As you climb the ranks of hockey, the relationships between players and coaches changes as the power structure shifts.
In junior, your coach essentially holds your future in their hands, and the worst of them leverage that. You’ve got only a couple years to make it count, and your opportunity (which is really just ice time plus linemates) can make or break your ability to get to the next level. So, when your coach says “I want you to act like a dog in the PP bumper spot,” damned if you don’t go out there barking.
As a pro, though, the balance starts to tip a little more in a player's favour, particularly if you’re good. That means in the NHL, players can actually hold more power than the coach, depending on their contract and playing ability and general status around the league.
Most players exist within some other status than those unique situations, though -- in college, both the players and coaches are likely to be together for a while. In the NHL, everyone knows everyone else’s contract status, and in most cases coaches and players have some idea if they’re going to be in a long-term partnership or not.
So when problems arise, the best thing to do is just deal with them head-on, talk about them openly, and move past them.
Unfortunately, like in any marriage, not every little issue is worth airing out, and the things you bite your tongue on can build up and spill over. In more healthy relationships, you can find a time when everyone is nice and calm to have a conversation about said issues, and work through them calmly.
In hockey, when a recurring issue boils over one too many times at a critical point in a game – or even in a season – you can have some knockdown, drag-out bleep-you matches. Behold, the best forward on the Colorado Avalanche having a chit chat with his coach on their way to winning the Stanley Cup together.
This week we’ve seen something like this erupt both in-game and post-game. Paul Maurice had a meltdown on the entire Florida Panthers bench versus the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Don’t lip read if you’re sensitive:
![](https://www.sportsnet.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/New-Gif-2023-03-31T125937.009.gif)
I’ve heard it hypothesized that Maurice was responding to public accusations of his team being soft, or not bringing it every night, and that in this moment of the game -- in the wake of those comments -- it might have led to the outpouring of emotion. But whatever the reason, it’s up to the players to figure out how to navigate it. You can see Ryan Lomberg seeming to echo his coach's sentiments, seconds before getting a shift, and taking a dumb penalty. He clearly heard his coach’s message.
And we also saw a version of this in a post-game interview, when Jets coach Rick Bowness first questioned his team’s effort, then rolled his eyes at the idea of an underperforming player (Mark Scheifele) suggesting how he likes to create offence for his team.
It’s a tough bounce to have a reporter tell your coach your personal philosophy on creating offence when you’re failing to create offence. Even worse, you’re supposed to be a team leader, and your own theories differ from how the coach is coaching. (You would assume that leader would know the coach coaches the team, and so suggesting your own ideas in the midst of a losing streak while you're playing poorly may not go over great.)
In my vast experience of being yelled at on the bench and in the dressing room, here’s what I know about those interactions, as broader generalizations:
What the coach wants is for you as a player to look back and show that you hear him for a second, then you can look at the ice as long as you nod or say “yep” or something to that effect. If you do that, the coach will be happy – they’ve delivered their message of frustration – and you’ll stay in the rotation, even if you’ve got a knot of disagreement in your stomach. If you opt for what Michael Bunting recently did, and continue to look away from your coach at the ice, it’s not the end of the world.
Your coach knows you can hear them. By not acknowledging them, you’re basically registering your disagreement, which is usually a short-term issue. In the Bunting case, that decision meant in a 2-1 game he didn’t play another shift, despite there being over six minutes left to play.
After the game, Maple Leafs coach Sheldon Keefe said, “I give players a lot of leeway and passes, essentially, especially for those who come right off the ice. For me to expect a player coming right from the heat of the battle to sit on the bench and be a true gentleman when I want to go talk to him, I am putting myself at risk going into that situation.”
But it’s still noteworthy the player didn’t play again.
Now, what the coach doesn’t want is for you to yell back. Obviously, MacKinnon types are involved in a different power dynamic, where for a few years they’re the core of the organization and if they don’t like the decisions being made, I can tell you which of the player or coach would be more likely to stick around. And so, the coach has to hear those players out a little bit more, and consider their opinions. In that clip earlier in this post, you could see Bednar treading carefully.
For most players, you can yell back, provided the coach has legitimately misunderstood something. Maybe the coach doesn’t know that your teammate called switch on a play then didn’t switch, or your skate blade had come dislodged. Whatever it is, if you’re going to yell back, there better be something tangible there. Just yelling at the guy to go bleep himself will inevitably lead to long-term issues, which are the type that come out … in post-game media scrums. And, if not there, they need follow up conversations in the days ahead.
If your coach is still hot and still sending messages to you and your teammates in the post-game presser, you can be sure we’ve got a few extra degrees of temperature to a situation that’s gone from simmering to boiling over.
The only thing I know for sure about all these various exchanges is that you better clearly understand your place in the pecking order when you decide how to react to an angry coach. It isn’t house-league hockey; all players are not equal. A fourth-liner is more disposable than a superstar, and thus, inevitably takes more abuse than those top guys ever will.
What’s worse is that coaches want their team to know people will be held accountable, but those coaches also know they shouldn’t mess with the top guys much. It doesn’t mean anything to do it to the guys who already play just eight minutes a night, so most teams have a whipping boy or two in their middle six or between their third and fifth defencemen who takes an inordinate amount of “coaching,” we’ll call it.
It's a high-pressure environment, and navigating it is just another one of the challenges of being a professional. If you handle the stuff on the bench well enough, you’ll likely never have to see the whites of your coaches' eyes, as they roll back in his head during a post-game presser at the mere mention of your name.
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