Flyers’ Vigneault appreciates healing power of sports
One by one, the pieces would fall into place, each leading to one hockey truth: Alain Vigneault, he gets it.
He got it in his first offseason, providing his input to Chuck Fletcher, stressing what Kevin Hayes could add to a hockey club.
He got it when he realized that former Flyers coaching strategies left the players exhausted, and not just physically.
He got it whenever he changed lines, picked the right goaltender, distanced himself from the Shayne Gostisbehere mania and, ultimately, pushed the Flyers to the point where they were playing hockey as well or better than any team in the NHL.
He got it, and so did everyone else, when he announced how he was going to spend the Flyers’ in-season break.
“I’m going home tonight,” he said. “And I’m going to have a martini.” A martini.
Perfect.
So there was Vigneault Wednesday, checking in with hockey writers on a conference call, stirring just the right mix about a great Flyers season, how it has been shaken, and what it will mean when the
NHL season returns. And it will return.
“Sports is going to be part of the process to getting back to some sort of normalcy,” Vigneault said.
“I believe everybody is missing their sports right now, and not just hockey, but baseball and basketball. Football is around the corner. And I believe sports is going to help people get back to normal.
“And I don’t know when it is going to be. But when it is, we’re going to be ready.”
He’s typically had the Flyers ready all season, on days when they were assigned a morning skate, on more days when they were told by their coach to show up at the arena that night, freshened by the extra hours of rest. But he could not have expected the rest that the Flyers, the NHL and most of North America has taken since March 10, when his team lost for the first time in 10 games then was made to scatter amid a virus pandemic.
Never one to waste an opportunity to dismiss panic, Vigneault’s first move was to Florida, golf clubs at the ready. Eventually, he said, Canadians were summoned home to engage in whatever social distancing could help kill the virus’s spread. So that’s where he has been during the shutdown, in Gatineau, Quebec. Predictably, he is neither relaxing nor panicking, but has found the proper in-between comfort zone.
“You now what?” the Flyers’ coach said. “I’ve only talked to five guys since the season has been suspended. I’ve left Ozzie (Chris Osmond) and Dan (Warnke), our two conditioning guys, pretty much in charge of the conversations with the players as far as the conditioning. Everybody has been following the guidelines, staying at home. There has been some feedback on what to do. But at the end of the day, everybody is trying to stay safe.
“At the same time, when this starts again, we want to be as ready as we can.”
To him, it’s a matter of when, not if, the NHL resumes, which may be this season. And though he is an expert on the powerplay, not disease control, he is the son of a physician. His sister works in the health industry. And he said his girlfriend is an emergency nurse at Ottawa Hospital, close to Gatineau.
“She’s been on the forefront,” Vigneault said.
“She’s been very impressed at how her bosses have handled this. She feels very secure when the ambulances arrive and the way it is set up and that they have a real good way of doing things so she can do her job.”
None of that makes Alain Vigneault an expert on pandemics, but it does place him close enough to the medical sphere to boost his appreciation that there are multiple ways to hasten healing. And he’s convinced the Flyers, and the NHL, and sports in general can be blended into in that therapy. For that, he will have his team ready.
“As far as a date and when to start, obviously I will leave that to the experts at that time,” Vigneault
said. “But I believe if we get a two weeks (of training) in, we’ll be fine. Everybody will be in the same position. We will have been out the same amount of time. This is obviously something a little different. But I am very confident that we can get something together that will be very efficient for our players, very efficient for our team, very efficient for our players and very efficient for our team. And hopefully that’s what happens.”
There have been reports of a June 1 opening of abbreviated training camps, followed by some kind of a Stanley Cup tournament, perhaps even at neutral sites. But Vigneault has received regular emails from the NHL about more specific ideas, and through that, he maintains a deep belief that the resumption of major-league hockey games will happen.
“Sports is going to be one of the venues that is going to help people get through this,” Vigneault said. “And once we get back at it, I am very confident that the focus of our group will be on the same pace as everybody else. It will be our job to work hard to work smart and to do the right things and get back to where we were.” He gets it.
He always does.