Quote:
Originally Posted by mikeecho
It went under the radar at the time, but he took a ricochet shot when Darryl was hired.
Darryl walked in on day 1 and his chief explanation for why the team wasn’t successful came down to conditioning.
“They were one of the poorest-trained teams in the league coming into last season,” Sutter said. “The biggest surprise I’d ever seen was when I came halfway through the year … the team’s conditioning.“
https://calgaryhockeynow.com/2022/09...oogle_vignette
I always thought that was odd as van Asten was highly regarded around the league and served as the conditioning coach in LA when they won their cups. A guy who knew how to get his players physically prepared to win championships. |
I don’t think van Asten was/is a Sutter fan, as he understands the diminishing returns of negative coaching. Still, he’s really just an internal consultant for the coaching staff. If there is a disagreement between him and the coach, he gives suggestions, they make decisions.
In a previous post he mentioned how one NHL coach believed every training rep for players in an exercise should be 45 seconds (because that’s an average shift length). He disagreed then explained why. That seems like a Sutter kind of “I’m smarter than the experts” perspective to throw at people who work for (& probably not with) him. But I could be wrong.
Either way, if the players conditioning wasn’t up to Sutter’s liking, it has more to do with on ice coaching and programming than off ice.
Off ice, during the season S&C coaching is more about monitoring, recovery, injury prevention, and maintaining mass/muscle as the season drags on.
It was just Sutter being Sutter & throwing Ward under the bus. It doesn’t mean he was wrong. The yo-yo of coaches grinding them into the ground like Hartley & Peters sandwiched by the Gulutzan & Ward really falls at the feet of Treliving to assemble a roster than ultimately pushes itself to be conditioned at the required level in the NHL, rather than being whipped by a hard ass coach.
Even Huska mentioned in interviews that this was something Ruzicka struggled with & still struggled with this year. He explained on one post game interview about how hard & important it is for healthy scratches to push themselves in practices (after game day skates or following games) when they’re not playing so they stay conditioned to avoid any drop off in play.
It made it sound like this was something that Sutter focused on.