Four coaches, four paths to success in the playoffs

Ken Hitchcock tugged at the waistband of his black and green Stars' sweatsuit when I asked him before last year's Stanley Cup finals what he had learned about playoff pressure and whether he was ready for the ultimate challenge after a career that included stints in junior hockey, the minors and as an assistant in the NHL.

He quickly answered, "I find it amusing when people suggest nothing can replace NHL experience or playoff experience. Some people spend 20 years playing hockey to get ready for a career in coaching. I spent 20 years coaching hockey to get ready for this moment."

Coaching is more than just changing lines or shouting at referees. It's strategy, motivation and lots of button pushing. And it becomes doubly important in the playoffs because of the us-vs.-them mentality. Coaches have to keep adjusting in order to keep up with the guy behind the other bench.

And the four coaches of this year's conference finalists form an intriguing paradox.

In the Western Conference you have two established coaches with little playing experience in Hitchcock and Colorado's Bob Hartley. In the East, you have New Jersey's Larry Robinson, who took over lot the fired Robbie Ftorek with eight games left in the regular season--and his team in first place, no less. And you have Philadelphia's Craig Ramsay, who took over for Roger Neilson in December after Neilson was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer. Robinson and Ramsay were standouts in their own right during their long NHL careers.

"People expect coaching a team to be this methodical roll up a hill or something, but it's not," Hitchcock says. "It's a lot of peaks and valleys and hard, hard emotion. It's a lot of pushing and pulling and dragging players along with you. There are plenty of volatile moments in the process."

Hartley learned last year as a rookie coach that in this day and age of multitiered salary structures, being a stern taskmaster doesn't work with everyone. But, like Hitchcock, he had worked his way up the ladder and been successful in juniors and the minors before getting his first coaching job in the NHL. Hartley had run-ins with goaltender Patrick Roy and others. But in the end, Hartley showed the Avalanche. he had the ability to make things work in the playoffs.

"We knew his history, how he sold windshields one year to help supplement his coaching," defenseman Adam Foote says. "There was a resistance at first, but he showed us ways to recover from a slow start last season, and when the playoffs came around, he had our total attention. That's when a coach earns his money."

Hartley convinced a group of individual stars to commit to a diligent defensive scheme in the neutral zone. And when it worked to create turnovers against the Red Wings, Hartley clearly had won over his doubters.

Now Hartley has become the first coach to beat the fabled Scotty Bowman two years in a row, and I Hitchcock has learned the secret to winning the Stanley Cup.

Devils G.M. Lou Lamoriello was seeking the secret to winning when he fired Ftorek, and the hockey world scratched its head. It was no secret, however, that the Devils, then in a 5-10-2 slump, were a disgruntled and divided team. But to fire the coach with only eight games to go? That seemed like a gamble with little chance of success.

"We were a bunch of miserable guys," Devils defenseman Ken Daneyko says. "No one was happy. No one wanted to play. It's such a fine line between winning and losing. Pulling together, working for each other--sometimes that sounds like a bunch of hog-wash, but it really means something if you can feel it in the room before a game."

Ftorek was remote and confrontational. Robinson, who had been fired after four seasons as head coach in Los Angeles and returned to New Jersey strictly to be an assistant, stressed discipline but was refreshing.

"This isn't about me," Robinson says. "It's about those 24 guys who have been here since September. They're the guys out there sweating and leading. All I do is point them in the right direction."

But someone needed to get disciplined play but of the Devils. Robinson had a minicamp shortly after he took over to help the players regroup. It was light and enthusiastic. He held one-on-one meetings with the players and stressed that the final eight games of the regular season meant nothing. His timetable was the start of the playoffs.

Robinson stressed shorter shifts, an importance on clearing the puck out of the defensive zone, better positioning and making sure the forwards come back to help out on defense. And that discipline had produced more offensive chances right up to the point when Robinson's team began to fall behind the Flyers in the conference finals.

Coaching in Philadelphia has been like pulling teeth. From the beginning, Ramsay never thought of himself as anything more than a friend helping a friend in need.

Back in December, Neilson, his friend of many years, was diagnosed with cancer. Neilson needed to get treatment, and he asked Ramsay to take over in the meantime. Ramsay, who was an assistant under Neilson, had been waiting for his chance to be a head coach in the NHL, but this wasn't the way he wanted it to happen.