Sixty minutes from the first conference finals of his NHL career, Barry Trotz strolled along the bench, shook a few hands, and was down the Verizon Center tunnel before a single player from either team had left the ice. Was he excited? Is a tube of tile grout excited?
“We just won a hockey game,” he said a few moments later, summarizing the moment. Yup. Just won a hockey game. That’s it.
It was, of course, one of the biggest wins of the Alex Ovechkin era, a 2-1 heart attack over the Rangers in front of a hysterical, braying crowd. One more victory — out of three chances — will push both Trotz and his core to a place they’ve never been. But as he has for weeks, Trotz remained — dare I say? — medium.
That didn’t change during a thrilling Game 7 win over the Islanders in the first round, and it hasn’t changed as the Caps surged to a surprising 3-1 lead over the Rangers, the NHL’s top regular season team. Before the playoffs began, Trotz explained the main lesson he’d learned in seven previous playoff campaigns: that you can’t overreact, can’t get caught up in the nightly spinal jolts of postseason hockey, can’t yell at officials or mull over a lost opportunity.
If “you’re not in control, they will not be in control,” Trotz said, and he hasn’t wavered. With the Rangers leading by a goal and dominating possession Wednesday night, and with fans calling for him to finally to shake up his lines – which have been as consistent as traffic on 66 – Trotz declined.
He was rewarded with a second straight goal from his previously silent third line, this one a bit of beauty from rookie Andre Burakovsky that tied the game near the end of the second period. That same line started the third period, and Burakovsky did it again, breaking out a video-game move that paralyzed Henrik Lundqvist to give the Caps the lead.
Did you notice Trotz’s reaction when Braden Holtby stoned Carl Hagelin on that third-period penalty shot to preserve the lead? As his players stood and cheered, and as fans high-fived and embraced, Trotz merely paced.
The most memorable image of Rangers Coach Alain Vigneault from this series involved him howling at officials after the Caps scored a last-second goal to win Game 1. And Trotz? Um. That time he crossed his arms maybe? Or the time he sipped on a drink behind the bench? Or maybe after the Caps won Game 3 in thrilling fashion, when virtually the first words out of his mouth were that his team could play better.
“I’m relaxed because I feel confident that we’re prepared,” he said. “I feel relaxed because I trust the group.”
That’s the man players have encountered, the one who lives out every coaching cliché.
“Doesn’t worry about what has happened, worries about how we’re going to react to it and what we’re going to do next,” Brooks Laich said. “Always pushing forward, always looking forward.”
“He’s been different [from other coaches] in that sense,” Karl Alzner said. “When we lose a game, he’s like we lost, we didn’t play good, forget about it, who cares, let’s go be better next game, and that’s nice. He doesn’t come in and ream you out and say you guys are terrible, this and that. It’s turn the page and play better, and that’s big.”
“Very relaxed,” Jay Beagle said. “Obviously he’s been doing it for a while, so he’s confident and it gives us confidence.”
Sure, it’s easy to be relaxed and confident when you’re leading a series, when your fresh-faced kids like Burakovsky and Evgeny Kuznetsov are Globetrotters on ice, when your goalie is turning somersaults in his crease and leading the league in goals-against average. (And to be fair, it was Trotz who held Burakovsky out of early playoff games; only an injury to Eric Fehr brought him into the lineup.)
But remember Game 2 against the Islanders. The Caps trailed, 2-0, were using a backup goalie and facing a two-games-to-none hole. Trotz didn’t waver, telling them to keep doing exactly what they had been. That comeback win set the tone for the rest of the series.
The same thing happened Wednesday. The Caps were outpossessed much of the game, but they blocked more than three times as many shots as the Rangers, won 57 percent of faceoffs, and rode superior goaltending and defensive energy to yet another one-goal win.
“You can see our commitment when we are in the defensive zone,” Alex Ovechkin said.
“It is playoff hockey,” said Troy Brouwer, one of the few Cup winners on this roster. “Hard on the walls, making sure that we’re finishing our checks down low, not letting their D-men get in the rush. Just little things that sometimes go overlooked, but those little details are what give you advantages.”
And that’s the message Trotz has delivered throughout the playoffs. His team’s style, he told them, was already playoff-ready. Nothing needed to change. Just keep plowing ahead. Our game is made for this time of year, he told them. It will work. Give it time.
“That’s what he preaches all year long is execution and hard work and you wear teams down,” Alzner said.
“At the end of the day we’ve kind of stuck to the same ideals, the same structure,” John Carlson said.
“Which is nice, because when you see a big change, then what was the season for, right?” Beagle said. “From the coaching staff and from what we’ve seen from them, it’s just a consistency of what we’ve worked on all season leading up to this. And this is why we did it, is for the playoffs.”
Of course, the style hasn’t succeeded yet. Some players noted that the Caps are likely fortunate to have this series lead. And Trotz brought out another classic hockey chestnut: that the hardest game in any series to win is the fourth.
Then he left the podium, with the same enthusiasm with which he had left the ice. The celebrations can wait.
