Miracle worker Brooks will win with talent this time

Sporting News, The, Dec 20, 1999 by Larry Wigge

Herb Brooks was getting the transmission fluid changed in his car when an attendant at the service station near his Minnesota home peaked through the door in the waiting room.

"He said, `Hey, you've got a phone call. It's long distance,'" Brooks says. "I said, `Who in the heck knows I'm here, other than my wife.'"

That's how the long arm of Penguins G.M. Craig Patrick reached out and convinced Brooks to return to coaching after a six-year absence from the NHL.

Patrick's team in Pittsburgh, which nearly beat Toronto in the second round of the playoffs last spring, also needs a few minor adjustments. The good news is no major surgery is necessary to revive this team, which stumbled to an 8-14-3 start under Kevin Constantine.

Up front, the Penguins still may be the most skilled team in the Eastern Conference. But when you lose nine times by one goal, as Pittsburgh has this season, a change in philosophy is needed.

Players said Constantine, who likely will resurface as coach of the expansion Minnesota Wild next season, called too many meetings, had too many full-contact drills and showed too many clips of the previous night's mistakes.

Those same players got a chuckle when they learned that as soon as Brooks, who last coached in the NHL with New Jersey in 1992-93, got the word, he dashed home, got his skates and went to his local pond so he'd be ready for his first Penguins practice.

Strange isn't it? When Mario Lemieux saved the Penguins from bankruptcy last spring, everything was supposed to be rosy. The team was young and exciting and filled with promise considering the talents of Jaromir Jagr, Alexei Kovalev, Martin Straka and Co. But that promise quickly turned into frustration when the egos of players and coach collided.

Brooks, 62, has spent five years as a scout for the Penguins. He is not out of touch. On the contrary, Brooks was ahead of his time during his coaching days with the Rangers, North Stars and Devils. His theory of a perpetual motion offense didn't work in the NHL in the 1980s as his 190-198-61 record indicates. But his attempts to have a weaving offense are exactly what many successful teams use today.

"We think we've got a man who fits what we have here," Patrick says.

"We're going to play an up-tempo, dynamic game," says Brooks, whose last head coaching job was for France in the 1998 Olympics at Nagano, Japan. "It's ice out there--it's not blacktop, wood or dirt. The first thing is to get back to even and play a type of game that fits into the abilities of the players we have here."

Despite being off to his fastest start, Jagr recently was called on the carpet by Constantine because he wasn't playing enough defense.

Excuse me, but you don't suffocate the multitalented Jagr.

"Jags is a cross between Jim Brown and Wayne Gretzky, with his strength," Brooks says. "You wouldn't tell Brown or Gretzky to think more defensively now, would you?"

Patrick says it wasn't hard convincing owner Lemieux, the greatest 1-on-1 player in his days, to make a change, especially since Super Mario often had said he wouldn't want to play for such a rigid, structured coach as Constantine.

"Let's face it," Brooks says, "we're in the entertainment business. And the athletes are the most important part of the equation.

"It's a fast-moving game. It's all about instincts and skills. There's no time to run to the library and try to figure out what you're going to do next."

Though some might consider Brooks as abrasive as Constantine, he's a polar opposite in regard to the freedom he gives his players on offense.

The Penguins aren't used to playing Brooks' full-court press, up-tempo, attack style, designed to work from defense up in its own zone with a make-you-pay attitude with turnovers in the neutral zone.

Constantine's workouts sometimes made hockey look like a football regimen. Brooks' make it look like basketball ad-libbing--with an accent on fast breaks. "Lots of open-ice skating, lots of flow, lots of puck-handling," Jagr says with a smile.

You use every inch of the ice playing for Brooks.

In Brooks' first two games as coach--a 3-0 victory over Washington and a 4-2 triumph over Phoenix (in which they limited the Coyotes to a club record-low 11 shots)--the Penguins showed the discipline they learned from Constantine and the freedom they were being given by Brooks.

"We will make the playoffs," Patrick predicts.

The Penguins G.M. can be that confident because he has worked firsthand with Brooks before--their greatest achievement being the U.S. gold medal at Lake Placid in 1980.

No, don't let Brooks' birth certificate fool you. He's still sharp as a tack--and he's taking over a team that is ready to listen.

Pittsburgh will get turned around, but it won't take another Miracle on Ice. This team is too talented for that.

Associate editor Larry Wigge covers hockey for THE SPORTING NEWS. E-mail him at wigge@sportingnews.com.

No gray area

Herb Brooks didn't expect to hear talk about his age (62) when he decided to return to the NHL.

After all, just one week earlier, Bob Pulford, 63, went behind the Chicago bench. Scotty Bowman, 66, and Roger Neilson and John Muckler, both 65, already are coaching in the league.