HUNTER KNOWS ALL ABOUT ROLE PLAYING
Team Canada head coach embraces the ‘team-first’ concept thanks to his top-notch NHL experience
The irony is not lost on Tim Hunter, one of the NHL’S alltime toughies.
“Paul Baxter, my old roommate, was a real smart guy and I remember him saying, ‘For you, it’s going to sound a little funny when you put it this way, but everyone has their own bouquet and you get a flower from here and a flower from there and you build your own bouquet of what your experience is all about,’” Hunter said. “That’s kind of the way that I still look at it.” He starts to chuckle. “Here Tim Hunter is, talking about flowers … ”
Over the next two weeks, Hunter’s task is to grow Hockey Canada’s gold-medal collection. Now 58, he’s the head coach for the host of the 2019 IIHF World Junior Championship in Vancouver and Victoria.
“The first thing is you respect him because of what he has done and the player and coach that he was at the NHL level,” said Tampa Bay Lightning centre Brayden Point, who counted Hunter as his bench boss with the Western Hockey League’s Moose Jaw Warriors, captained Canada’s world junior outfit in 2016 and is now turning heads at the highest level.
“He knows the game. He has coached and played a ton at the NHL level. He understands the guys and I think he played the game in an exciting way. I think he’ll do a great job.”
This international under-20 showdown has often been a coming-out party for the next wave of stars, a get-to-know-’em for up-and-comers who aren’t yet big names outside of their junior home bases or for fans of the NHL organization that drafted them. Point is a prime example.
Canada’s latest coach, though, needs no introduction.
Hunter was a legendary slugger, a co-captain and fan favourite when the Calgary Flames won the Stanley Cup in 1989 and one of only nine hombres in NHL history to rack up 3,000plus penalty minutes. (Hunter is eighth on that list with 3,146 in 815 career contests.)
Born and raised in Calgary, he skated for upward of a decade with his hometown team, a staple in the glory and sometimes gory days of the Battle of Alberta.
Hunter also toiled for the Quebec Nordiques and the Vancouver Canucks, advancing to his third Stanley Cup final with the West Coasters in 1994.
His coaching resume includes a three-year run as an assistant with the Toronto Maple Leafs, plus longer stints on the bench staff in San Jose, where he concluded his playing career, and in Washington. For the last five campaigns, Hunter has been skipper for the WHL’S Warriors.
This is his third consecutive Christmastime call from Team Canada. As an assistant coach, he was charged with overseeing the defence and penalty killing unit for both a silver showing two years back — “Hockey Canada called that a gold-medal performance, just not a gold medal,” Hunter said, referring to that shootout thriller against Team USA at Bell Centre in Montreal — and then a return to the top of the heap last winter in Buffalo, N.Y.
“I’m not patting myself too hard on the back here, but if you look at my resume, it’s long on experience and there’s a lot of success in there,” Hunter said. “I think the No. 1 thing that makes me a good coach and a capable coach is my experience and my experiences being in three Stanley Cups as a player, being in the Stanley Cup as a coach, coaching in two world junior championship gold-medal games, having success with the Moose Jaw Warriors.
“All that really helps. Each experience gives you a little bit more and a little bit different view of what success is. At the end of the day, it always boils down to the players playing for each other and the players buying in and buying what the coach is selling.
He added later: “If you look at the past tournaments, we’ve always been disciplined and team first is about discipline. Being No. 1 in power play, being No. 1 in penalty killing, being No. 1 in goals against, being No. 1 in take-aways, being No. 1 in save percentage. All these things are components of our success, but it doesn’t work unless everyone buys in.
“That’s a real important element of it is getting guys to buy in. We used to call it ‘accepting’ their role. I think more important now is it’s about ‘embracing’ their role.”
Led by the likes of Max Comtois and Cody Glass up front, Evan Bouchard and Noah Dobson on the blue-line and Mike Dipietro between the pipes, this edition of Team Canada opens its world junior title defence against Denmark on Boxing Day.
Their preliminary round slate also includes clashes with Switzerland and the Czech Republic and a New Year’s Eve date with Russia that should be a doozy.
“Going through that tournament is something special. You need to live it at least once,” said Dominique Ducharme, Canada’s head coach for the last two instalments of the world junior shindig and now one of Claude Julien’s deputies with the Montreal Canadiens.
“Experience you can’t buy, right? Those playoff runs that he had, you can find similarities. This tournament is almost a Game 7 every night, so having that experience as a player for sure helps him as a coach, too.”
Proof of the countless hours of prep work they have put in together, Ducharme and Hunter both compared the calibre of action at the IIHF’S under-20 slugfest to the equivalent of the American Hockey League playoffs, pointing out that’s quite a leap from the mid-december spins in the Canadian Hockey League.
Hunter will emphasize the importance of short shifts, of stopping instead of circling.
He’ll repeat one of Edmonton Oilers head coach Ken Hitchcock’s favourite lines, stressing the importance of “playing for each other, not with each other.”
He will undoubtedly remind the current cast that Canada’s 13th forward, Tyler Steenbergen, scored the most important marker of the tournament a year ago.
“Tyler didn’t play a lot in the gold-medal game,” Hunter said.
“But he sure had one heck of a shift.”
Hunter was a scratch on that memorable May night in 1989 when the Flames clinched their lone Stanley Cup title at the Montreal Forum, just his third sit-out of that spring run.
It didn’t dampen his spirits any nor should it have.
He was determined to be the guy who would carry the shiny silverware off the ice and down the tunnel to the visitors’ dressing room. Wearing a red sweatsuit for the celebration, he did exactly that.
“A lot of guys, they do this the other way around. They win their world junior gold and they go on to win a Stanley Cup, especially the players,” Hunter said. “I’ve got my Stanley Cup and I know how hard it was and how much I put into the Flames organization to win that and to be part of that team.
“The beautiful thing about the Stanley Cup — and no other trophy is like it — is that your name is on it. It’s indelible forever. When you get a little bit older, they have to remove the ring to make room for the new and the younger generation, but your name is on that ring forever. You get a Stanley Cup ring and you can wear that forever and it’s very special.
“The sacrifice to win a Stanley Cup is two months of four rounds of hockey. It’s gruelling. The tournament is not two months, but from start to finish — from camp to winning a gold medal — is about a month and it’s gruelling.
“It takes a lot.”
The coach, with all that experience of his own on big stages, is anxious to take them there.
Hunter vowed that this crew of Canadians will be tough to play against, a term that means something different now than it did during his heyday.
“My vision and what I hope we can be is one of the fastest world junior teams yet,” he said.
He knows the game. He has coached and played a ton at the NHL level. He understands the guys and I think he played the game in an exciting way.