OILERS ‘DIALED-IN’: GULUTZAN
Former Flames’ coach says new team already exhibits a ‘sense of urgency’
First impressions are important.
And Glen Gulutzan is impressed.
The former head coach of the Calgary Flames, now Todd McLellan’s right-hand man on his new Edmonton Oilers coaching staff, wasn’t sure what he was going to see behind former enemy lines with the team on other side of Alberta hockey’s Mason-Dixon Line.
He likes what he sees. Really, really likes what he sees.
“I see a real sense of urgency. There’s a real dialed-in-sense. When you’ve been around the league for eight or nine years, you know that usually doesn’t happen. But these guys are really dialed in to get this season going. I see a little different look in this group.”
People say nothing has really changed between this year and last with the Oilers roster and that’s true on the ice — but not behind the bench.
There’s a whole new group there with Gulutzan, Trent Yawney and Manny Viveiros. And they’re an interesting study as the team’s 40th NHL season goes to the post.
McLellan hasn’t taken the new group and filled them in on the pros and cons of his holdover players.
Indeed, he’s done just the opposite.
“Three fresh sets of eyes,” he said. “What that does is that it allows just about every player in the room to have a fresh start. I’ve tried to be passive when it comes to what I or the old staff felt about players, what their demeanour is, how they react to certain situations. I want the new coaches to develop their own opinions. I might be wrong. It breathes fresh life into some other players.”
And what do the fresh set of eyes see?
“A little bit like Trent, coming from Anaheim, our observations were more player related and how the team was perceived,” said the Flames’ former bench boss.
“Obviously everybody knows Connor McDavid but we told Todd how much other teams respected the skill and also the toughness that was in the group, that Edmonton kind of had a little bit of an intimidation factor with Milan Lucic and Zack Kassian and the guys who played that heavy game. In the West they were kind of a team that could play a little bit both ways with the heavy skill of Connor, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan NugentHopkins and they had some heaviness and toughness to back it up.
“Todd has kind of let us alone and let us make our own observations. As we plowed through some video in the off-season looking for some strengths and weaknesses, it wasn’t just all about grabbing all the mistakes and looking at them but also looking at all the strengths and what changed from one year to the next,” added the coach who witnessed the Oilers play a nearperfect game against Calgary for openers last year and then come totally unravelled over the next 81 games.
And the conclusions they came to?
“There were a lot of subtle changes. For instance, on the penalty kill, we’re going to have to change some of the pressure points and the trigger points because at times it looked like we were trying so hard to pressure that they were exposing themselves. Heading over to the power play, we also looked at the difference between one season and the next and there were a few things. One was that we got pretty predictable. And maybe we were trying to pass it into the net rather than shoot it into the net.
“Five-on-five, we saw some things. We’d slowed down a bit. We want to speed up our game. We changed some transition things and Todd did a lot of that work, really, on his own.”
Gulutzan said while there are definite areas of improvement to try sell the players, the fresh set of eyes offered something else.
“We aren’t going to chess piece these individuals. Our job is to facilitate and get them into positions where their skill gets better looks. Those are subtleties on the power play that we want to put in place in particular. It’s a one-foot league. If you’re out of position by a foot, you’re going to get burned.”
Gulutzan said there’s another first impression here.
“For me it’s the environment. For starters there is Rogers Place. It is the nicest rink that I’ve been in. And the facilities and commitment by the organization to do everything it can to win is certainly evident as I walked through the door, whether it’s what we eat or our video systems or the access we have to training devices, technology and all those things.
“Of any organization this is probably the organization that is most committed to all of that I’ve been around.”
Despite what happened to the Oilers last year, Gulutzan said he’s here because he saw this job as one where it could be a lot of fun for a few years.
“I had a few of opportunities. But what drives you as a coach is winning. You want to win a championship. A big part of my decision was to be part of a group that I thought could win. That’s exciting when you look at this group and the players you have.” No. 1, of course, is McDavid. “When I met him, I told him ‘I might still be coaching Calgary if you hadn’t played here.’”
I see a real sense of urgency. There’s a real dialed-in-sense. When you’ve been around the league for eight or nine years, you know that usually doesn’t happen.