Today new Thrashers coach Craig Ramsay met with reporters in Atlanta for the first time since he was hired last week and, again, spent a lot of time talking about what kind of system he plans to play.
I find a coach's background of interest in terms of how he saw or learned the game. A lot of the game's hot young coaches now learned it from the ground up in the minors or junior(Peter Laviolette in Philadelphia, Guy Boucher in Tampa).
Ramsay is interesting in that he was a first-round pick, played forward in the NHL for 14 seasons and won the Selke Trophy, given to the game's best defensive forward. For my money, defensive forwards (think Bob Gainey) are among the smartest players on the ice. They're not reacting, like, say an Ilya Kovalchuk does. They're always thinking about positioning and observing little details about their opposition in order to contain them.
So I asked Ramsay how being a Selke winner and being known as a defensive forward informed the type of coach he is.
"I think I understand the defensive side of the game and people always would look at that reputation as a Selke winner or a Selke candidate year after year," he said. "I think one thing that people sometimes forget to look at it is that I scored 20 goals eight straight years. Donny Luce and Danny Gare played with me on a line and we had 99 goals as a checking line and the next year Danny scored 50. I think that's one of the most under-rated accomplishments in the history of the game.
"People don't realize that. Fifty goals from your checking line -- a 50 goal-scorer --wouldn't that be nice? So what we're saying is everybody is involved at both end of the rink. We need five guys at both ends of the ice. If you're going to be successful, you need five guys coming back. You can't have players who [think] 'Hey, I'm a scorer,
