Familiar coach, familiar result

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This article was published 31/03/2017 (3087 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Randy Carlyle has the Anaheim Ducks cruising in the Pacific Division and a playoff spot is all locked up.

But six months ago, the former NHL defenceman and longtime bench boss wasn’t sure what brand of hockey club he was about to begin coaching.

The Ducks were coming off another early exit in the playoffs, this time to the Nashville Predators in a 2016 first-round Western Conference series. Head coach Bruce Boudreau was out, the victim of one too many Game 7 losses, and Carlyle, a familiar face, was in.

Anaheim went through an off-season purge, choosing to part ways with players such as David Perron, Shawn Horcoff, Jamie McGinn and Chris Stewart. There would be turnover and it was Carlyle’s job to pull it all together.

“From year to year, your teams change,” said Carlyle, speaking Thursday following the Ducks’ morning skate. “This hockey club changed with the addition of youth. There was some veteran players here that, with the salary cap situation — the budget situation — our hockey club was in, we couldn’t afford to keep all of them.

“So, we transitioned some younger players into our lineup.”

Enter forwards such as Nick Ritchie, Ondrej Kase and Logan Shaw, all playing regular minutes for the Ducks, one of the NHL’s hottest clubs in March (10-2-1), prior to Thursday’s battle with Winnipeg.

But Anaheim came out of the gate slowly in October, going 0-3-1 in its first four under Carlyle. He said the early struggles were no great surprise, but the group responded — and was 17-11-6 at Christmas.

“We looked at, if we could make it through (the first month), make it through the next month, make it through the next month and try to build this group into a hockey club that plays either way you want them to play,” said Carlyle.

“You wanna skate. Well, we can skate. You wanna play physical, we can play physical. We have a comfort zone that we can go into any building and have success. That’s really what we strive to do.”

The Ducks are middle of the pack when it comes to scoring and won’t blow teams away. But the squad is adhering to the principles of a bench boss who once captured the Norris Trophy as the league’s top blue-liner.

And that means a responsibility to team defence, solid specialty teams and the expectation of quality goaltending from the duo of John Gibson and Jonathan Bernier. Anaheim entered Thursday’s play having surrendered the third-fewest goals (183) in the NHL and, while the power play (just 17.7 per cent efficiency) has struggled mightly since mid-December, the penalty-killing unit (84.9 per cent) has shone.

“He’s demanding of a certain level of hockey, much like he did when he was here the first time,” said Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf. “Overall, his principles are the same and that’s why he’s here.”

Carlyle’s been behind the Anaheim bench before — and had his greatest coaching success exactly a decade ago with the club. He guided the Ducks to the Stanley Cup in 2007, with a pair of rookies named Getzlaf and Corey Perry on the squad, along with veteran stars Teemu Selanne, Scott Niedermayer and Chris Pronger.

Getzlaf said very little has changed in the demeanor of the now 60-year-old Carlyle, who had a 17-year playing career with stops in Pittsburgh and Toronto before spending parts of 10 seasons with the Jets 1.0.

He was also head coach of the Manitoba Moose of the old IHL for four-plus seasons.

“His overall fire and passion haven’t really moved a lot,” said Getzlaf. “But Randy, as long as I’ve known him, has never been a coach that snaps after wins or losses. He doesn’t come in here and throw things. It’s more about how we play on a consistent basis.

“A lot more is done during the game. There’s nothing you can do after the game. He knows that, he’s a smart guy.”

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @WFPJasonBell