Ken Hitchcock on Thursday night became an 800-game winner, leaving just 244 to Scotty Bowman’s NHL record which, figuring five more seasons of 50 victories, seems, even at just-turned age 66, feasible. For a guy accused at each of his four firings of wearing players out with exhausting mental gymnastics and negativity, Hitchcock lasted five-plus years in St. Louis, his longest run since the original seven seasons in Dallas.

Besides, Hitch insists he’s learned how to take a day off, which means the players get desperately needed days off from him.

“When I was with the Flyers I had done nothing but win in midget, junior, and in Dallas,” he said. “So everything was drive, drive, drive because you were expected to at least be in the conference final every year.

“Columbus was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I learned how to back off on the off days. Am I still driven on the game days? You bet, but on the off days, I get away. Get the work done and get out. I don’t grind mentally like I used to; it was bloody obsessive. I don’t think that makes you a better coach.”

Four hours after Hitchcock said this, his Stars, playing their fourth game in six nights on the road, forced the rested and red hot Flyers into overtime before Alexander Radulov took the second of his two penalties and Philadelphia scored, costing Dallas a second point on top of a well-earned first one. It brought this kindler, gentler Hitch to his post-game presser looking for blood, obsessively too.

“It was two really poor penalties by a good player,” said Hitchcock. “It’s disappointing after the way we fought in a back-to-back game.

“Our role players did exactly what they needed to do. But we are not going to get better until our impact players have a positive impact on the game on a consistent basis. They need to come through to carry us to the next level.”

Let the record show that Tyler Seguin has six shots on goal and hit a post in overtime. His team did not win, so he had not done enough. If Seguin or Jamie Benn, undoubtedly going through Hitch Hell these days, have quickly come to wonder exactly what is Hitchcock’s standard of enough, they need to call Keith Primeau, who has taken so many calls questioning how to live with the fat man that Keith essentially runs a Hitch Hotline. Mike Modano, Derian Hatcher, Simon Gagne, David Backes and Vladimir Tarasenko can provide the same service as, eventually, Seguin and Jamie Benn will too.

Despite Hitchcock’s insistence that he has learned to tell a generation of new age players not just what to do but, as they increasingly demand, why, and even called his relationship with key Stars a–get this–friendship, Hitch never leaves a player’s head. Even if he has knocked off early from the office oh, maybe one day a month, his idea of letting up.

At some point, a coach gets almost as tired of wanting more, more, more as does the player trying to meet those demands. The boss then better chooses his fights, sands down his rough edges and indeed, becomes a better coach on the way to being replaced for not winning at the same rate he did a year or two earlier.

Such is the life they have chosen. Ridiculous, but true: Bowman got fired in St. Louis and Buffalo, and after the latter, might never have gotten back behind a bench had not Bob Johnson taken ill and Scotty been conveniently in place as a Penguin personnel guy. He won another Cup for the Penguins before their stars rebelled. Perhaps as a result, Bowman’s mind games were subtler in Detroit and perhaps just as effective.

Then again, Bowman had reached the point he could pull it off because he had won. “Players coaches”, if such a genre truly exists, don’t last as long as guys like Hitchcock and Mike Keenan and, once fired, certainly aren’t as likely to get hired again. Hitchcock credits all his demises to his leaders–essentially the guys who learned how to take him–having moved on and there is a lot of truth to that. Indeed, blood has to be spilled for any NHL coach to reach a lofty place on the all-time victory list.

Trust the Islanders who won four consecutive Stanley Cups: Behind the scenes, Arbour wasn’t always Uncle Al.

“If you don’t have energy, you can’t last,” said Hitchcock. “The players can’t get there by themselves; it’s too hard, you need the energy to help them.

“That’s the key to longevity in coaching. There is going to be a lot of aggravation and emotion. Can you take those players to that other level? Do you have energy to do it or is it going to wear you out? A lot of coaches get worn out.”

So do some players, but except in a few cases, most of those weren’t worth the effort. Gagne describes his first two years with Hitchcock as a “nightmare” until, coming back from the lockout, it suddenly all stopped, and Gagne became one of the messengers to the rest of the team. That message? Essentially it was, “Yeah, he’s a bleep’ but he knows what he is talking about so do you want to win?”

Hitchcock never wears the Stanley Cup ring he won in Dallas but its gleam caught his Flyers’ eyes regardless, following an ugly mutiny against Bill Barber. Those veterans became redeemed because they recognized what Hitchcock could do for them. The Stars need only to look up into the rafters of American Airlines Center to know why he is back and why they should suffer him.

Sure, you can go home again. Why not? Hitchcock’s rehiring was ultra-popular with the fans and more important, all the players on the 1999 Cup team are gone. Other than the front-office persons still in place from his first run, it’s almost like he has moved on to another franchise. And, for what it’s worth, Hitch barely recognizes Dallas for the hockey city it has become.

“When I first went to Dallas, we were responsible for growing the game,” he said. “Now I just coach.

“Hockey and minor hockey have great followings in Texas. When we played New Jersey, I coached against two kids from Plano (Stefan Noesen and Blake Coleman).”

Hitchcock had more to do with that growth than just winning a Cup. Critics can be cynical about the guys who best fill reporters’ notebooks becoming above reproach by the media but they sell the game, in this case Hitchcock enthusiastically to the once-hockey heathens of the Southwest.

Nevertheless, the greatest selling job Hitchcock always does is to his best players, who, however painfully, learn how much more complete they can be than they thought possible.

“Nobody teaches the game better than Hitch,” says Kings’ coach John Stevens, who was on Hitchcock’s staff in Philly and succeeded him as head coach. “He has a very clear vision of his team’s identity and can pinpoint the specific details he requires.

“As a Civil War buff, he is fascinated with leadership. And as far as any ‘new Hitch,’ I do think he is trying to gain a greater understanding of today’s athletes and how they think so he can better communicate. He always is trying to better himself, but it’s from a good foundation of what he believes is necessary.”

Until Russ Farwell hired Hitchcock, to his first pro job, a Flyer assistantship, in 1991, his only access to pro coaches was through clinics he religiously attended. He watched, read and essentially mentored himself into becoming the third winningest coach in NHL history.

It is an incredible success story. Fifteen of the 31 current NHL coaches never played in the NHL, but none of the other 16, except for Hitch, failed to reach even any major junior or collegiate level, Not a one possesses a degree in marine biology, either. Hitchcock ran a sporting goods store in Edmonton while he moonlighted as coach of a dominant midget team and ate himself towards a likely early grave. He probably would have become a sales rep for a equipment company had he not applied on a whim for the Kamloops junior coaching job and shockingly got it, chosen essentially because he would work cheaper than experienced candidates.

“From where I’ve come from, it’s a long ways,” he concedes, and he doesn’t just mean the 200-plus pounds he lost from 476 before Farwell brought him to his first run in Philadelphia under Paul Holmgren. “Three years ago I had a reunion with guys I played public golf with in Edmonton and one of them stood up and said, ‘You know what I am proudest of Hitch? That you are still alive.’

“The way we ran and carried on, I’m surprised all of us are alive. We all had good jobs, money to spend and, every day and night, we were out of control. That’s why I am so grateful for hockey. It not only has given me a good life but it really saved me. If that midget team hadn’t gotten me into a structured environment, I would have been in big trouble.

“I was almost embarrassed to pass Al Arbour (for third all-time in wins). Joel Quenneville (second) is a contemporary all of us coaches admire but there are so many Western League players I knew personally who played for Al that he became mythical in my mind. So this doesn’t feel right. I’ve talked to a lot of people about what Al was like as a coach. Al was a blue collar player and a western guy I could identify with strongly.”

Finding compelling reasons for one, two, three and four-time champions to want to keep on winning, was a yearly battle for Arbour through flat regular-season stretches. Having the Islanders unfailingly prepared for the most important time of the year, required a superb coaching job. But of course Arbour had five eventual Hall of Famers to work with. In a 31- team league with a salary cap, the talent is so equally dispersed that the coach, once comparable in value to maybe your fifth best player, may have become as important as the leading scorer.

Hitchcock says the game has become so fast that the defensive structure he was in the forefront of bringing to the game is ebbing. “Tennis has become ping pong,” he says both in marvel and maybe, a hint of disappointment to this control freak. It was to think on a level with learned coaches like Hitchcock that a generation of technocrats have been hired to stand today behind every NHL bench.

“A coach needs his staff more than ever because there is so much detail to be taught in the game,” said Hitchcock. “It’s so competitive, so close, that the staff can make a huge difference in adjustments, preparation, and post-game review, especially post-game review. The good teams don’t go into the ditch because of what they learned from the last game.”

As voracious as once was Hitchcock’s compulsion for food, it has always been even greater for knowledge. A self-taught guy will be learning until his last breath. He has a consultant’s job waiting for him beyond the bench in Dallas, but even in his seventies Hitch will be a coach, or a coach-in-waiting, no mere consultant. Should no NHL, or KHL or junior or college team want him anymore, he will find pickup games to organize on some frigid rink at midnight, although Stevens says that day never will arrive. “There will always be a demand for Hitch’s services at a very high level,” he said.

Even so, it’s hard to imagine any demand for him outlasting his demands on himself.

“I just want to go one year at a time now,” he says. “Do I have energy to dig in and make the player better? If I don’t, it’s time to get out.

“I feel like I still have it but I don’t know how long it will last. To challenge the player on a daily basis to reach his potential is mentally taxing. But that connection to a team, I would really miss. I love that.

“Between jobs in St. Louis we formed our own little workout and golf team. We had a riot but it was always team, team, team. I am no good at individual stuff, have to feel a part of something.”

Join the Discussion: » 2 Comments » Post New Comment

» The Penguins Suck it Up

» More Than Ever, the Winner Will Earn It

» We Have a Right to Know

» It's a Good Plan, but Only for This Time

» Taking a Shot Before There's a Shot