Maurice takes one for his team
SHIFTING FOCUS: As Byfuglien clams up, Jets coach aces media savvy test and helps deflect the pressure
Last week in California, a day before the Winnipeg Jets were to play the Anaheim Ducks to open their playoff campaign, locker rooms were briefly open to the media after practice.
A crowd gathered around Jets defenceman Dustin Byfuglien.
The first question was about the excitement of the postseason.
“It’s just another hockey game,” he responded, staring off into the distance. Similar attempts to elicit a thoughtful comment followed, all of which were met with shrugs and clipped responses.
The whole thing seemed odd. It’s the playoffs, the Jets were finally in them, and here was Byfuglien, utterly standoffish before a game had even been played. What was he so mad about? It turns out that was Byfuglien being expansive.
We didn’t hear from him again until Tuesday morning, after another tough loss for the Jets, marking the first time in NHL history a team had honked three straight playoff games in which they entered the third period with the lead. (No team had ever done that twice, either.)
Byfuglien had played poorly on Monday night: on the ice for three Ducks goals, and he took two penalties, one of which came after he knocked Corey Perry to the ice while the Ducks forward was celebrating a goal.
It was a borderline suspendable offence, and exactly the kind of thing Jets players keep saying they have to avoid. So, Byfuglien was asked about it. “As long as we stick together as a team, we’ll be all right,” he said in response. He proceeded to answer every question in this manner, even specific ones about the Perry hit.
Sometimes he mixed it up: “We’re a team. We stick together.” Or, “that’s why we’re a team.”
But the message was clear: these Winnipeg Jets are a team, and they intend to stick together and, thus, be all right.
It was just another log on the smouldering pyre between athletes and the media in recent months.
And then Paul Maurice, the Jets coach, was asked about it. Didn’t Byfuglien’s answers show immaturity?
The Jets coach launched into a defence of his player that was about as thoughtful and complex as you are ever going to hear in the bowels of a hockey arena.
“He’s a very, very competitive man, and he’s particularly unhappy with the result. More than anything else he wants to win. So he doesn’t like the fact that he has to speak to the media today,” Maurice said. “I want you to fully appreciate the number of F-bombs he dropped on you in the back of his brain that didn’t come out, out of the sense of civility that he has — he’s a kind and civil and giving man — so the fact that he didn’t tell you how he really felt is maturity.”
Later, Maurice got to the nub of the issue: If Byfuglien had made mistakes on the ice, and the coach said the penalty on Perry was the type that a player just cannot take, then those things are addressed privately. The coach said again he wished some days he could share his every profane thought with the media.
“So I’m a little jealous,” Maurice said. “I wish he had come out and — actually, no I don’t. I’m glad he did what he did. It’s not perfect and sometimes things aren’t right, but that’s Dustin, and we love him.”
It was a master class in coaching that had nothing to do with line combinations or possession tactics.
Maurice stood up for a player, deflected blame, absorbed some of it himself, and helped push the spotlight away from the fact his team currently cannot hold a lead to save its life. Whether Maurice’s explanation holds up is another thing.
If Byfuglien was just cranky about a tough loss on Tuesday, how does that square with his non-answers of a week ago, or for the rest of the season?
No, Byfuglien just doesn’t like talking to the media.
As is the case with other athletes like him, the media should probably make peace with that fact.
His teammates, and head coach, already have.