Showdown represents ex-coach’s validation
Saturday night’s tie-breaking Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final at Washington between the Capitals and the Vegas Golden Knights was not completed in time for this edition. Read the late game story in our e-edition at OrlandoSentinel.com/late or on our website.
WASHINGTON — The text message lit up Troy Mann’s phone the morning after the Capitals eliminated the Penguins with a patchwork lineup featuring five rookies. It came from Barry Trotz.
“Thanks Manner for having all those rookie Caps ready,” Trotz wrote. “They all played well — you own a piece of this win last night.”
Mann beamed with pride when more than a half-dozen players he coached with the American Hockey League’s Hershey Bears contributed to the victory that got the Capitals into the Eastern Conference final. Many of those players are still playing key roles for Washington in the Stanley Cup Final against the Vegas Golden
Knights — more than a month after Mann was fired from his job as Hershey’s head coach.
This is a bittersweet time for Mann, who had a hand in the development of Jakub Vrana, Chandler Stephenson and Christian Djoos as coach and was an assistant when Braden Holtby, John Carlson, Dmitry Orlov, Andre Burakovsky, Jay Beagle and Tom Wilson went through Hershey on their way to the NHL. Considering the success of those players and Hershey products Nate Schmidt and Cody Eakin contributing for Vegas, the Cup Final is a validation of Mann’s methods of getting prospects ready for the next level.
“I called Troy Mann the other day and thanked him for producing a lot of good players,” Trotz said.
“All the players he had the last couple of years are all playing in the Stanley Cup Finals. Guys who haven’t played a (playoff ) game before. They’ve brought some of that winning tradition that they had in Hershey. It’s important for those guys to be a part of it.”
Mann has remained connected to the Capitals’ playoff run by talking to Trotz and Hershey video coach Mike King, who’s in Washington. Amid interviews with other organizations for another AHL job or work as an NHL assistant, he has watched about 80 percent of the Capitals’ games this postseason and can see the elements in players’ games he and assistant Ryan Murphy harped on improving during their fouryear tenure.
“We talked a lot during our time here about what they needed to do at the NHL level to be successful,” Mann said by phone. “The thing we’ve seen the most with our guys is just the improvement level from year to year and month to month.”
As much as Mann notices the improvement from afar, the players feel it too and credit him for giving them the playing time to grow their games in Hershey, a market that expects championships as much as development.
“He just gave us a chance,” said Stephenson, who has seven points in his first Stanley Cup playoffs. “The type of franchise that Hershey’s been and having so many Calder Cups and things like that, he put a lot of faith in the younger guys and just trusted us.”
His support several years ago helped Eakin become a full-time NHL player who said Friday that Mann “knows how to get the most out of his players.”
But after three playoff appearances including a trip to the Calder Cup Final in 2016, missing the postseason this year led to the Capitals not renewing Mann’s contract.