The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2022-23 regular season by former NHL coaches and assistants who will turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher. Marc CrawfordMark Recchi and Phil Housley will take turns providing inside.
In this edition, Crawford, coach of the Quebec Nordiques from 1994-95, Colorado Avalanche from 1995-98, Vancouver Canucks from 1998-2006, Los Angeles Kings from 2006-08, Dallas Stars from 2009-11, associate coach of the Ottawa Senators from 2016-19 and assistant coach of the Chicago Blackhawks from 2019-22, looks at what helps the top young players succeed in the NHL.
In the NHL now, I think there’s an understanding with teams that they want to introduce younger players into their lineup for a lot of reasons.
One, it’s getting players used to the NHL level, really helping their progress by showing confidence in them and giving them opportunity. But it’s also that young players’ improvement generally will be on a greater curve if you invest now, and the payoff will be in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, when young legs are fresher legs and they can help you get through the grind of the postseason.
I have always felt it was about confidence from the player. In saying that, the player had to have enough desire and enough presence to really want to show they can play. For me, that would always show itself in practice. It showed itself in how they interacted with other players, mostly on the ice but also how they interacted within the team. If they were outward and really showed their common sense and hockey sense, then that was a big part of telling me that they were ready to take that step of being introduced into the team and into the League.
I know looking back at my own personal experience as a player. I’d come off back-to-back Memorial Cups [with Cornwall of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League], but my first NHL game that I played in with the Vancouver Canucks, we lined up against the Los Angeles Kings and I was in the starting lineup against Dave Taylor, Marcel Dionne and Charlie Simmer, the Triple Crown Line. It was a real thrill and I was excited. But the thrill quickly wore off when Taylor took my shoulder, turned me and took off, hit Dionne with a pass and he had a breakaway. Thankfully goalie Glen Hanlon bailed us out. I was thrilled to be playing and eyes wide, wide open, but within 10 seconds I realized, “Oh my God, this is another level.”
So getting back to that common sense and that hockey sense, common sense is important because you need to know where you are. You need to have a pretty good analogy of what your parameters are.
Coaches maybe do a good job of talking to players about expectations and their role. The hockey sense part is knowing those little things, knowing you’re going to be playing against stronger people, knowing where to play when you don’t have the puck.
I think a lot of kids are ready now because they have such high-quality coaches and they’re exposed to systems and they’re exposed to development and all of those aspects seem to do a good job of trying to prepare people. But from the individual standpoint, it comes down to the players being comfortable in their own skin, knowing how they have to act within that group. Then it comes down to the hockey sense of knowing how they have to play when they don’t have the puck.
That’s the biggest change, I think, from junior hockey or college hockey to the National Hockey League is that you’re so dependent on other people on the ice doing a decent job in their specific areas.
You want to show people how much skill you have when you have the puck, but at the end of the day I really think it comes down to how you are without the puck. Are you presenting yourself and getting open for people? Are you offensively driving the play? Are you not being shy and really going to the net? Are you not in awe of people, so you’re going to take whoever it is who’s in the play, and not just say, “Oh, I can’t do that yet, I’m not old enough, I don’t have the respect of the League?” That’s not what it’s about. You have to have enough confidence and enough fortitude to be able to say, “No, I’m going to do what’s right, I’m going to do what I do as a hockey player.” Nobody cares if you’re in your first or third year. They care that you know how to play.
I always used to like to tell players a couple of things, and the second is way more important than the first. First, show us you’re not going to hurt us before you show us how much you’re going to help us. That spoke to trust, so I’d talk to them a lot about that: you need to build trust. I’m going to put you in situations I think you can handle. Hopefully I won’t put a guy where he’s against Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl In his first shift in the NHL as a checking winger. It may be more than they can chew at that particular moment. On the other side, we want them to show us that they’re ready for the moment.
The second part, which is more important, after we talked system and expectations and any detailed information, was to trust their instincts and play. There is lots of time for correction with young players. You can do it on the bench with the iPad, you can do it in the dressing room. Players are so good now at receiving feedback because they are getting it at all the different levels. They all watch their own games now, they’re all used to seeing what’s happening with them. They’re much more exposed to a higher standard of coaching and detail than it was in my day and I think that’s allowed for young players to get better quickly.
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