Making a case for success
Sharks’ head coach brings team structure, energy
If one piece of equipment symbolizes new Sharks head coach Peter DeBoer, it’s his much-used laser pointer. “He loves that thing,” assistant coach Steve Spott said. “It is kind of funny,” defenseman Brent Burns said with a laugh. “He must have a big stock of batteries for that laser pointer somewhere.”
DeBoer likes to wield the laser pointer in team meetings, targeting video clips and plays and making sure everyone is focused.
He also holds a law degree from the University of Windsor and University of Detroit dual Canadian-American JD program, and he interned with a criminal law firm; one easily could envision DeBoer directing the jury’s gaze to
evidence Exhibit A rather than highlighting flaws on the forecheck.
“I feel like I use my law degree every day,” DeBoer said this week at Sharks Ice in San Jose. “Twenty years ago, you’d tell a player to jump and they’d ask how high. Now, you have to make a case why you want them to do what you’re asking them to do.”
And his legal background is revealed in the way DeBoer conducts those team meetings.
“It’s a little like law school, with the Socratic method. You couldn’t go to sleep; they’d call your name and you’d have stand up and recite information,” DeBoer said “I try to build that in, calling for guys to answer questions; active learning.”
“He lays out the expectations very clearly,” center Tommy Wingels said. “As a player, you want a blueprint to follow and he lays it out there very concisely. He’s an all-business guy, intense but in a good way.”
DeBoer had to get the Sharks up to speed with his system and style quickly after succeeding Todd McClellan as head coach May 28. DeBoer said he tried not to lay too much on his players at once, and wanted to keep many of the elements that have made the Sharks successful in the past. But he emphasizes pressuring opponents, and that takes a lot of hustle and communication.
“I think if you give anyone time to make plays, they will, especially good players,” he said. “We want structured pressure everywhere on the ice, and when you do that, you have to move as a five-man unit, because you always have to have people backing you up in case you get beat.”
DeBoer had success with his system in New Jersey in 2011-12, taking the Devils to the Stanley Cup Finals against the Ducks in his first season as head coach. He was fired Dec. 26, 2014, after the team started with a 12-17-7 record.
“If you ask any coach who gets fired, 90 percent of them would say they’ve run out of answers,” DeBoer said. “You’d like to turn it around, but a lot of times, the team is at the end of the line because you push them to points that frustrate everybody.”
That sounds a lot like the situation the Sharks faced last season in McLellan’s seventh year as head coach; McLellan and the Sharks had a mutual parting of the ways after San Jose missed the playoffs for the first time in his tenure.
In DeBoer’s first 15 games, the Sharks are 7-8-0 and in fourth place in the Pacific Division. Burns is among those who believe the team will move up as it finds its identity under DeBoer.
“It’s been awesome,” Burns said. “He has a great energy; guys are having fun coming to the rink. It’s really structured, but a great change of energy. Last year’s coaches were great, too, but this was needed for everybody, I think.”
DeBoer, 47, grew up in Dunnville, Ontario, a small town an hour west of Buffalo, and he was a good junior-league player with the Windsor Spitfires. A 12th-round pick by Toronto in the 1988 NHL draft, he spent three years in the minors with the Milwaukee Admirals, a former Maple Leafs affiliate.
“I was a good minor-league player, but I look at my hockey career as leading to this, which is what I was meant to do,” DeBoer said, gesturing around his office. “I think if you look at the coaches around the league, you have the rare guys who were excellent players, but you have a lot of guys like me who had to work, had to be a student of the game to try to survive.
DeBoer went to law school following his stint in the minors, and though he enjoyed the courtroom portion of his law internship, he wasn’t enthusiastic about some of the defendants, and he returned to his first love. “It was hard to wrap your mind around some of the people you’re defending but it was very interesting. It taught me a lot about human nature,” he said. “It really pushed me into following what I like to do.”
His first coaching job came as an assistant with the Detroit Junior Red Wings, working under Paul Maurice.
“Pete was, and is, very bright, very logical and very competitive,” said Maurice, the longtime NHL head coach who currently is in charge of the Winnipeg Jets. “He was smart to get a law degree; he can describe what he wants so directly and confidently, and he relates to everyone.”
“I think he has a real good feel what each player needs,” Spott said. “That’s why he would have been a successful lawyer — he probably would have read a judge pretty well.”
DeBoer’s first NHL job came in 2008 with Florida, where he was the head coach for three seasons. After he was fired in 2011, he quickly was hired by the Devils.
His family — wife Sue, daughter Amy and sons Jack and Matthew — remains on the East Coast, where the kids are in school. “We’re managing,” Sue DeBoer said by phone. ‘It’s not the easiest, but for us, career-wise, it was an opportunity that Pete couldn’t pass up. It takes a little getting used to.”
DeBoer got to spend time at home on San Jose’s recent road trip — and found that the small town of Madison, N.J., is now Sharks territory, with lots of friends and family members wearing teal. “A lot of people here have jumped on board,” Sue DeBoer said. “You walk around here and you do see Sharks hats.”
So for DeBoer, the biggest transition to California living is domestic in nature.
“I’m reteaching myself to do my laundry and cook for myself; that’s probably the most difficult part. The hockey part is easy,” he said.
How are DeBoer’s culinary skills?
“He’s got a couple of specialties,” Spott said. “One is turkey chili; it’s world class. And he makes a really good salmon on the barbecue. We’re trying to find a cedar plank, so if any fans have a cedar plank, we’ll take it.”
Spott is his roommate in the Willow Glen neighborhood of San Jose, a setup straight from classic TV.
“Pete’s a good cook. I’m really a stickler for keeping the place clean, so it’s a good combination,” said Spott, whose family remained in Toronto. “It’s Felix and Oscar.
“My wife, Lisa, and Sue are best friends, so it’s been nice. They can talk to each other and probably vent. I don’t know if they believe us, but we’re actually very boring. It’s dinner, watching a hockey game, then maybe an episode of ‘Orange Is the New Black’ and that’s it. We’re not a lot of fun.”
“I feel like I use my law degree every day.” Peter DeBoer, Sharks head coach