If Todd McLellan needed any reminder as to why he got the job as San Jose’s head coach, it arrived today in the form of his Stanley Cup ring.
Proudly showing off the jewelry, McLellan refuted the claim his team is the best in the league right now.
“When I look at the rings we just got to day, it says the Detroit Red Wings are Stanley Cup champs,” said McLellan. “Until you knock them off when it counts, they’re the best team in the league, and they won the Stanley Cup for a reason. They’ve got a tremendous amount of talent there and we’d like to capture some of the foundation things that they use.
“Obviously as a coach here I believed in them and the players proved that it works, so I would not be a very intelligent coach if I didn’t implement some of that stuff.”
It is the ultimate compliment in professional sports when a team tries to duplicate your style. It would be easy to look at the Sharks and say they were ripping off the Wings by hiring McLellan to coach the team, but their success this year goes far beyond the guy standing behind the bench.
“This team’s been built for a long, long time,” said Red Wings head coach Mike Babcock. “Even people before Doug Wilson, you know they’ve done a good job, they’ve had prospects going there forever. What Todd’s done is he’s gone in there as a fresh face and he’s got a little bit different way of playing.”
Typically when a former assistant leaves any coach’s staff, the relationship remains close. There is mutual respect between Babcock and McLellan, but the fierce competition between the Wings and Sharks has minimized their chatter.
“If he was in the east, we’d talk more,” said Babcock. “We still text and that. We talk when we play them. Not as much as we probably would if we weren’t competing against each other and their team’s doing so well. In the end, he’s probably hoping and I’m hoping that one of us has an opportunity.”
It’s tough to say the Wings are struggling when they are the second best team in the west, but there has been a certain lack of intensity accompanying the 2008-09 season so far. You need only look at the last handful of games for an example. It seems the Wings are consistently playing from behind.
Tonight’s matchup against the best in the west may get Detroit firing on all cylinders as soon as that first puck drops.
“They’re the best team in the league, they’ve set the bar very high,” said Red Wings forward Dan Cleary. “They’re playing great. Great system, great players with solid potential. I’m excited about tonight. I’m excited to see where we really are. We need to really come out and play well. Good start. Good finish. We need to play a good 60 minute game and make it something to build on, we haven’t been very good the last few games at home.”
The puck drops at 7:30 tonight at Joe Louis Arena as the Wings look to claim their 45th and 46th points of the season.
