The old college try
After years of turning to former players, the Flyers opted to hire a man the lead team who has never played or coached at the NHL level
Bill Sulak is a regular at Philadelphia Flyers practices because he is retired, lives 10 minutes from the team’s training facility and can stand right next to the boards and watch the team for free. It is chilly in the practice rink, so Sulak wears a black Flyers jacket with ’ 74 and ’ 75 on the sleeves, representing the team’s only Stanley Cup championship seasons. The glory days of the Broad Street Bullies are ancient history.
But Sulak brightens when he says the coming season feels different. He looked over at the Flyers’ energetic and stern new head coach, Dave Hakstol, a black cap pulled down to his eyebrows, and said, “I love the approach he’s taking, with the aggressive way he’s practising.”
He watched some more, then added: “It’s the college approach. Maybe this is what we needed.”
When the Flyers hired Hakstol, the coach at the University of North Dakota for the previous 11 seasons, he became only the third man — and the first since 1982 — to jump from a college coaching job to his first NHL coaching job. It seemed like an audacious move, and it was particularly unconventional because Philadelphia had made a tradition of hiring former Flyers as coaches. Hakstol replaced former Flyers forward Craig Berube, who amassed 3,149 penalty minutes in his 1,054-game NHL career.
Hakstol, 47, represents a radical culture change. A native of Warburg, Alta., a prairie town of 789 that also produced Dallas Stars coach Lindy Ruff, Hakstol was a defenceman who never made it past the International Hockey League in five professional seasons.
The Flyers are essentially the same team that last year finished 33-31-18, the 24thbest record in the 30-team league and 14 points out of a playoff berth.
What Hakstol says he will do is get the Flyers playing at a faster pace — partly because everyone is, especially elite Eastern Conference teams like the New York Rangers and the Tampa Bay Lightning. Despite a power-play unit that ranked third in the NHL, the Flyers were 21st in scoring last year.
“This is a hard-working team,” Hakstol said in a low, flat voice. “I believe it always has been. This game starts and ends with energy and work ethic and guys that are good teammates. That’s the baseline. The game is played at a high pace now, and we want to think in this room that we have the ability to get up the ice a little bit quicker, the ability to create a little bit more in the offensive zone and getting everybody involved.”
Already gone are the days when the Flyers settled their differences — or compensated for their lack of speed and skill — by dropping their gloves. They were third in the league in fighting majors each season from 2012 to 2014, but they were 10th last season.
“My goal is not to come in and make wholesale changes,” Hakstol said. “When I look at last season, and how close the league is, we just have to do little things a bit better. And if we do those things every day and we are committed to doing them every day, you change the results.”
Long-suffering Philadelphia fans like Sulak want to give him a chance. A poll conducted by philly.com showed that 77.8 percent were in favor of hiring of Hakstol, his lack of NHL experience notwithstanding.
“He’s a very hard worker, he’s very diligent, he’s very determined, he’s very focused,” said Philadelphia general manager Ron Hextall, a former Flyers goaltender, who hired Hakstol. “He’s got a real good presence about him.”
Hextall had an in. His son Brett, a forward in the Flyers’ minor-league system, played for Hakstol at North Dakota, but Ron Hextall said, “I wanted to find the best coach.”
It seems to be irrelevant to Hextall that he found his man on a college campus in Grand Forks, N.D., whose metropolitan population of 100,000 is a tiny fraction of Philadelphia’s. It has become apparent to Hextall that Hakstol relies heavily on his assistant coaches.
“He’s not sitting back pretending he knows it all,” Hextall said.
Asked what he thought of Hakstol’s coaching in a metropolitan area of six million, Hextall smiled and said: “I think he’ll be fine. He’s an honest guy. You’re going to hear the truth from him. Many people don’t realize it, but expectations at North Dakota were high every year.”
North Dakota was a seventime NCAA champion before Hakstol took over in 2004. He compiled a 289-143-43 record there and led his team to the NCAA tournament in all 11 seasons, going to the Frozen Four last year. About 20 of his former players, most notably Chicago Blackhawks centre and captain Jonathan Toews, went on to the NHL.
“The college game is tailored to make pro players,” Flyers goaltender Steve Mason said. “Hack’s been one of the top coaches in hockey for a number of years, and so far, I think he’s made a great transition to the game here. He’s taken over the team and has put a system in place that we want to stick to. He’s run an extremely high-tempo, highintensity type of camp. Guys are receptive to that, and we’re trying to start off the season on the right foot.”
Forward Wayne Simmonds added: “So far, I wouldn’t have been able to tell if he was a college coach. He’s got all the qualities of an NHL coach.”
There are differences, though. When Hakstol addressed the media after a practice between pre-season games, he was ringed by more than a dozen reporters and photographers.
“Obviously, it’s the magnitude of things,” he said. “Bluntly, the enormity of dealing with the media each day is just an example.”
Hakstol said people in Philadelphia had been as friendly to him and his family as people in Grand Forks were (although the Flyers have yet to play a game).
Hextall acknowledged that he had hired a very serious coach. Hakstol is friendly and pleasant, but he has been put in charge of his first NHL team, so he does not appear as if he is having too much fun — even though Hakstol insists that he is.
“Yes, he does smile,” Hextall said. “But when he’s at work, he’s all business.”