Culture change in Calgary

Iin Calgary t took less than 30 minutes of the Calgary Flames’ morning skate Friday to hear something from coach Glen Gulutzan that was never audible in his three seasons as an assistant with the Vancouver Canucks.

Versatile four-letter word. Sounds like puck.

Gulutzan halted the Flames’ morning skate, which became a full-blown practice despite a pre-season game that night against the Canucks, to deliver a verbal blast with vocabulary and syntax appropriate to a National Hockey League team that finished last in penalty killing last season.

He was talking about the PK and noted, loudly and emphatically, that it’s OK for players to gather snow on their shin pads. Adjectives abounded.

There is a culture change underway in Calgary, where the new coach is supposed to be gentler than the old one but his demands on players will be unyielding.

After the Flames missed the playoffs last season following an out-of-nowhere, 97-point campaign in 201415, general manager Brad Treliving fired Bob Hartley, hired Gulutzan and gave him authority to change almost everything about the way the team plays.

The special teams are different. The Flames actually want to possess the puck and make plays instead of dumping it out of their zone and into their opponent’s. And when they don’t have the puck, they’ll pressure aggressively with speed to get it back rather than retreat and wait.

After four years of Hartley, this is a tough transition. And Treliving hired a gentle soul to undertake it.

“There’s always this, sometimes negative, connotation about a ‘players’ coach,’ whatever that means,” Treliving said Friday afternoon. “In today’s game, you do have to communicate. But that shouldn’t be lost as being soft. Players need to be pushed. Glen said it best: You build a relationship and trust with players, and that allows you to take a deposit out of the bank account when you need to push.”

Gulutzan said: “When you’re the assistant, it’s a different job. I got used to it over the three years in Vancouver and I enjoyed it. But as a head guy, you have a different role. It doesn’t change the person you are. I’m never really mad at the guys. I was forceful today, but I want them to be great.”

Good would be an upgrade on last season when the Flames’ 20-point plunge in the standings was nearly as deep as the Canucks’ free fall.

Gulutzan was only 39 years old when the Dallas Stars named him their head coach in 2011. He was fired two years later, then impressed enough in interviews with the Canucks that former general manager Mike Gillis asked John Tortorella to put Gulutzan on staff before Torts’ lone tirefire season in Vancouver.

Gulutzan survived the regime change that followed, partly because Canuck owner Francesco Aquilini was going to have to pay more than $10 million to get rid of Tortorella and Gillis, and was kept on by new head coach Willie Desjardins.

Interestingly, it was Gulutzan who had agreed to retain Desjardins as an associate coach when Gulutzan succeeded Marc Crawford in Dallas.

In Vancouver, Gulutzan was admired for his temperament and communication skills, his technical knowledge and ability to connect with players. He never pursued another head-coaching job but always wanted the second chance so many young coaches require when they get to the NHL too soon and realize too late that they didn’t actually know everything.

“I was two years removed Calgary Flames new head coach Glen Gulutzan gives instruction during an on-ice session at training camp in Calgary. Gulutzan spent three years as an assistant with the Vancouver Canucks before taking the Calgary job. from the East Coast League when I got the head coaching job in Dallas,” Gulutzan said, asked about his coaching evolution since then. “We did some things there that were really good and helped players. But we also did some things where I learned there were better ways to do it.”

Gulutzan said he microcoached and complicated the systems play with multiple variables.

“I added a lot of layers when I was first there,” he said. “But really, these are the best players in the world and you just need to give them a framework. You don’t need to modify it or add all these layers. You just have to give them the right structure and let the players work through it. That gives them more freedom.”

Tr e l i v i n g had never worked with Gulutzan. They knew each other only from opposing sides of rinks in the minor leagues, where Gulutzan coached in Las Vegas and Austin, Tex., and Treliving oversaw the Phoenix Coyotes’ farm team in San Antonio.

“I always wanted to be a head coach again, but I was never pursuing it or was fixated by it,” Gulutzan said. “I thought: Here I am as an assistant (with the Canucks) and I’m going to do the best I can.

“And that head coaching job will find me if I do a good enough job.”