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When you talk to people in André Tourigny’s past, the attribute they cite most often is his ability to build relationships.
“Sometimes, it’s just about honesty,” said former Coyote Alex Tanguay, who played for the Avalanche while Tourigny was an assistant coach there for two seasons. “You always want an honest answer from your coach. It might not be the answer you’re looking for, but if he tries to give you that and then he gives you solutions to grow your game, to help you get better and put you in a situation where you’re going to play more minutes, how can you not respect that guy?”
Tourigny has not yet built that sort of relationship with the Coyotes players, but in an effort to further forge those bonds, the team went glamping near Payson this past weekend. The team-building exercise is an annual event, but this one was close to home and it allowed everybody to unplug for a 24-hour period before ramping up for the regular season, which starts Thursday in Columbus.
“I don’t know if we had a (cell) connection but I did not see anybody on their phone,” Tourigny said. “It was fabulous and the guys had a lot of fun. We played a lot of outdoor games together and we played pool, ping pong, and we ended up playing golf.
“When you talk about team building, you want something the guys will do together. It looks easy to organize that sort of thing but it’s not that easy. Most of the time, it happens organically, but I liked the number of smiles and the number of guys that had fun together; the mix of guys. Until Oct.1 in training camp, we had two (separate) groups so the guys were not even together. To have a chance to mingle with the other half was phenomenal.”
Tourigny has talked often about the culture he is trying to build, but there are also some habits of his own to which his players will have to adjust. I sat down with him for a few minutes after practice on Monday to touch on several of them.
Tourigny has hinted several times since his hiring that he would not name a captain to start the season while waiting for that player to emerge organically. He confirmed that on Monday. The Coyotes will go with a leadership group of players who will wear As as alternate captains. That group could rotate.
“We have good leaders here,” he said. “(GM) Bill (Armstrong) did a really good job to get some leaders from the outside and we have a bunch of guys who were here who grew as well. They’re older guys now. They have more experience in the league. They are more assertive and they want that leadership role. It will be a mix of it.”
Tourigny’s stance on morning skates is music to every reporter’s and many players’ ears. He does not believe they hold any value.
“You saw the practice today,” he said, referencing the Coyotes’ fast-paced, battle-heavy practice that lasted nearly two hours on Monday. “Do you think I could do that at a morning skate?
“We won’t have a morning skate unless we could not skate the day before so we will not have a morning skate (for the season opener) in Columbus and we will not have a morning skate in Buffalo. We will morning skate the day of the home opener because we are not skating the day before.”
I asked Tourigny why he thinks teams still employ morning skates.
“A lot of players like it to go on the ice and shoot some pucks and get loose, but for me, you need to know who you are as a team, you need to know each other and you need to know that it will not create bad habits,” he said. “Sure, we’re trying to build our culture and the way we do things, but if you look at (sports) science, morning skates are no good. They don’t do anything. I think a lot of people are going in this same direction. Some guys like it and it’s superstition and I understand that, but at some point, I think you draw a line in the sand.”
The Coyotes will leave on Tuesday (today) for Thursday’s season opener to allow their bodies to acclimate to the Eastern time zone.
When we go out east, the visiting team practices at 11:30 but in reality for us, it’s 8:30 so it changes the whole day,” he said. “We want to get our guys used to that.”
Unfortunately for Tourigny, the NHL schedule won’t allow the Coyotes to do that as often as they would like. On two occasions this season, the Coyotes only have one day between a home game and a road game in the Eastern time zone. That same scenario occurs four times with trips to the Central time zone.
Former coach Rick Tocchet did not practice often at the Ice Den Scottsdale. There was a reason behind that. The training and medical facilities in Scottsdale are cramped, making life harder on the Coyotes’ equipment and medical staffs.
Tourigny doesn’t have any plans to alter that approach.
“We will only practice at the Ice Den when this one (Gila River Arena) is not available,” he said. “And when we don’t have a morning skate, we will go to EXOS and train. We will have a meeting room there and that’s where we will do our special teams meetings.”
When new coaches arrive, they bring new terminology with them. Tocchet had a number of terms that he introduced such as surfing (when a defenseman closes the gap on a forward by skating toward him on a curve rather than in a straight line, allowing him to dictate the direction of the play).
Instead of surfing, Tourigny calls it “squeezing.”
Instead of “toes up” (keeping the play on the boards in the defensive zone), he uses “building the wall.”
There’s also “cut hands.”
“Meaning the way we angle and finish a check in the gloves to take away their hands so they cannot make a play, instead of shoulder to shoulder,” Tourigny said. “If we have the puck, it’s the same thing, You want to get your hips in their gloves so they cannot make a play.
“There’s a few examples like that. The language I use is the language I gathered by going around Hockey Canada and working with a lot of NHL coaches, like John Stevens, Ken Hitchcock, Mike Babcock. Babs used ‘cut hands.’ The important thing is to be clear with the player and make sure everybody understands.”
Both GM Bill Armstrong and Tourigny expressed belief on Monday that forward Phil Kessel will play in the season opener. “I don’t have the confirmation that he is clear for Thursday but seeing him in practice today, I feel confident,” Tourigny said.
The Coyotes assigned forwards Barrett Hayton and Ryan McGregor to Tucson on Monday while placing defenseman Kyle Capobianco (lower-body injury) and forward Alex Galchenyuk (upper-body injury) on injured reserve. With those roster moves, the team reduced its roster to the 23-man limit before NHL opening day on Tuesday.
Here is the opening-day roster:
Centers: Nick Schmaltz, Jay Beagle, Johan Larsson, Travis Boyd.
Wings: Clayton Keller, Lawson Crouse, Loui Eriksson, Antoine Roussel, Christian Fischer, Phil Kessel, Dmitrij Jaškin, Ryan Dzingel, Andrew Ladd and Liam O’Brien.
Defensemen: Jakob Chychrun, Conor Timmins, Shayne Gostisbehere, Anton Strålman, Ilya Lyubushkin, Victor Söderström and Vladislav Provolnev.
Goaltenders: Carter Hutton and Karel Vejmelka.
After starting the season with Chychrun paired with Strålman, Tourigny has switched up the top two pairs. Defenseman Conor Timmins is now paired with Chychrun and Gostisbehere is playing with Strålman.
“Both of them can move the puck,” Tourigny said of his top pair. “Tims has good poise and a good read of the game as well. They can read off each other and we really like Strålman with Gostisbehere. Stralman is a really, really stable defenseman and Goose has a lot of offensive ability. Having that veteran presence with him to read off him will help him.”
As for the third pair, right now, it sports a pair of right-handers with Ilya Lyubushkin playing the left side and Victor Söderström playing the right side. Vladislav Provolnev is the seventh defenseman for now. It remains to be seen what will happen to the defensive group when Capobianco comes off IR. Tourigny said that Lyubuhskin played the left side a fair amount in the KHL with Yaroslavl Lokomotiv and has some comfort there.
Starting goaltender Carter Hutton only played five periods in the preseason. That was a bit of a surprise to some analysts, especially with a week off between the last preseason game and the season opener.
“That was the plan,” Tourigny said. “He was ideally not going to play the first two games so from there it was first game, two periods, and the second game, he played a full game (against the Kings) and then we got to the last game in Vegas and we said, ‘What do we want to do here?’
“He played really well in L.A. so we talked to him, talked together and he said he was feeling good and didn’t need to play so that gave us an opportunity to play (Karel Vejmelka) in Vegas.”
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