The best power-play coach in hockey is now running the bench of the playoff rival Dallas Stars, but Glen Gulutzan won’t soon forget his glorious time with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Co. after his seven years as an Edmonton Oilers’ assistant working with five different head coaches. Read More
The best power-play coach in hockey is now running the bench of the playoff rival Dallas Stars, but Glen Gulutzan won’t soon forget his glorious time with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Co. after his seven years as an Edmonton Oilers’ assistant working with five different head coaches. So Gulutzan won’t be running the power
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The best power-play coach in hockey is now running the bench of the playoff rival Dallas Stars, but Glen Gulutzan won’t soon forget his glorious time with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Co. after his seven years as an Edmonton Oilers’ assistant working with five different head coaches.
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So Gulutzan won’t be running the power play in Dallas, too?
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“No thank-you,” laughed Gulutzan, whose lethal power play in Edmonton crested at 32.4 per cent one season, an NHL modern-day record, but will let Neil Graham, Stars’ AHL affiliate head coach, run it for Gulutzan, who has enough on his plate in his third stab at being an NHL head man after earlier times with Dallas and Calgary.
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“Never even crossed my mind. I’ve known Neil going back to when he was starting out in Idaho in the ECHL and I was in Calgary. We first met for an hour or so over a coffee one day there,” he said.
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Oil Spills
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Gulutzan will have Graham, who interviewed for the Dallas head job as well, work with Miro Heiskanen, Roope Hintz, Jason Robertson and others in Dallas while Gully now watches 97, 29, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Zach Hyman and Evan Bouchard work with whomever Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch brings in to replace him.
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Gulutzan, who also looked after the Oilers forwards as assistant coach, had the time of his life coaching the Oilers oiwer play, though.
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Some critics would say, that McDavid and Draisaitl really ran things, of course. Gulutzan doesn’t discount their input, for one second. But he would be the guy weaking things when teams figured out the PP, and 97 and 29 were all ears, and respected his smarts totally, because when Gulutzan came to the Oilers in 2018, they were last in the league on the PP.
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“I don’t disagree. It’s not totally wrong,” he said of the people who downplay his influence on the power play. “We went through an evolution. We changed the structure and we kept working until it involved into a juggernaut and we had the best players in the world in the right spots. You let them play together for two to three years and bang, we set the league record.”
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When he first came to the Oilers, the power-play machination was different.
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“We wanted to make sure the D-man was the facilitator and his job was to get it into Connor, Leon and Nuge’s hands, in the right spots,” said Gulutzan who first had Oscar Klefbom on the point with 29, 97 and Nugent-Hopkins and Alex Chiasson and James Neal switching off at net-front.
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Bouchard is the passer for sure today, but he’s also got the Bouch Bomb.
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“He’s a great facilitator but you’ve also seen his shot. That was another great weapon to Edmonton’s arsenal,” said Gulutzan.
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“The greatest source of pride for me was working with those athletes for that amount of time. There’s some ideas that all of us brought. That’s a treasure for me,” said Gulutzan, who always listened to what 97 and 29 and Nugent-Hopkins had to say, but in the playoffs it became a chess match and Gulutzan was up for the challenge.
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Who fits the bill to replace Gulutzan here?
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Certainly a guy who played helps the power play, he said.
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“But there’s lots of young guys who’ve studied power plays, studied the Anaheim power play, Colorado, Kucherov in Tampa. You don’t have to be a (former NHLer) for that. It’s knowing the different structures, how different PKs work. Those five guys are going to know their spots and know what to do. Just find the personality who can work with those guys and add value to it,” he said.
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“Maybe it’s the right time for somebody else to take on that challenge, because things can get stale,” he said.
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Gulutzan fully admits he wasn’t ready for his first kick at the can as Dallas head coach in 2011 to 2013. “I was two years out of the ECHL. I coached just two years in the American League before Dallas. It was way, way, too early. I didn’t have enough scars on me,” said Gulutzan, who has coached almost 1,200 NHL games as head coach and assistant, and almost 100 in the playoffs, but was a newbie 14 years ago and wasn’t rehired by current GM Jim Nill when his contract ran out, as Nill went with Lindy Ruff, instead.
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“Jim told me then he didn’t like getting rid of good young coaches but he wanted more experience. Looking back I agree with him. He was right,” said Gulutzan, who was hired for his first stint at Dallas by GM Joe Nieuwendyk.
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He was more prepared in Calgary in his second shot at being a head coach from 2016 to 2018, making the playoffs his first year, but after two seasons, they opted to change and go with Bill Peters after the team hit the skids down the stretch and missed the post-season.
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That’s when Gulutzan joined the Oilers.
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He had interest from other teams but now he’s back in Dallas with a ton of familiarity of roster after Stars played Oilers in two straight playoffs.
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“I don’t know if it made it more comfortable but made it easier with the interview,” said Gulutzan, who had heard his name mentioned often from reliable sources when Pete DeBoer was fired after losing to the Oilers in Round 3, but didn’t know he was getting an interview until late in the Florida final.
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Gulutzan said he had a bite the year before when another NHL team reached out, and he had two other feelers this past season, apart from Dallas.
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“I knew I was getting back on the ferris wheel,” he said, adding he benefited from facing the Stars in the playoffs.
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“It gave me a leg (up) in the interview. I knew the players and how they played, but going to a team with 106 points, the expectations are high. They’ve been to the Final Four three years in a row and you know how hard that is. The Stars are one of eight to 10 teams with a realistic chance to win a Stanley Cup, and there’s not many of those,” he said.
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What did he see from Stars that needs to be better?
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“They’re a tremendous rush team but at my presser, I said they need to be one degree harder, more forechecking, holding onto pucks, grinding teams down a bit. They’ve got some big bodies … (Jamie) Benn, (Miko) Rantanen, Robertson. A one-percent more physicality game built into the 82-game schedule,” he said.
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