Just 17 months ago, Gerard Gallant was abruptly fired by the Florida Panthers and left at the curb following a road game to hail his own taxi as the team bus drove away.
On Sunday, the 54-year-old Canadian was packing his bags for the National Hockey League‘s (NHL) Stanley Cup finals as head coach of the Vegas Golden Knights and part of the unlikeliest story in sports.
Gallant was still all business in Winnipeg on Sunday night after Vegas had beaten the Jets 2-1 to ice the series 4-1 and ensure they would be the first expansion team to play in the NHL final in 50 years.
READ MORE: Winnipeg Jets’ playoff run ends with 4th straight loss to Vegas Golden Knights
“It’s been an awesome ride so far. But again, this isn’t what we want,” Gallant said.
“We’re far from satisfied.”
The Knights, who will play the Washington Capitals or Tampa Bay Lightning for the NHL title, have been dubbed misfits after being rejected by their former clubs, and the description applies equally to former goal-scoring forward Gallant.
“Each guy was given a new chance and opportunity here,” said Knights veteran forward James Neal.
“(Gallant) gave you that opportunity and let you work with it. He’s just positive, the perfect coach for our group.”
WATCH: Vegas beats Winnipeg in 5 Games to advance to Stanley Cup Final
For Vegas fans, the team’s success resonates deeply.
The Knights, Nevada’s only pro team in any of the four major North American leagues, was quick to reach out to victims and first responders after a mass shooting in Las Vegas last fall just as hockey season started.
“It has a lot of meaning,” said Knights fan and Vegas resident Lynn Romano, who returned to the city she grew up in for Game Five with her daughter Mikayla, 10.
“The community came together with hockey. There’s a big connection.”
WATCH: Paul Maurice on Jets loss
The Knights dominated early, forcing an errant pass by Jets defender Josh Morrissey that ended in a Vegas goal by winger Alex Tuch.
Morrissey tied it late in the first period with a rocket shot that beat Vegas goalie Marc-Andre Fleury high.
Vegas notched the winner in the second, when Winnipeg-raised winger Ryan Reaves tipped a shot over Jet goaltender Connor Hellebuyck’s shoulder.
The loss was crushing for Winnipeg’s rabid fans, especially as the Jets had earlier eliminated the NHL’s best regular season team, the Nashville Predators.
Fans had dressed in white costumes ranging from Elvis to fast-food icon Colonel Sanders at parties dubbed Whiteouts, which will now fade to black with the club’s elimination.
“There’s actually a very small part of me that is sad for Winnipeg,” said Romano.
The Vegas Golden Knights are headed to the Stanley Cup final as an expansion team.
Amazing.
One of the men most responsible for that is Golden Knights head coach Gerard Gallant, who spent two seasons as an assistant coach with the Canadiens under Michel Therrien in 2012-13 and 2013-14 before being named head coach of the Florida Panthers.
The Panthers unceremoniously fired Gallant in November 2016 after they got off to an 11-10-1 start one season after finishing with a 47-26-9 record and made the playoffs for the first time in four years before losing in the first round. Gallant was a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s best coach that season.
In an interview with Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic last week in Las Vegas, Gallant said he didn’t expect to make it to Christmas that season with the Panthers following a management shakeup that saw Dale Tallon removed as general manager and replaced by Tom Rowe. On a conference call after firing Gallant, Rowe said there was a “philosophical divide,” between Gallant and Panthers management. Tallon is now back as GM of the Panthers.
The Panthers’ loss was the Golden Knights’ gain and Gallant is a solid bet to win the Jack Adams Award this season after leading Vegas to a 51-24-7 record — the fifth-best in the NHL — and a trip to the Stanley Cup final following Sunday’s 2-1 victory over the Winnipeg Jets in Game 5 of the Western Conference final to win the best-of-seven series 4-1.
LeBrun also interviewed Therrien for his article on The Athletic website about his relationship with Gallant behind the Canadiens bench. Therrien said he didn’t know Gallant very well before he joined the Canadiens staff but that they became good friends.
“He became a really close friend,’’ Therrien told LeBrun. “We had chemistry right from the start when we started working together. He’s a very loyal guy. That’s what I remember the most about Turk, he’s loyal to his friends and loyal to the people that he works for. I’m super excited about the success that he’s having in Vegas. He’s a big part of what’s happening there this year.”
Knights are 48 weeks into their existence.
The Sabres are 48 years into their existence. — Kevin Paul Dupont (@GlobeKPD) May 20, 2018
When Gallant was back in Montreal as head coach of the Panthers during the 2015-16 season, he said about Therrien: “To be honest with you, I coach very similar to Michel. A lot of the systems Michel used in Montreal, I use with my team in Florida. Michel was a great teacher for me. I had two great years with him. Real good person. We worked well together.”
The Canadiens players had high praise for Gallant at that time.
“He’s one of the best guys I’ve ever met in hockey,” captain Max Pacioretty said. “Everybody speaks so highly of him.”
Added defenceman Nathan Beaulieu, who also played for Gallant in junior with the Saint John Sea Dogs: “He’s just a player’s guy. He’s so approachable. You’re in junior, you’re young, you have problems, and he’s just so easy to talk to. He’s always there for you. You can call him any time of the night. He’s just a good, old East Coast boy (from Summerside, P.E.I.). He’s down to earth and he’s got a big heart. Very fortunate that I got to cross paths with him.”
So are the Golden Knights.
scowan@postmedia.com
twitter.com/StuCowan1
There are currently no items to display.
What is the magic of Vegas coach Gerard Gallant? What is his secret super power?
I can’t say for sure. I’m no expert on him and his team, so I can only speculate. But I was nonetheless struck by something he said last week when he was asked a question about holding his players accountable for mistakes in a game.
“It’s a game of mistakes,” Gallant explained. “You’re not going to be perfect every time you’re on the ice, and then when mistakes happen, you forget about them and you move on. You can go over that game (Game Three of the Conference finals) and there’s not one player on the ice who didn’t make mistakes last night. Like I said, they’ll own up to their mistakes but they don’t have to. That’s part of our game. You make mistakes, you move on, you play the next shift and you hope you make some good plays. Those guys are accountable guys and they work hard and they don’t got to apologize to me. They just go to go out and play their game and get better every shift they can do.”
The reporter then asked a follow-up question: “It’s obviously a big part of your success, though. Like, is accountability a big part of your success?”
Gallant shrugged. “I guess it is to a point. But, again, I’m not holding my players accountable for making mistakes. You got out there and if you worry about making mistakes, you’re not going to play a good game. I want you going out there and thinking you’re gonna make the good plays and do the right things on the ice. So don’t worry about your mistakes.”
My take
I haven’t heard a more refreshing comment from an NHL coach in some time. Think about this quote: “I’m not holding my players accountable for making mistakes.” It’s quite the mouthful, certainly not something I expected to hear, not in the cautious, conservative world of NHL coaches. I love how Gallant insisted on his point, even as the reporter evidently wanted him to say that accountability was indeed a key or the key to winning. Gallant refused to adopt that position because he clearly doesn’t believe in it. Again: “I’m not holding my players accountable for making mistakes.” And: “Don’t worry about your mistakes.” The quote certainly resonated with me, partly because I’m a minor hockey coach and partly because I’m an Oilers fan. I’ve come to be preoccupied with how to teach young players to be more aggressive and confident on the ice. It’s no simple task for a rank amateur such as me. As for being a fan, when I’ve watched current and former Oilers players like Justin Schultz, Ryan Strome, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Jesse Puljujarvi in recent years, I’ve often wondered what it might take for them to play the game with more confidence, as I’ve sometimes seen more skill from them than on-ice results. Some players, Taylor Hall and Connor McDavid for example, come into the NHL and there’s no holding back their self-expression, their will to show all their brilliance. But so many others come in tentative and uncertain, flashing marvellous talent but unable to unleash that ability consistently. Sometimes those players crack the code, as Schultz has done in Pittsburgh, and as Nugent-Hopkins did increasingly this year. Can Strome and Puljujarvi find the path to apply their full ability to the game? Can Oilers coach Todd McLellan find a way to unlock their high level skill? Evidently Gallant wants a focus on what his players should do, not what they shouldn’t do. The stress isn’t on accountability so much as it is on positivity. Of course, like any NHL coach, he believes in disciplined defensive play and coaches defensive skills. As he says, he wants his players to do “right things.” But his mindset is to dwell on doing the right things and making good plays, not on punishing players for mistakes. In saying this, Gallant also knows he and his players are in a pressure cooker of accountability already. In fact, there’s a near overwhelming emphasis on accountability. These players have been hearing since they were small boys about the various things they must do on the ice. With seasoned pro players, most of the accountability comes with a player holding himself to account, and with it also being done by teammates. But it’s also apparent Gallant realizes how important it is for a team to remain positive and confident in a chaotic game where even the best squads make numerous glaring mistakes. How many mistakes does an NHL team make each game? About 120 per game, that’s my best estimate. That’s a lot of mistakes, but it’s the nature of the game. The puck is round, the ice is slippery and the game is largely improvised, so what else would you expect? By mistakes I mean mental errors, such as missed assignments, turnovers and bad line changes, but also lost battles. Some of the mistakes are much worse than others and, of course, the worst teams will make more than mistakes than the good or great teams. But on average I’d say an NHL team makes about 120 notable mistakes or lost battles per game. How many of these mistakes are truly rancid and will almost certainly the attention of a coach? Players on a single team make about 30 major and glaring mistakes every game, I estimate, about one every second minute. These are the kind of mistakes that can easily lead to goals against if some teammate, very often the goalie, doesn’t save the day. What do I base these estimates on (and you can skip ahead to Point #12 if you’re not interested in this nitty gritty)? This past year fellow hockey writers Jonathan Willis, Bruce McCurdy and I tracked mistakes made by the Oilers on scoring chances against. As a team, the Oilers gave up 8.0 Grade A scoring chances per game, with 18 major mistakes per game on those eight chances. But we only counted the major mistakes that actually ended up as shots on net from the inner slot. There were plenty of other major mistakes that didn’t end up as scoring chance shots. My conservative estimate is there are about two dozen more glaring mistakes per game. An NHL team will make, on average, about two glaring mistake for every three minutes of play. In total, the Oilers gave up 1,320 Grade A and Grade B scoring chances in 2017-18, 16.1 per game. The team made 3,496 mistakes on all scoring chance shots against last year, about 43 such mistakes per game. Of course there were many more small mistakes that led to outside shots, missed shots and missed chances from the slot. There were also numerous battles lost, including one on each face-off. Most of these would not be totalled up in our count, as they did not result in scoring chances against. In the end, it’s safe to say there about 40 major, rancid mistakes per game, and about 80 other smaller but notable mistakes and lost battles. This means a mediocre NHL team like the Oilers will make about 120 mistakes a game, about two every minute of the game (and I suspect I’m being conservative in this estimate). A really good team, like Vegas, probably chops that number by 10 or 20 mistakes per game. Suffice it say, 40-odd major mistakes per game is enough that if a coach were to focus on those mistakes, and forcefully hold his players accountable in the moment for each one, things would be extremely sour and dour on the bench. The difference in a game is often whether or not players have the ability to shrug off their errors and the confidence to take on and beat opposing players. A player who lacks confidence is one who will hesitate and fail to use all his skills to win a battle. Gallant is taking a confident, aggressive but also calculated approach to the game. It’s evident he doesn’t want his players to dwell on mistakes and perhaps shrink in fear on the ice by being too cautious. He takes a bold and audacious approach, one where his players focus on attacking hard, getting after the other team, and in a game of mistakes, forcing the opposition to make the majority of errors. Sounds like a plan, eh?
At the Cult
McCURDY: Adam Larsson shows his quality as Sweden wins gold
LEAVINS: Leon Draisaitl took it on the chin in a couple of ways in 2017-18
McCURDY: Oilers sign Joel Persson to one-year pact … to pl;ay in Sweden
STAPLES: Boston insider proposes Boston-friendly deal for Klefbom & 10th overall
