No experience necessary

Sporting News, The, Feb 12, 1996 by Larry Wigge

The banner is not colored in crayons, but some might wonder if a less-advanced sports fan has authored the sentiment.

"Don Shula (with Xs marked through the name), Pat Riley (with the same treatment) and Doug MacLean. Who's the best?"

Doug Who?

Fans around that banner cheer loudly for the first-year Panthers coach as the sign is paraded around the Miami Arena.

MacLean laughs it off at the All-Star Game. "Here's a quiz for you," he says. "Pat Riley, Don Shula, Jimmy Johnson and Dottg MacLean. Who doesn't belong?

"The answer is: They write books on coaching. I just read them." MacLean has spent a lot of time working as an assistant coach for the last 10 years. He has developed a great sense of humor in that role. At 41, he is getting his first opportunity to be a head coach in the NHL -- and, if the vote were taken today, he would be the ranaway winner as Coach of the Year.

"I won a contest the other day," MacLean says, deadpan. "It was for being the best-dressed coach in the NHL. I didn't have the heart to tell them I only own one suit."

Coaching in the NHL is a vagabond's life. Here today, gone tomorrow. In fact, a record-tying six coaches already have been replaced -- equaling the in-season mark set in 1990-91. Gone are Montreal's Jacques Demers, Hartford's Paul Holmgren, San Jose's Kevin Constantine, Dallas' Bob Gainey and Ottawa's Rick Bowness and Dave Allison. They've given way to a new breed of coach -- a coach with little or no NHL head-coaching experience.

"I couldn't coach today," says Al Arbour, winner of four Stanley Cups for the Islanders. "At first, the players kept me young. But then the job became a real nightmare because I had to deal with all of their money squabbles -- and their agents. Coaching became secondary.

"Now, it's definitely a young man's job."

When this season began there were four rookie coaches -- Steve Kasper in Boston, Ted Nolan in Buffalo, Craig Hartsburg in Chicago and Larry Robinson in Los Angeles. The list expanded to eight when Mario Tremblay replaced Demers, Paul Maurice replaced Holmgren, Jim Wiley replaced Constantine and Ken Hitchcock replaced Gainey.

"I've never seen so many good young coaches come into the league at one time," Blues Vice President Ron Caron says. "With the salaries of today's players, the players are often unbridled. So it takes a good jockey to whip them into shape.

Doug MacLean has injected youngsters and a new life into the Panthers, and Ted Nolan in Buffalo has taken a team most gave up for dead (after the team traded star winger Alexander Mogilny and decided not to re-sign Dale Hawerchuk and Wayne Presley). He came in and showed the players who was boss and has the Sabres playing better than anyone would have expected."

Most of them have coached in junior hockey, the minors or as assistant somewhere, except Tremblay, who went from the broadcast booth to the hottest hotseat in the game.

"I thought I was a pretty good coach upstairs," he says. "But the players never talked back to me when I was on the air. Patrick Roy, for one, didn't wait long to give me an earful after I went behind the bench." After being dismissed in Ottawa, Bowness took a job as assistant coach on Long Island. It's obvious he still bears animosity over losing his job.

"A few years ago, you had to be an ex-college coach," he says. "Men it was ex-NHL players and then it was former minor league players. Now, it's guys with little or no experience. Go figure."

His success is a profile in perseverance. His parents raised 12 children on the Garden River Reserve of the Ojibway Native American nation at Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. There was no indoor plumbing until he was 16. He hitchhiked or walked to his first junior games because his parents had no car. He heard racial insults when he played.

"The first thing I did after I convinced the Sabres to hire me, I went to my parents' graves and cried," Ted Nolan says.

Nolan, 37, recalls the influence his parents had on him -- as a player and coach. He left his first NHL training camp because he was homesick. But his mother put him on a bus and sent him back to the Red Wings' camp. Mom and dad also gave him the confidence to succeed in life after a back injury ended his playing career. He took classes at Lake Superior State University, enrolling in public speaking and motivation classes.

His success with Sault Ste. Marie in the Ontario Hockey League was legendary. He turned down three minor league coaching jobs to become an assistant coach with the Whalers in 1994-95. After Sabres General Manager John Muckler went through several candidates to replace himself as coach, he got a call from Nolan, who wondered why he had not been considered, "He went through an awful lot to get this far, that's what impressed me the most," Muckler says. "He's a career coach who was willing to pay his dues. At Sault Ste. Marie, his teams always overachieved. That's the sign of a very positive young man."

Nolan says he can't give in, no matter what problems he has been handed while the Sabres' management tries to trim about $6 million from its payroll. He has laid down the law -- and there are no passengers on his team.