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Multiple National Hockey League (NHL) coaches have been in the middle of controversies this past week.
What started as stories of former Maple Leafs head coach Mike Babcock using unfavourable methods with some of his players, like Mitch Marner, has now evolved into more players coming out with the way they have been treated by coaches.
Yesterday, minor league player Akim Aliu tweeted that years ago, current Calgary Flames head coach, Bill Peters, used racial slurs towards him while with the Rockford Ice Hogs.
In response to all these breaking stories surrounding coaches, former San Jose Sharks assistant coach, Drew Remenda, was on the John Gormley show Tuesday morning to talk about how coaching has changed in today’s NHL.
“The players now, they’re smarter, they’re more sophisticated and you have to tell them the why. You have to tell them this is why we are doing this, this is why we are doing that,” said Remenda.
“And they have to believe in that. And the only way they believe in that is if they see their game improve or they see the team game improve.”
Remenda, who knows Babcock personally, addressed the Mitch Marner situation but says people shouldn’t be so quick to call the former Leafs coach “old school” or a “dinosaur.”
“Obviously what Mike was trying to do was to inspire Mitch to be hardworking. He was trying to show the guys this is who Mitch looks up to but he made a mistake and he owned it,” he said.
“He is old school as far as his demands on his team, his players, himself and his staff. He is a very demanding guy. You have to be in coaching, you have to be in the national hockey league. But he is not old school. This guy goes and seeks out presidents and chairmen of real successful companies and he goes and talks to them to find out how they get their guys to rise to this level. That’s not an old school guy, that’s not Scotty Bowman.”
Remenda says the difficulty for coaches is every player doesn’t respond to the same style of coaching, but you still need to hold all the players to the same standards.
“Some guys get a hug, some guys get a kick in the rear end some guys you just leave them alone because you can depend on them, those are your guys that you trust,” said Remenda, who used Pat Falloon and Ray Whitney, from his time with the Sharks, as an example of this.
“Pat Falloon needed hugs, Pat Falloon needed people to coddle him. Ray Whitney, you had to say something negative to Ray, and he would go out and try and stick it up your keister. You know who lasted longer in the NHL, Ray Whitney.”
According to Remenda, in today’s NHL, coaches have to hold the core accountable and hope that accountability spreads like it did with Babcock’s former team the Detroit Redwings.
“You couldn’t be unaccountable about your play when Steve Yzerman was across the room or Brendan Shannahan or Pavel Datsyuk or Nick Lidstrom. Mike was trying to build that in Toronto but I think some of the peripheral opponents can sometimes work against you,” he said about the media and, to a degree, the current Leaf management who weren’t the ones who hired Babcock.
“And you’ve got more [peripheral opponents] in Toronto than you do anywhere else. I had a friend who played in Toronto, one of the stars in Toronto said to him. When you are here, you aren’t as good as they say you are, you aren’t as bad as they say you are and when you leave they will bury you. So that’s Toronto.”
