CorgisPer60
Barking at the net
With the Jets, he ran the team’s powerplay and coached its offensive schemes as a rookie NHL coach, a role he says nobody could have been prepared for. Vincent has always felt that coaching is a constant learning experience. That was true when he was surrounded by the best coaches in junior hockey in the QMJHL. It was also true when he worked with Dave Cameron and Mike Kelly and the rest of Hockey Canada’s staff with the national program, something he said he would recommend any young coach to get involved in.
Still, he said he felt like he gained about 20 years of experience in his first season coaching in the NHL.
“Every year you learn a little bit more about yourself as a coach and how you respond to the success or the failures. Going to the Jets was a real eye-opener because the gap for a player between junior or college hockey to the NHL is huge, but for a coach, it is as well,” he said.
After five seasons behind the bench with the Jets, Vincent was asked to be the head coach of the Moose.
“They told me ‘Basy — that’s what they call me — you’ve been coaching to win your whole life. We still want that. We still want to win hockey games. But not at all costs. We’re here to develop. You need to understand that. We know the passion, we know how it works, but you’ll need to reset your mindset to develop and to develop to a point where the team’s going to win.’ So that’s what we do,” Vincent said.
“Every year we reset and we develop players the best we can and try to find what they’re good at and how we can push them individually. And we believe by doing that, collectively, your effort, his effort, my effort, and everybody’s effort, if we push the right buttons and we develop our guys the proper way, eventually we’re going to win.”
Vincent credits the Jets’ drafting and their development team for giving him good players to work with. The results speak for themselves now, too.
“The first year we couldn’t win a hockey game and the second year we couldn’t lose a hockey game at a certain time of the season,” Vincent said. “There’s a lot of steps and layers before we get a hold of them. And we’re trying to develop the best players, yes, but we’re trying to develop the best Jets players – and there’s a difference.”
Sometimes, he said, developing is about not overthinking things. Instead of forcing players to work their way up the lineup into the role they’re expected to play — which can stunt their development — Vincent puts scorers into positions to score and passers in a position to find them.
“We just play them,” he said. “We put them in positions to sometimes to fail. We want to put them in a position to succeed but when they know they’re in a position to fail, it’s a learning moment and they have to deal with that. It’s good to fail, it’s good to struggle, it’s good to face some adversity. Knowing how to win, yes that’s important. Staying even keel and not getting too high. But learning how to cope with struggle is important as well.”
Just a couple of the more salient points of the article. If you want to read more, then hit that link.
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Led by head coach Pascal Vincent, the Manitoba Moose proving...
