Glen Gulutzan must be in a great mood these days.
His Calgary Flames are off on their CBA-mandated bye week and hit the break on a seven-game winning streak that has them in second place in the Pacific Division. The most stressful thing for Gulutzan today may be getting his kids to their hockey games on time.
“I’m trying to be Mr. Mom for a little bit and I’m not very good at it. I’ve been late already,” Gulutzan said. “I was late for hockey yesterday with the youngest.”
There were no sticks thrown in frustration over that, but just 11 days ago Gulutzan caught everyone’s attention when he chucked his deep into the stands during a Flames morning practice.
[snippet ID=3322139]
Curiously, his team had won two games in a row when the coach snapped, so what made him boil over that day? Gulutzan said it wasn’t pre-meditated and explained what happened to the Hockey Central at Noon crew on Tuesday.
First, he was debating with his staff whether or not to hold a practice at all. But coming off a 4-3 win over the Kings, in which the Flames’ power play went 0-for-4, Gulutzan decided they needed to put in some work on that part of their game. The coach figured he’d skate the players for 15-20 minutes to warm up, practise a bit on the man advantage and thought “it won’t be long.”
That’s when it went off the rails.
“It was awful,” Gulutzan explained. “It was like we had won the Stanley Cup the night before and we were just putting in time. As the first 10-12 minutes went, because I premised it, I put some thought into it, it struck me the wrong way. I thought we could have taken a hold of it and changed it and we didn’t and that’s what triggered it for me. Nothing pre-planned or meditated, but I think at some point I was trying to decide to smash my stick or throw it.
“We got young guys in here and that’s not our culture. So that was going to put an end to it quickly.”
In the next game, Calgary beat the Anaheim Ducks in a spirited affair that was filled with physical play and a couple fights, though the power play was shut out again. In its final four games before the break, Calgary’s power play went 3-for-10 and is now 19th in the league. It is something the Flames will need to keep improving when they get back to game action Saturday at home to Winnipeg, and an aspect of the game Gulutzan will surely be challenging his team over again.
Gulutzan said he spoke to his players after his blowup at practice and they agreed the skate wasn’t going so smoothly. He said because the stick toss wasn’t something contrived, it wasn’t lost on the players.
“When you’re real and the emotions are honest your team usually reacts in the right way.”
[relatedlinks]
