Players love Blashill; Holland loves that he wins
In Jeff Blashill, the Red Wings would have a coach whose players would throw themselves in front an oncoming bus to protect him. In the departed Mike Babcock, they had a coach whom players often wanted to push into the path of a bus.
Not that it makes a damned bit of difference when it the puck drops and winning is on the line. It's just to suggest that coaches often have dramatically different ways to motivate their players. And as different as their demeanors might be, Blashill, like Babcock, is a proven winner behind the bench.
And that's why the Wings are unlikely to consider anyone else after general manager Ken Holland sits down with Blashill to talk about a little vacancy in Detroit.
It should be a short conversation. Blashill is the guy the Wings have been grooming for an NHL gig, and this is the dream job for a made-in Detroit guy, the son of a former police officer. Money won't be an issue when the Wings tear up his $400,000 annual contract and multiply it by three or four times in a deal likely to be worth in the neighborhood of $5 million to $6 million over three years.
That's a fair wage for an entry-level NHL coach, even considering Babcock's front-loaded deal worth a reported $5 million over eight years. Todd McLellan, the former Babcock assistant in Detroit who went on to coach San Jose, signed on with Edmonton for $3 million a year -- which for a day made him the highest-paid coach in the NHL.
But this is less about money and more about continuing a legacy of winning in Detroit. That's something Babcock contributed greatly to in the decade he served the Wings -- though Detroit fans would have liked to see his team win a few more playoff series.
Holland likes his club's chances with Blashill. Why?
"First off, he seems to have something. He wins wherever he goes," Holland said, mentioning how Blashill got a beleaguered Western Michigan team into the NCAA tournament by quickly rebuilding that program before coming to Detroit. "Prior to that, he won a championship in Indianapolis ... The first year we hired him as coach in Grand Rapids, they won the Calder Cup."
Blashill was Coach of the Year in the American Hockey League last season, and now has his team in the Western Conference finals after two series wins. In the opening, best-of-five series this spring, his Griffins lost their first two games at Toronto, but responded with three straight victories to advance.
What first caught Holland's eye about Blashill, though, was when he coached Detroit's kids in the Wings' annual Prospects Tournament in Traverse City.
"It's now eight teams, and we never won that tournament," Holland said. "The first year we hired him as Grand Rapids coach, he coached our team and they won the tournament."
As far as Blashill's credentials go, Holland said, "I think those are enough. You hire people and you make them accountable. He's got a work ethic. He's got a plan. He's coached before. He's got experience.
"He wins."
That's management talking. The players who grew up in Detroit's system and were developed under Blashill are even more effusive in their praise.
"I love Blash," said winger Tomas Jurco, who struggled this season and needs a bounce-back year to establish himself on the Detroit roster. "He understands the game really well. He's a really good guy, and you can talk to him and he understands you as a person. Great guy. Great coach."
Tomas Tatar, the leading goal-scorer on the Calder Cup team a few years ago, agreed.
"He's a good talker. He can motivate the players," Tatar said of Blashill. "I feel like the system and how he's willing to play with the players is really good. Players feel like they can talk to him. He's somebody who they can trust and feel good (about)."
Winger Landon Ferraro, who made an immediate impact as an energy-line winger with Luke Glendening and Drew Miller after a late-season call-up, goes even further. Ferraro says he owes whatever NHL career he'll have to Jeff Blashill.
"For me, Blash has been huge," said Ferraro. "He's taken me from a guy that had the tools to get here and get a chance to someone that's actually gotten here.
"He made it clear that I wasn't going to make it right away as a scorer, and that I've got to make sure I'm good defensively. I made a ton of strides with him working with me the last three years, and I owe a lot to him. He's a guy I would pretty much do anything for. I trust him, and he's got the respect of all the guys in Grand Rapids."
The Detroit roster is loaded with players -- 14 of them regulars on the roster this season -- who were groomed under Blashill. If he can establish the same kind of rapport and trust with the veterans in the Wings' locker room -- and there's nothing on his resume to suggest he cannot -- then this should be a seamless transition from one coach to another.
(FOX Sports Detroit's Dana Wakiji contributed to this story.)
