonio, Mike Brown and Gregg Popovich left three timeouts each on the table. Confident in the ability of veteran players to execute quality possessions, the coaches allowed the play to flow back and forth. The Spurs lost 90-88 but Manu Ginobli released a steady, open, and transition jumper from the foul line as time expired.

After a 6-5 shootout win over Pittsburgh, Bruce Boudreau commented that one of the first moves that he became Washington coach was to make the Capitals a four-line team. Rather than over-emphasize match-ups - dumping the puck to initiate line changes, losing puck possession while focusing on the other team - Boudreau felt that all eighteen skaters should know how to play against everyone and understand that the coaches believe in their abilities

Subtle coaching strategies may pay dividends when motivating apprehensive players like Andrea Bargnani, who according to Sam Mitchell is still learning his position and probably according to Leo Rautins needs to learn that he can succeed in the Association. After scouting, drafting, or recruiting nature, the trick is to nurture a Caron Butler, not destroy a Kwame Brown.

According to the Harvard Business Review, the two most important managerial behaviours are enabling people to move forward in their work and treating them decently as human beings. The latter was evidenced by the coincidence of ‘progress events’ with ‘interpersonal events’ whereas the former was driven by multiple factors. Good managers provide direct help and adequate resources and time, react to success and failures with a learning orientation, and set clear team goals.

Maybe Tom Coughlin’s sideline tirade towards New York kicker Lawrence Tynes was not an example of a learning orientation. But it didn’t bother him, unlike Michael Jordan’s legendary tirades towards Kwame Brown in Wizards practices, because of Tynes’ personal constitution and Coughlin’s awareness of this. The Toronto Raptors’ coaches should set clear goals and follow-up while players and peers monitor his mental attitude and provide personal support.

The Game

Put in uniform at six or seven, by the time a boy reaches the NHL, he is a veteran of close to 1,000 games-30-minute games, later 32-, then 45, finally 60-minute games, played more than : twice a week, more than seventy times a year between late September and late March. It is more games from a younger age, over a longer season than ever before. But it is less hockey than ever before. For, every time a twelve-year-old boy plays a 30-minute game, sharing the ice with teammates, he plays only about ten minutes. And ten minutes a game, anticipated and prepared for all day, traveled to and from, dressed and undressed for, means ten minutes of hockey a day, more than two days a week, more than seventy days a hockey season. And every day that a twelve-year-old plays only ten minutes, he doesn’t play two hours on a backyard rink, or longer on school or playground rinks during weekends and holidays.

It all has to do with the way we look at free time. Constantly preoccupied with time and keeping ourselves busy (we have come to answer the ritual question “How are you?” with what we apparently equate with good health, “Busy”), we treat non-school, non-sleeping or non-eating time, unbudgeted free time, with suspicion and no little fear. For, while it may offer opportunity to learn and do new things, we worry that the time we once spent reading, kicking a ball, or mindlessly coddling a puck might be used destructively, in front of TV, or “getting into trouble” in endless ways. So we organize free time, scheduling it into lessons - ballet, piano, French - into organizations, teams, and clubs, fragmenting it into impossible-to-be-boring segments, creating in ourselves a mental metabolism geared to moving on, making free time distinctly unfree.

It is in free time that the special player develops, not in the competitive expedience of games, in hour-long practices once a week, in mechanical devotion to packaged, processed, coaching manual, hockey-school skills. For while skills are necessary, setting out as they do the limits of anything, more is needed to transform those skills into something special. Mostly it is time unencumbered, unhurried, time of a different quality, more time, time to find wrong answers to find a few that are right; time to find your own right answers; time for skills to be practiced to set higher limits, to settle and assimilate and become fully and completely yours, to organize and combine with other skills comfortably and easily in some uniquely personal way, then to be set loose, trusted, to find new instinctive directions to take, to create.

But without such time a player is like a student cramming for exams. His skills are like answers memorized by his body, specific, limited to what is expected, random and separate, with no overviews to organize and bring them together. And for those times when more is demanded, when new unexpected circumstances come up, when answers are asked for things you’ve never learned, when you must intuit and piece together what you already know to find new answers, memorizing isn’t enough. It’s the difference between knowledge and understanding, between a super-achiever and a wise old man. And it’s the difference between a modern suburban player and a player like Lafleur.

For a special player has spent time with his game. On backyard rinks, in local arenas, in time alone and with others, time without short-cuts, he has seen many things, he has done many things, he has experienced the game. He understands it. There is scope and culture in his game. He is not a born player. What he has is not a gift, random and otherworldly, and unearned. There is surely something in his genetic make-up that allows him to be great, but just as surely there are others like him who fall short. He is, instead, a natural.

“Muscle memory” is a phrase physiologists sometimes use. It means that for many movements we make, our muscles move with no message from the brain telling them to move, that stored in the muscles is a learned capacity to move a certain way, and, given stimulus from the spinal cord, they move that way. We see a note on a sheet of music, our fingers move; no thought, no direction, and because one step of the transaction is eliminated - the information-message loop through the brain - we move faster as well.

When first learning a game, a player thinks through every step of what he’s doing, needing to direct his body the way he wants it to go. With practice, with repetition, movements get memorized, speeding up, growing surer, gradually becoming part of the muscle’s memory. The great player, having seen and done more things, more different and personal things, has in his muscles the memory of more notes, more combinations and patterns of notes, played in more different ways. Faced with a situation, his body responds. Faced with something more, something new, it finds an answer he didn’t know was there. He invents the game.

- Ken Dryden, The Game

North American athletes play far too often, which is the reason why other countries have closed the gap in international competition, whether on the ice or the hardwood. European basketball clubs practice twice daily, improving individual moves and shooting skills. Hockey clubs emphasize quickness and passing in extensive development programmes. Plus fitness.

United States and Canadian sports organizations devote excessive time to playing and traveling. As Dryden alluded, muscle memory falls by the wayside when seated in a car or on the bench. Why should a high school player go from league game to club tournament - barely playing - when he could practice on his own and receive one-on-one attention? Skilled coaches do their best work in small groups.

La joie de vivre, ou la joie de jouer, est trés importante. Ken Dryden mentioned this in 1980 and it has proven itself to be true repeatedly: in the 1988, 1998, 2004, and 2006 Olympics for starters, as Europeans and South Americans have entered the Association, as skilled post play is replaced by mere size and athleticism.

Fundamentals remain paramount. An athlete cannot succeed without outstanding performance factors and exceptional skills. A student-athlete cannot land a scholarship without grades. A country may have won in the past but they must continually improve the entire sport system to win in the future. After all, John Wooden was correct when he said that “it’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

I Wrote this While Watching House on DVD

The Trailer Park Boys Movie featured a major new character: Sonny, owner of the nearby Gentlemen’s Club. The Simpsons Movie introduced Russ Cargill of the Environmental Protection Agency, who appeared far too frequently. These prominent characters could have been replaced easily (Cyrus and Ten-Gallon Hat Man are two possibilities) and should have been excised from the films because they fell flat in their roles (whether furthering the plot or attempting to make a joke.)

When asked to explain his team’s recent success on the road (five points in three games), Alexei Kovalev said that, “On the road, [the Montreal Canadiens] seem to play more relaxed and kind of play the game with nothing to lose. When we come back home, we try to overdue things. We try to do a little bit extra because family is in the building, and friends and all of our fans.”

The Habs return to the Bell Centre on Thursday to play the Lighting, a team they recently defeated 5-2 in Tampa. What can the Canadiens do to ensure a win and avoid disappointment?

Sport is fundamentally simple: the body repeats a number of actions. It becomes more complicated when the mind interferes, building mountains out of molehills. Certainly, we wouldn’t enjoy the game at the highest levels if it was played like a 6:00am house league game but the trick lies in resisting the temptation to harm ourselves; the opponent proves more than eager to complete that task. Whether at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital or on the ice, one must focus on what one does best.

The Detroit Pistons would be foolish to abandon the Circle Play for the playoffs. Jamario Moon would be equally rash to think that he should match Ray Allen shot for shot. The University of Western Ontario seemed to run only one continuity set (baseline screens, deftly performed) to win Ryerson’s DeArmon Memorial Tournament.

Why do players and team want to make it more difficult for themselves? Everyone has the freedom to choose how they want to perform. It’s up to coaches to motivate players, creating needs and wants, so they perform optimally.

Guy Carbonneau, Montreal’s coach, should put his foot down (and make Kerry Price the number one goalie, Ken Dryden style) and make things simpler for his team, using video, practical examples in practice, or a frank talk. Kovalev’s comments are a cop-out, a mere excuse. If players truly feel that way, the coach isn’t doing his job.

Adversity and the Toronto Maple Leafs

For the third time in four seasons, Mats Sundin has returned to the Maple Leafs after a serious mid-season injury and questions arise regarding his influence on the team. Based on anecdotal evidence - the 2002 Playoffs and November 2006 - it seems as if the Leafs do worse when their captain dresses:

2002 Playoffs Arm Injury

Last Five Games Before the Injury (4/12 to 4/23):
Record: 4-1-0 (8 pts)
Points per Game: 1.60 ppg
Goals Scored per Game (for - against): 3.20 - 2.20
Shots on Goal per Game (for - against): 29.2 - 29.8
Power Play: 12.5% (3 - 24)
Mats Sundin Productivity: 2 G - 5 A - 7 Pts - +6 - 12 Shots

Mats Sundin’s Absence (4/24 to 5/16):
Record: 7-5-0 (14 pts)
Points per Game: 1.17 ppg
Goals Scored per Game (for - against): 2.83 - 2.75
Shots on Goal per Game (for - against): 28.8 - 28.4
Power Play: 21.5% (11 - 51)

Mats Sundin’s Return (5/19 to 5/28):
Record: 1-4-0 (2 pts)
Points per Game: 0.4 ppg
Goals Scored per Game (for - against): 0.80 - 1.80
Shots on Goal per Game (for - against): 26.8 - 25.4
Power Play: 15.0% (3 - 20)
Mats Sundin Productivity: 1 G - 3 A - 4 Pts - +1 - 13 Shots

2005 Eye Injury

Injury Occurred During Season Opener (10/05):
Record: 0-0-1 (1 pt)
Points per Game: 1.00 ppg
Goals Scored per Game (for - against): 2.00 - 2.00
Shots on Goal per Game (for - against): 25.0 - 23.0
Power Play: 11.1% (1 - 11)
Mats Sundin Productivity: 2:53 minutes of ice time

Mats Sundin’s Absence (10/08 to 11/03):
Record: 6-5-1 (13 pts)
Points per Game: 1.08 ppg
Goals Scored per Game (for - against): 3.58 - 3.50
Shots on Goal per Game (for - against): 26.33 - 32.67
Power Play: 27.0% (20 - 74)

Mats Sundin’s Return (11/05 to 11/12):
Record: 3-2-0 (6 pts)
Points per Game: 1.20 ppg
Goals Scored per Game (for - against): 4.20 - 4.20
Shots on Goal per Game (for - against): 28.60 - 32.80
Power Play: 23.5% (8 - 34)
Mats Sundin Productivity: 2 G - 5 A - 7 Pts - E - 15 Shots

2006 Elbow Injury

Last Five Games Before the Injury (10/30 to 11/6):
Record: 4-1-0 (8 pts)
Points per Game: 1.60 ppg
Goals Scored per Game (for - against): 3.60 - 2.00
Shots on Goal per Game (for - against): 28.2 - 34.4
Power Play: 21.4% (6 - 28)
Mats Sundin Productivity: 3 G - 6 A - 9 Pts - +1 - 19 Shots

Mats Sundin’s Absence (11/09 to 11/24):
Record: 4-2-1 (9 pts)
Points per Game: 1.29 ppg
Goals Scored per Game (for - against): 4.00 - 2.43
Shots on Goal per Game (for - against): 33.57 - 29.29
Power Play: 33.3% (12 - 36)

Mats Sundin’s Return (11/26 to 12/2):
Record: 0-4-1 (1 pt)
Points per Game: 0.25 ppg
Goals Scored per Game (for - against): 1.25 - 3.75
Shots on Goal per Game (for - against): 37.25 - 24.50
Power Play: 8.0% (2 - 25)
Mats Sundin Productivity: 2 G - 0 A - 2 Pts - -3 - 23 Shots

Sundin’s Value to Toronto: Does Mats Sundin make a positive contribution to the Leafs? Despite the recent losing streak, I think the answer is yes. This question can be divided into two issues, which I think can be answered by coaching and the team’s character.

Improved Performance During Sundin’s Absence: Adversity motivates the Toronto Maple Leafs to improve their intensity and focus. This is a strategy that other coaches can use to inspire teams to play harder, together, and smarter. In the past two seasons, the team has bettered their defensive numbers, in terms of goals and shots against. The offensive numbers decline but this is because the Leafs have made the games tighter and more conservative. The team improves its focus, making the most of power-play chances. Combating adversity is a button that Toronto coaches and alternate captains have been able to press to lift team performance.

Play After Sundin Returns: Mats Sundin is still the Leaf’s most skilled offensive player and as he goes, so does the team’s offence. When the team has not played well offensively, Sundin has still been able to get shots on goal and score his usual percentage of the team’s points. But there seems to be a let-up in intensity, as defensive numbers fall. Shots by both teams increase, perhaps indicating that the games have become more wide open. The Leaf’s power-play execution falls, which I think can be attributed to an over-reliance on Sundin and a drop in team chemistry caused by suddenly inserting someone who plays a great deal of ice time into the lineup.

Summary: The statistics - provided by ESPN.com - and analysis are too superficial to provide a concrete answer. First of all, Sundin doesn’t affect the team as much as the disruption caused by his absence does. The team is 1-2 in the first game after the injury but has been able to turn things around into a winning record.

Sundin’s first game back was likewise disruptive as the team went 1-2 despite riding winning streaks at the time. The adversity motivational tactic helps players raise their levels of focus and intensity and they seem to drop after Sundin returns. Also, each player was required to do more while Sundin was away, increasing team fatigue levels (so the team may have started losing games whether Sundin had returned or not).

Given that the coaches handled the absence of the team’s key player well, they could probably do more to prepare for his return. Paul Maurice stuck Sundin on the third line whereas Pat Quinn had returned him to his usual place on the first line. Neither tactical strategy was successful in 2005 or 2006 so it suggests that a mental training strategy would be necessary.

Losing the leading scorer was initially challenging for a team that I am coaching as every player felt the responsibility to replace the missing contribution themselves. This inconsistent performance was followed by a realization that the team was in a deep hole. That challenge - combined with a strategy of breaking up team goals into smaller, achievable ones - permitted the team to play better and come together as a team. When the key player returns, positive reinforcement and a reminder of team tactics are necessary.

The Toronto Maple Leafs need Mats Sundin. When he returns from injury, his performance is high (whether the team does well or not). During his absences, he likely continues to lead, motivating the team by modeling the way and creating a positive atmosphere. The responsibility falls to the team’s management to mitigate the disruption caused by his return and maintain the team’s performance.