The Rangers introduced David Quinn as the 35th coach in team history Thursday. While winning a press conference doesn’t translate into victories on the ice, losing one could set a negative tone moving forward. To use a baseball term, Quinn knocked it out of the park both at the introductory press conference and post-conference media appearances. He came across prepared, was willing and able to answer any and all types of questions, set the level of expectations he has for himself and his players and provided a bit of insight into his coaching philosophy.
Full Press Conference:
The quotes are from the Sporting News, SNY Rangersblog, NY Post, NHL.com etc.
Sources close to the situation indicated the Rangers twice sweetened their financial offer to pry the 51-year-old away from Commonwealth Avenue.
Quinn said he was approached by several NHL teams over the past few years about making the jump.
"This was really the only situation I would have left Boston University for," he said Thursday at Madison Square Garden, with a gold Rangers pin on his lapel and a huge smile on his face.
Though Quinn made it clear that money was not the only factor in getting him to leave BU, ultimately the Rangers did have to increase their initial contract offer to get him signed. What became clear from listening to Quinn was that this was the job he really wanted and only one he would have considered leaving given that he had in his view a perfect situation at BU.
In Quinn, the Rangers are hoping they'll get a coach proficient in a number of areas, from being able to relate with and get through to the team's young core and the players it will continue to add, to stylistically and how he envisions the team playing, to his willingness and open mindedness to incorporate data into his decision-making.
Quinn could bring his guru of analytics, Kathryn Yates, who was a Rangers' fan growing up, see column (http://www.espn.com/espnw/voices/article/18968851/kathryn-yates-cool-sports-job-bu-hockey-director-analytics) with him to New York. Yates made a material difference at BU and would benefit any organization. Quinn's youth - even though he is just five years younger than Alain Vigneault, but he looks more youthful - plays well based on that potential roster construction, which could consist of 13 players with college hockey experience.
The 13 are: Kevin Shattenkirk (BU), Chris Kreider (Boston College), Kevin Hayes (BC), Brady Skjei (Minnesota), Jimmy Vesey (Harvard), Neal Pionk (Minnesota-Duluth), Brendan Smith (Wisconsin), Rob O’Gara (Yale), John Gilmour (Providence), Steven Kampfer (Michigan), Boo Nieves (Michigan), Vinni Lettieri (Minnesota) and Ryan Lindgren (Minnesota). Quinn's ability to relate to those players, especially younger ones, will be critical to accelerating their developments and making the rebuild seamless.
On his coaching style and culture he wants to create, "I like to think that I am fair and demanding. There is no gray area with me with players. They want to get better and held accountable but the message has to be that this is in your best interest, it's not about me being the big-tough coach, it's about letting them know that everything we we are doing is to make them better players. When a player realizes that and how much you care about them, there is a trust factor that creeps in and that is where success happens.
"In order to win games, you have to hold each other accountable, whether it's your best and older players holding the younger guys accountable, but your younger guys should quietly be holding the older guys accountable as well," Kevin Hayes said. "Everyone is on the team to win one thing, and we all know what that is. You obviously have to have the right players and the best players, but a major thing for a successful team is accountability. It shouldn't just be the guys who have been here for seven, eight years holding the younger guys accountable, it's a team-wide thing."
"He kind of holds everyone accountable defensively and then kind of lets you do your own thing offensively," Hayes said. "Obviously defense leads to offense. I feel like in my four years here I’ve thought a lot more defensively than I have offensively. I think with a good relationship and a good trust between the both of us, if I do my work defensively I’ll be able to provide a lot more offensively."
"He holds everyone accountable,” Hayes added. “And we need to hold each other accountable, and that means the younger guys holding the older guys accountable, as well. It shouldn’t be just the seven or eight oldest guys doing that. Everyone’s here to win the same thing.”
"I wouldn't seek out his criticism but he would give it anyway. He is someone who had a huge impact on my career, and developed me from the college level and minor league level, he scratched me at the minor league level and it's something that maybe at the time I wasn't grateful for, but it really woke me up to what I needed to do to succeed," Kevin Shattenkirk said.
"He is -- like he said -- he's fair and demanding. That's very accurate," Shattenkirk added. "He treats players with a lot of respect but he expects you to show up to work every day, and he wants to work on something every day, so it's constantly growing, it's constantly developing as a player, and that's something that we need here.
"In knowing him so well and then really thinking about our team and what direction we need to head in, it's the right move; it's the right way to go."
Fair and demanding. Accountability. If you read the comments from Hayes and Shattenkirk, those two elements were missing in New York last year. From listening to Quinn, both of those components of his coaching style and manner of dealing with players is not just lip-service but ingrained in everything he does. The past few years saw a drop in accountability, Quinn, as seen in the story regarding Kevin Shattenkirk hopefully carries that willingness to hold and call players out when appropriate rather than focusing only on a few.
On skill development and developing players, Quinn said, "we are going through the stage of figuring out what the roster is going to look like. You want to spend as much time with the individuals as possible, we have systems but the concepts within the systems will be important. Stick positioning, angling, all the hockey terms that you need to do to become a better player whether it's from a forecheck standpoint, a D-zone standpoint, you need to work on these things daily in practice and practice is important. You gotta come to the rink with a game-like mentality and work on getting better. We are going to do that, be in great shape, our practice will be fast and there will be a lot of attention to detail."
How do you define a rebuild, "take advantage of the draft picks but my job is to develop people on a daily basis. We gotta come to the rink everyday, make every individual better, make the players realize that, improve our systems on a daily basis and to me, it's patience. If you make 22 mistakes on a Monday and 21 on a Tuesday, you've had a good Tuesday. That is the mindset we have to have, getting better everyday. It may be cliche but it's true."
Jeff Gorton: On being hands on, "we spoke to a lot of players that have played for David, been around David and it always came back the same, that he is a hands on guy that loves to be a teacher and it's hard to get him off the ice. This is a hard job as we rebuild and he is the guy that will help us do that."
Shattenkirk: What should the team expect from Quinn, "hard work. He is someone who drills the details of the game into you. You work a lot in practice and it's not being out there for two-hours and being run into the ground, but when we go out for 30-40 minutes you go out to work and get better and that is something that we need. We have a lot of youth on our team and they need to be coached and developed and he is someone who takes individual players and coaches them on that level and also take the team and make sure we are structured and it's something that you have to work hard to achieve but winning is something that will result as of our work ethic.... He is very detail oriented, expects a lot of you as a player and holds you to very high standards. For a lot of guys I think that is a great thing. He doesn't take mediocrity and for us here, that is what we need, it's time for us to develop and he will be a great leader for our team and is truly invested in coaching players and making sure they achieve their full potential.
Hayes mirrored the remarks made by Shattenkirk and Gorton. What's also clear is the practices, at least the last few years, were less than optimal and left a lot to be desired. Teaching and developing players take on a higher focus. Players can and will need to improve on their own, but the job of the coaching staff will be to build on their skills, maximizing their abilities. Take what the player does well and enhance it. Focus on an area of need and make that less of a weakness at a minimum and possibly convert that weakness into a strength.
What kind of style of play, Quinn said on WFAN with Mike Francesa: "pressure, puck possession game that is built around defense. Defense isn't just what goes on in the defensive zone. When there is a change of possession in the offensive zone or neutral zone we want to get the puck back quickly and take away time and space and make people uncomfortable and when we get it we want to possess it. It doesn't mean we aren't going to have to chip it behind people at appropriate times but that is not the system we want to play. We want to be hard to play against and fast and physical."
How do you see him help on defense, Gorton said: "one of our areas of concern was our D zone play, our defenseman jumping into play, getting pucks out of our zone, clearing the front of the net. As you go through the interview process he is nodding his head pretty significantly to understand what we need to do. I think we think the same and that will help us."
Defense triggering offense but Quinn will adjust his system to fit the personnel, not vice versa. his experience as a defenseman as a player and then as a coach should aid in that adjustment. Quinn will also use analytics wisely, as noted above, rather than having ones that reportedly were in place previously. In addition, his willingness and ability to build personal relationships with his players also should aid in this regard.
Player relationships was an area of focus by Penguins coach Mike Sullivan, who looks and sounds like Quinn "He will build relationships and I think that's how you get the most out of players," Sullivan said. "Don't get me wrong, he's got a good command of the Xs and Os and he'll be a prepared guy … but if you ask me what I think his biggest strengths is, it's building relationships."
Those thoughts were echoed by his former players at BU.
Minnesota Wild forward Jordan Greenway said Quinn was hard on him during his two seasons at BU but always was approachable and fueling his confidence.
"He's a coach you can go up to all the time, and if you're playing bad or just don't like the way your game is going, you just want to be like 'Coach, I need some help,' and he helps you out and does video," Greenway said.
BU freshman forward Brady Tkachuk, one of the top prospects for the 2018 NHL Draft, credited Quinn for being "optimistic, charismatic and passionate."
"He's a big communicator in between periods," Tkachuk said. "When we're not playing so well, he's definitely getting on us and telling us to wake up. Whatever he does, whether he's hard on us, he's always the biggest supporter of our team. ... I'm going to miss him."
A coach that relates to all of his players. We will see how he manages the demands of coaching as a head coach in the NHL as to whether he can maintain those personal relationships. Hiring the right assistants will be key. Benoit Allaire returns as the goaltending coach. Beyond that is unknown. But whoever is added must share the same coaching and player relationship philosophy with Quinn. Names mentioned have been Martin St. Louis, Brian Leetch and Jack Capuano with Lindy Ruff's status up in the air. Everyone highlights this as being Quinn's strength, and seeing the development phase New York is in, those relationships will be key. He has it already with Shattenkirk and to a lesser extent Hayes while Kreider and Vesey are well aware of Quinn, same with Skjei, who I believe played under Quinn in a junior tournament.
If you want to get an even stronger sense as to Quinn's passion and philosophy, read this QA with Steve Serby (https://nypost.com/2018/05/26/david-quinn-talks-motivation-memories-and-bucky-dent/). These two questions and responses provide the perfect overview:
Q: What won’t you tolerate?
A: Laziness.
Q: Will you have rules?
A: Give me an honest effort every night. Every day and every night as a player. Be attentive, and give me an honest effort mentally and physically every day.
Quinn won't put up with a half-hearted effort from anyone. That has been lacking the past few seasons. He will put players in a position to succeed. The more I listen to him and read his thoughts, the more impressed I am with Quinn. He looks to have the perfect temperament to succeed in NY. Time will tell, but initial perspective is that Quinn and Chris Drury and Glen Sather got this right.
New York Rangers Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»