CARLYLE MAINTAINS POSITIVE OUTLOOK AS HIS DUCKS DIVE
The scrum was over, but Randy Carlyle wasn’t going anywhere. He wanted to keep talking, to share a few more stories, and enjoy some more laughs. Lord knows, he could use them about now.
So the beleaguered head coach spoke about seeing Freddie Mercury and Queen perform at the old Maple Leaf Gardens, and about the time when a teammate fell down the steep flight of stairs that carried players to the dressing room at the old Chicago Stadium. And how they used to give the visiting team oil-stained towels at the old Boston Garden. All it did, Carlyle said with a smile, was smear the sweat all over your body.
Had you not known, you never would have guessed that this was the same coach who a few nights ago had been on the losing end of a 9-3 blowout and who entered Monday night’s game against the Maple Leafs having dropped 15 of the past 17 games with the Anaheim Ducks. Nor would you have guessed that this was the same coach who was criticized for being too stubborn, too old school and too grumpy with the younger players during his somewhat brief time behind the bench in Toronto. But times have changed. And with them, so has Carlyle — even if the results don’t show it. The once demanding head coach who used to have two ways of doing things — Randy’s Way or the Highway — now has younger players demanding to know why they should do what he asks. And the 62-year-old Carlyle, who won a Norris Trophy as a top NHL defenceman and coached more than 900 games, is now giving them the kind of answers that you would expect to hear from a kindergarten teacher.
“The hierarchy of the hard coach with the iron fist — that’s gone,” said Carlyle, who was fired by the Leafs in 2015. “It’s gone by the wayside. What we try to do is provide them with as much positives — catch them doing something good, catch the good things — because everybody knows that coaches are going to harp on the mistakes being made.”
This sounds like a different coach than the one who had no time for Jake Gardiner’s constant turnovers and Nazem Kadri’s lack of maturity, and who wasn’t sure whether Morgan Rielly would ever tap into the offensive potential that made him a topfive pick. That Carlyle, who made headlines and inspired an AT&T commercial for critiquing James Reimer’s effort in a 3-2 loss as “Just OK,” seemed to be warring with every player on a roster that simply wasn’t good enough.
“I get no percentages,” Carlyle said of the ads, which has mechanics, tattoo artists, babysitters and surgeons downplaying their aptitude level. “I’ve seen it used. I’ve seen the ‘Just OK’ and it makes me laugh. But again, there are some fun times and there are some tough times.” This is one of those tough times. And yet, Carlyle is trying to find the positives.
For one, Ducks GM Bob Murray recently gave Carlyle a vote of confidence. And two, despite a recent 12-game losing streak that lasted six weeks, the team is only three points out of a playoff spot. Though the chances of Anaheim making the playoffs — they have to climb past five teams to do so — and Carlyle keeping his job past this season both seem unlikely at the moment.
Like Chicago and Los Angeles, who after combining to win five of the last nine Stanley Cups are now at the bottom of the Western Conference standings, Anaheim is going through a transition. Heading into Monday night, the Ducks had the third-worst record in the conference. Their two remaining players from their 2006 championship run (Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry) are now 33 years old and no longer the players they once were. Too old and too slow for today’s game, the team should rebuild.
And yet, thanks to a wild-card race that nobody wants to win, Anaheim was still only three points out of a playoff spot. “We’re still in a position to challenge, which is crazy enough with the season that we’ve had,” said Carlyle. “So that’s what’s most important for us now.” In some ways, this Ducks team resembles the Leafs teams that Carlyle presided over during his time in Toronto. They might be good enough to compete for a playoff spot. But even with a Vezina Trophy-worthy performance from John Gibson, no one would expect them to contend for a championship — much less make it out of the first round. The Ducks need to get younger and faster. They need to find their version of Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, as well as hope that Brandon Montour, Ondrej Kase and Nick Ritchie can grow into the players that Rielly, Gardiner and Kadri have become. And Carlyle? Well, for all his positivity, he’ll eventually have to hand the reigns over to the next Mike Babcock.
“It was a totally different time, a totally different group of players,” he said of his four seasons with the Maple Leafs. “Obviously, the overhaul that’s taken place here is something that they felt was necessary. They’ve done a good job of it.”