You have been away from the NHL and the North American game for six years. What is going through your head as you shift from something so dramatically different — the English Premier League — back to this?
“It’s quite simple. I am not allowing emotions into my space. From the day I made the decision, I have been extremely focused on taking care of what I need to take care of on that day and I haven’t drifted beyond that.
“The first few months were about developing a revised plan for where the NHL is today, where the speed of the game is and the lowering of the physicality and the increasing of the offense. With my assistant coaches, we developed a plan throughout the summer. I mean, we brainstormed hours and hours and hours. Once the plan was clear, it was about how to implement it. We had lots of contact with the players in the summer, lots of communication before we even came together. Every day, we have so much to work on and improve on so we have stayed on topic. I’ve just been plowing through some hard labor together with the staff and the players and that’s really it.”
How did you familiarize yourself with the NHL game after being away so long?
“I’m a coach that focuses much more on my own team than others. There’s always pre-scouting — and I don’t watch every minute — but our video guys cut them together and they know what I’m looking for. In the end, it’s been a focus mainly on us and it continues that way. We’re making sure we’re getting our principles and concepts in on a regular basis.
“As far as the need-to-know the details, I have that around me. I have that support from my coaching staff. There is so much copy and paste in the league that you try to look for the nuances and I try to look for the personality of a team. Every team has a personality and I have enough time to go team by team, even with the back-to-backs, but it is a learning process.”
Is there an inherent advantage from having worked in Europe and being familiar with so many other hockey-playing cultures?
“We have 10 (European) players. Almost half your team comes from European cultures so understanding them helps a lot: the needs of a Finnish player vs. a Czech vs. an American. They come from completely different backgrounds so it’s important to be cognizant and respectful of that. There are different buttons to push — not that everybody from a country is the same but I do feel that is an advantage I have.
“Having said that, this is such an international game now. Hockey is played very similar all over the world now. There’s no real European and North American game anymore. I think they are all meshed together. You have the different (ice) surface but the great Swedish players have a lot of the same traits as the great Americans and Canadians. Twenty years ago, there was such a different personality coming from each country. Now, everybody has homogenized the game because they have taken the best parts of different cultures.”
You didn’t get much of a chance in Edmonton. Why come back after all those years in Europe before and after the abbreviated Oilers experience?
“More than anything, I was looking at all my different experiences in life and what was the next place where I could use the maximum amount of my toolbox. This was the only role that gave me that feeling. I could have gone into team presidency or there were two groups looking to purchase teams in the Premier League that asked me to lead the purchase. I had three really weird options.
“After the Olympics and the World Cup, there was so much hockey going on inside my brain that I wasn’t able to put into play and I thought if I don’t do it now I might not ever be able to do it. I can use my leadership skills at the same time. Everything in my life seemed applicable to what Buffalo needed. It felt like the right time to come here. I took the job because it checked more boxes than any other one and the personal challenge and the respect I had for the challenge made me want to climb another really steep mountain and this was the steepest of them all. The others were quite a bit flatter and softer.
“I think it’s a renewing experience for my whole family. This is the world I was in for 25 years. We never cared where we were, whether it was in Austria or the Olympics. I just love the day-to-day life as a head coach so to be able to step back into that lifestyle, my whole family has really embraced it. My kids are adults now but this is a journey we are sharing together. It’s definitely refreshing and renewing. The people of Buffalo and this organization from Day 1 have been extremely supportive about this abstract hire.
“I could have had a lot tougher month of August or September. Friends of mine who might have questioned me taking the job because of the perception of me coming from the Premier League in a chairman role to this, but the people of Buffalo were open right from the start and that has helped a lot.”
