The Hockey PDOcast - From the Archives - with Rikard Grönborg

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

In a previous interview with Rikard Gronborg, Dimitri talks to the coach about using data to help make decisions, balancing short-term results vs. long-term process, and his experiences at the 2016 World Cup coaching the Sedins  This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

dressing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipo. Welcome to the HockeyPedocast. My name is Dimitra Filipovich, and here's a plan for today's show. So initially, we were going to rerun an oldie-but-goody interview that I'd done last year with Rickard Gromberg as today's show, and we still will do that in a couple minutes here. But before we get to it, I had to quickly record a little intro, at least giving my initial reactions to the news that the Detroit Red Wings had placed Yakubrana on waivers because it's a topic

that's very near to my heart. As people who have followed my work for the past couple years know, he is one of my favorite players in the league to watch. I've been talking up how good of a player he is and how valuable he is and how excited I am by him for years now. And so obviously this year has been incredibly worrisome. First and foremost, all that really matters here is Jakubana, of the person, not the player. And it's great to see that, you know, he was willing and able to take the steps necessary to enter the player assistance program to get help, to work on himself, to figure things out off of the ice.

And it seems like he's working towards that. We've only seen him play two games in the NHL so far this year. We've seen him play, or he has played a couple games in the HL for the Grand Rapids, the Red Wings, AHA affiliate so far. And it seems like he certainly still got a long road ahead of him, in particular in terms of getting back up to speed to be able to physically play at the NHL level in an NHL game action. And so there's that component to this.

I was really surprised by this, honestly, because I just didn't see a player of his caliber being put on waivers at this point, even acknowledging, you know, all of the other contextual factors. And so I reached out to a number of people to try to, you know, suss out and figure out what they were thinking, whether they saw this coming, if they had any news on it. And honestly, everyone generally seemed to be pretty shocked by it and pretty surprised and pretty taken aback. So everyone's still kind of trying to figure out what's going on and see if there's something deeper to this or if there's other circumstances that we need to consider. We'll see by the

time we record tomorrow's show, we're going to know what happened in terms of the waivers processing. And so we'll be able to react to that. And I'm sure we're going to have a lot more intel by then. But in terms of what's going on right now, like I think I'd like to think that part of the logic here for the Red Wings is simply feeling like whether it is some sort of an unspoken, you know, wink-wink agreement with the other teams to just let Bran up spend more time in Grand Rapids working on himself getting back into form before anything happens here. I'd like to think that's the case. And the Red Wing is just quite reasonably thinking, well, listen, how many teams in the league at this point can realistically even fit in a $5.25 million cap hit? It's totally apples and oranges to compare these two. But it's worth bringing up because a couple weeks ago, when Ely Tobinin was put on waivers, we were shocked at 22 teams passed on it, right? He made it all the way down to the Seattle Cracken who were 23rd in terms of waiver priority.

and entirely different player, you know, when healthy, significantly less valuable, a goal score and player than Jacob Rana is, but also makes significantly less, right? He makes $1.45 million this year and next. And so I thought teams would just be lining up to take a chance on him, and we saw that there was either an inability or an unwillingness to take on another contract, not even a significant one, but one that's $1.45 million to make that work. And Vrana makes 5.25 this year, 5.75 in salary next year. Now, listen, he turns 27 in February.

He's still 26 years old. When he's right and when he's playing and when he's on the ice, one of the best goal scorers in the league. And not only that, but one of the best and most pure lethal 5-on-5 goal scores in the league. And that is an incredibly valuable player. And we've seen him do it for years and be able to create his own shot and convert at a high level, and he can just do things that a very small percentage of NHL players can do. And so you would think that there would be teams incredibly interested in him, and I can't help but think that, you know, a bad team that's low understandings that does have a ton of financial flexibility would be, would do really well here to, you know, acquire him essentially for free by just taking on his contract, allowing him to get right, allowing him to get reps in and get back in a form.

get into NHL games, play score goals, and then either you got an awesome young player who's in his prime for pretty much nothing, or you can go ahead then and retain at 50% salary, let's say, which all of a sudden makes him incredibly more feasible for a number of different teams that are contenders to help acquire him closer to the deadline. He plays for a contender.

You acquire free futures in terms of draftics or prospects along the way. Seems like a no bearer. So we'll see what happens. I'm very curious to see how this plays out, what the logic was here, what the Red Wings were thinking, how it all turns out for them. And I'm sure by the time we record tomorrow, as I said, we'll know plenty more on that. All right. With that out of the way, let's get to the originally planned conversation that I recorded last year with head coach Rick Gromberg. And part of why I wanted to bring it back at this time in particular is A, I think it's really interesting and I think you can enjoy it.

But B, recently over the holidays, it might have snuck under the radar to a lot of NHL fans, maybe not to Canucks fans listening to this on Sportsnet Live because they've been interested in him for a while now, but he did part ways with his team, the Zurich Lions, over the holidays. And the reason why that timing was interesting in particular was he was expected already to leave the team at the end of the season, but they went ahead and essentially fast-track that process,

making him a free agent in-season along the way. And so the rumor mill understandably started buzzing or churning or whatever action the rumor bill does to get going. Basically, people's interest was piqued. And I don't have any insider knowledge on this. I haven't spoken to Rickard in the meantime since we recorded this podcast. But from what I gather, teams are understandably interested. We're paying attention to this story.

and honestly they should be. I think you'll hear for yourself over the course of this interview, he's awesome. We chatted about using data to help make coaching decisions behind the bench, how to communicate with players in terms of the way they're playing

and not necessarily inundating them with all these numbers and stats. And none of that. Just in terms of being aware of what's going on and then being able to communicate with them so that they can either focus on something or, you know, keep an eye on something or get better or just kind of appreciate the patterns that are happening in their game.

We talked about, you know, balancing long-term process with short-term results, which is a key for coaches over a full season, especially if you're going to talk about the NHL where you're playing 82 regular season games. There's going to be a lot of highs and lows along the way and you might be winning a bunch of games, but your play is actually slipping and it can be alarming. Or you could be losing some games,

but you feel like your process is good, your dominating possession, everything's going except you're just not getting some breaks or some bounces here or there. And so kind of how do you stick with that process? And of course, while I had him on, I had to ask him about coaching at the 2016 World Cup because that is a personal favorite event of mine. And, you know, his experience is facing Team North America and kind of the supernova that was at the time. And also getting to work, you know, closely with the Cidines and coaching them as well. I was really fascinated by all that stuff. And he certainly delivered. So Anyways, I really like the way he views the game, how he thinks about this stuff,

the way he puts it all together into one package. And so I think you're going to really enjoy it. And that's all I got. I think I've said enough on the topic. So we will run the tape and you're going to hear my interview with Coach Ricard Gromberg. And joining me is my buddy, Richard Gromberg. Ricardo, what's going on, man? Not much.

No, ma'am. We're hanging out here in Zurich. It's a night for me and a morning for you. That's right. Yeah, we had to get my car. coffee we started a bit earlier than expected so uh hopefully the coffee kicks in as we get going here um i put myself in a a bit of a rare and awkward position here where you could argue that i only have the second best beard on the show and and that's usually not something i find myself saying when i'm

recording the pedocast so i'm just going to have to find a way to push past that but you've obviously been working on that one for a couple years now yeah i know it's been a little bit of a trademark i guess but uh you know i don't mind the beard especially now in wintertime and everything else you try to keep yourself warm. And yeah, I know it's been with me for a while now and we're probably going to stick with it for a little bit too. Yeah. All right. So I've got a couple topics here. I've known for a while that we were going to record this show. So I've been thinking about it. I've been jotting down some notes. So I'm just going to run some stuff by you and see how far we go. So I'm really interested in, you know, the idea of implementing analytics or I guess, you know, kind of more progressive

thoughts or ideas or even just sort of data analysis, even if it can be very simple, into actual on-ice product, right? It's one thing for people like myself to be, you know, talking about it on a podcast or writing blogs, but it's an entirely different thing to actually make use out of it, get functionality out of it by either, you know, preparing for your opponent by kind of scouting their tendencies and sort of figuring out where they like to attack from and how you can try to minimize that or even your own players, you know, this defense pair works for whatever reason or these two guys, you'd think they'd work, but their numbers together just

aren't right. I'm really curious about sort of your approach there. And obviously, you've been coaching for a while now at many different stops. And that's certainly evolved over the years. But you kind of feel that that sort of shift in the profession in terms of sort of keeping up with that and actually sort of incorporating some of this stuff into actual decision making beyond just kind of going with your gut at all times? Yeah. And at the end of a day, I think absolutely. we're implementing, I think, you know, as head coaches and our coaches period, you know, we're trying to always have an edge. I mean, that's at the end of the day.

That's the reason why you dig a little bit deeper. And we're living in the information society right now. There's a lot of information out there. And for me, it's the biggest thing is that you need to try to boil it down. I mean, information is not hard to get a hold of, but you need to boil it down. You need to boil down in a sense of making everyone understands that you present it to. and when it's being presented to me, I need to understand it. And I like to incorporate when we have tendencies of showing pictures of it.

And pictures for me, that's how my brain is working. I need to see that on game tapes or whatnot. And if you do in that, you see the tendencies very clearly. We do not have here in Switzerland. We don't have an NHL staff. So we're working very intimately with that we do obviously. get supplied with with information when it comes to analytics and whatnot. But, you know, you also need to look at it critically in a sense.

If you don't doing that yourself, the data yourself, you need to look at it critically. But again, I think the biggest thing for me is that it needs to be easily understood. It needs to be easily broken down and easily presented, especially when you're doing it with the players. Yeah. I find that's probably one of the big obstacles, right? you're sort of the middleman for that for that flow of information where it's up to you to obviously make use of it and figure out what's important and what's not and how you want to utilize it, but also communicating it efficiently, right?

Like I imagine the level of appetite from player to player is probably going to vary in terms of how much you can sort of communicate with them on, oh, like, this is happening out there, or maybe you want to check this out or whatever. And some guys, you might just kind of leave them alone or not even present them because you know that it's just not going to be received properly. Yeah. And to be, I'm a communications guide. That's, you know, my background.

And when we're sitting in our morning meetings with all the coaches, we're discussing these things. And when we see tendencies going one way, and I have an assistant coach that I've been with you now for, for 11 years through the national teams with Sweden. Also, he moved down here in Zurich with me, Yon Andersson, who was very in tune with, you know, when it comes to analytics and everything else. And he knows how my brain is working.

So when he presents something new, a lot of times he incorporates that with showing pictures. if I see pictures of it, see the tendencies, it's going to be a lot easier for me to implement it in our game plan for that future game or in practice, what we need to get better at and keep working on it and what's actually working. So again, as coaches, we're always trying to find an edge, if you like, and that's what I think analytics is very effective

if it gets presented in the right way. You know, you speak about how you're focusing on tendencies and kind of the visual element. Do you find yourself, are you more interested in terms of at least like the preparation when you're sort of preparing in specific events or do you find yourself more interested in the results? Do you just want to know like, okay, what did this lead to ultimately? It doesn't matter.

Or are you more interested in, oh, okay, well, you know, if this one little thing in the entire process is good or bad, maybe it's influencing the results? I think it's a combination of everything. You know, you're obviously trying to look into the future a little bit, which is always a little tough, but by learning from the past. And the biggest thing for me is the sample size. You know, you can't just go a tendency. It's like watching a game and you see one situation in that game and suddenly that's the complete truth for the whole game. And that's, that's to me, the sample size. If it keeps repeating itself, yeah, now we we have something that's really good or something

that's maybe not so good. So sample size is one thing. We do, we're trying to stress test our system, continuously when we sit and down having those discussions in the morning with the coaching staff. And, you know, we're doing everything with analytics. Obviously, the video is a big thing for me and I'm watching that. Everything from looking, because, you know, as coaches, we're trying to get the games into our strengths. You know, what are our strengths as a team? That's somewhere where you're starting. That's kind of the foundation of everything.

And then you're trying to find situations. And in this case, obviously, analytics to help you out of getting those tendencies and going to to be your favor. Yeah, you know, it's so interesting. Like for me, it ultimately boils down to, you know, you're going to have these in-game settings where they're just higher leverage moments. And you can kind of, it's not as cut and dried as, oh, you know, if we change this one thing, all of a sudden, we're going to win the game or not anything

because a lot of different factors go into it. It's just for me, you're giving yourself a slight mini competitive advantage, right? And I remember I had the only other head coach that I've had on the show in the past was John Mubouloski, who was working with the U.S. development program and then went on to the King's AHL affiliate. And he was very interested in all this stuff and we messaged back and forth about her. And one of his sort of concerns or how he felt that one of the pushbacks or drawbacks to really implementing a lot of this stuff in game settings was people for whatever reason,

whether it's coaches or people in organizations or players, had this fear that using too much data was going to sort of robotatize it, right? it was going to kind of get in the way of them doing their job and sort of just totally change the way things have been operating for however many years they've been doing it. And I really think that's a misnomer. I just view it all as kind of additional information. And then it's ultimately up to you, whether you're the GM or whether you're the coach or whether you're the player as a decision maker to kind of figure out how much of that you want to incorporate. It's like any organization, any business, right? You'd want to have obviously too much information

can become a problem. But it's weird to me that some people would kind of blind finally just ignore stuff just because they're scared of what it might tell them. Yeah. And I think, you know, as as head coaches especially, I mean, we're really getting paid to make decisions, you know, and how do you make the best decisions? And for me is, you know, what I like about analytics and statistics is a cold value, right? It's a cold value to take away the emotions and everything else. This is actually what happens, right?

And somehow, that's kind of a good foundation, too. I'm not saying you should take away all the emotional part. And I'm like, yeah, that's the reason what we're doing this, playing this game. And that's the reason I'm involved in this game. I think you can make better decisions based on just cold values sometimes too. So, you know, at the end of the day, I think the best way for me to describe is you need to be able to present in a good way. I don't like the robotic way. I like the players to play the game.

But if we can help them out by giving them, okay, if you're going to be around this area, say that you're more likely going to score or if you're around this area as a defensive play, you know, you're more likely going to, you know, you're more likely going to, you know, you're more likely going to, you know, you're more likely going to, you know, you're you know, enter the opponents to score, just to give an example of just simplify the information. And I think if you presented that way with players, I think you, you know, you can give tendencies and you can obviously be repetitious in practice and whatnot. So for myself, I like the stress test our system all the time, continues to stress test. I hate the idea of incest of ideas. Like we're saying the same thing over again from, you know, August or whatever we get together. until, you know, March or April or certain cases may. So I continues to ask those, you know, questions.

And one way to do it is with numbers. Another way to do is a video. And there's different ways to do it. And see, obviously, see, you know, for me, I mean, I like to communicate with the players. I like to sometimes it's easier when you have a video, when you have some statistics, some analytics to sit down and discuss and talk about it. And then other stuff comes up. comes up as well.

So I think that's the biggest thing, again, with the information society we're living in today, is for me as a head coach, it's kind of, you know, if you like, you have a lot of polls and areas trying to get them down and somehow, okay, what do we do on today? And let the players focus on, you know,

making the trade better or whatnot, and you're helping them out with that way. Yeah, well, so you kind of tapping into that a little bit. I'm curious for sort of when you're behind the bench coaching, how do you balance, you know, the idea of the process in terms of the way your team is playing first, the actual results. Because ultimately, you're going to be judged based on your wins and losses, right? Like that's what matters at the end of the day.

But I do find that, especially in smaller samples, being overly reactionary in this sport, which is it can be so random sometimes, there can be so much luck involved. You can get yourself in trouble. If you're just purely judging a team's performance based on whether they won or lost, it's a good way to kind of wind up chasing your own tail. And so, you know, there's going to be individual games or even stretches of games where you're playing really well. You're doing everything that, you know, you've talked about before the game and in practices

that you want your team to do, but the puck just doesn't go in. Or maybe your goalie isn't making the saves that you think they should make. And you have nothing to show for it, right? And so I imagine it's, it's tough as the coach, everyone's looking to you, okay, like, how do we get out of the slump? How do we fix this? And, you know, it might not be palatable for you to try. just sit back and do nothing because it's going to give off the illusion that you don't care or

that you're not kind of tuned in or dialed into what's going on. But you might in the back of your head be thinking, listen, if we keep playing this way, we're going to get the wins eventually. We just kind of need to stick with it. Do you find yourself kind of struggling with that sometimes? Or how do you sort of balance those two things between the way you feel your team's playing and whether you actually are getting the results that you think you should get for it? Well, and that's an excellent question. I mean, again, we're all emotional. We're all a lot of times, especially five minutes after a game, you value that game based on the result.

And that's the reason why, you know, most of the time I'm never going into the team after a game because, you know, you're still emotionally attached to those type of situations or your impressions on what happened in the game versus, you know, watch the game through. I always watch the game from start until the end after a game just to get a feel for what actually happened. And a lot of times, you know, you're not right when you're on the bench

compared to what happens. actually watch the game on video because there's so many things that influence your special result influence your impression what happened in the game. But in the same time, I think everyone's talking about, you know, trust the process. No matter win or lose, we're trying to be very, you know, methodical in a way we're presenting stuff to the team. And when I say stuff, it's tendencies in games. Like you said, you know, if we keep doing this, it's going to be really good.

Hey, maybe we need to practice more of this. but that's more of a coaching situation versus when you presented to a team. A lot of times, like you said, you know, lose one or two games. A lot of times now we start playing mind games with yourselves. And the players start playing mind games with themselves. Instead of refocus them, I'll say, hey, listen, this is what happened in the game. Those are the things we need to do better. Win or lose.

These are things we need to do better. These are things we need to keep doing. And I think that to me is the process. What are you doing every day? And, you know, you're trying to get the emotional part of it as much as possible, you know, versus before the game, you know, you try to get the, you know, the motion going a little bit. After game, it's more, okay, what happened? We always have after a game, we're breaking down.

We have some tendencies in the games. We always break down after game. And I asked the players, too, and we have something called after action review, after a game. And after action interview, you know, this comes from the Navy SEALs. After the mission, they go on and it's a flat organization, what everyone can speak, no matter what, you know, what level there are in the military. and we're doing the same thing. I'm asking the questions of a place

because they're actually on the ice and they see them maybe a different way. So I always started with after action review and after that I have a little bit of what I call a package of, this is what the statistics says. This is analytics on the statistics. This is a video. These are a few things we need to do.

If you keep doing it, believe in what we're doing. And that's to me, that's quote unquote, trust the process. That is the process. So, you know, all these information you get, I think it's very, very important that you present in that.

the right way. Yeah, it's always so interesting to me. You often hear when a, you know, if a team wins a game or something, and then it's like, okay, we're keeping the same lineup, even if we might have better options available. Let's say someone was injured and now they can't get back into the lineup because we won the last game. And it's like, well, the new game is an entirely different thing, right? Like, you should be, you should be kind of focusing on what's to come as opposed to just worrying purely if you won the last game or not. So that's always kind of interesting to me, how you manage those two things. All right, let's take a quick little break here in the show. And when we come back, we're going to keep running the rest of my conversation

with Coach Rickard Gromberg. You're listening to the Hockey P.D.O cast streaming on the Sports Night Radio Network. I think that I did want to talk to you about was, you know, these days you see players with the advancements and skill development, just what they're capable of with the puck on their stick is, has developed so much over the past, however many years, even since I started really working in this sport like a decade ago or so, like just seeing what guys, are able to do on a day-to-day basis now is incredible compared to where we were at back then. You know, you watch someone like Trevor Zegrois flipped a puck over the cage to a teammate that bats it out of the air. You see some of these highlight real plays. What are you thinking

as a coach? Because obviously, I imagine when you have a very talented, skilled player that can do some of that stuff or maybe you see them doing it in practice, like, yeah, if it leads the goals, I imagine you're like, okay, well, this is what makes this player special. So I need to give them the kind of freedom to pursue that. But obviously, you know as well that sometimes that could lead to to mistakes or turnovers and we know that coaches sometimes you get really irritated when players don't do the simple play and try to kind of get themselves in trouble by by going above and beyond their means. So how do you sort of balance those two things in terms of creating a space where you enable your skilled players

to to try stuff and experiment and do what makes them special while also kind of playing in that team setting and sort of playing the role of disciplinary or whatever you want to call it as a coach. Wow. You know what I mean in terms of like those two sort of thought processes. Yeah. And that's that's a million dollar question every day, right? So I believe that you need to let the players make decisions on the ice.

That's the biggest thing for me. Our job as coaches, we help them out with a foundation that is a team sport. We working together, positionally strong and all that stuff. You know, we give, we feed them in information. We boil the information down like a. said and presented it in a way that everyone understands and it's easy to, okay, this is, if we just keep doing this, things are got to be pretty good. Now, you know, I, you know, what happens in the game situation? A lot of times the guys are actually breaking them all. The guys are breaking out

doing something that changes the tempo of the game because now, nowadays, every team is so well coached. Every team, you know, have very good players at the professional level. So, you know, the guys actually can break the patternly to do something different, is a lot of times going to be the game breaker. I mean, that's a two, one game or, or, you know, three, two goal or whatever. So, you know, it would be wrong for me as a coach to take that away from players. Now, if this doesn't work, you know, continues to doing the same thing, repetitively try to do the same thing and it doesn't work is also my job to let him know,

hey, listen, this is not working. Right. Don't keep doing it, you know. But at the end of a day, hockey is, you know, you need to allow the players to make decisions. And sometimes it's going to be mistakes. It's just wearing the ice. You're making mistakes. And in what, put it's way, is it a selfish decision?

Is it a decision based on, hey, you just try to do something to win the game for us? There's so many things that plays into me as a coach because I need to guide him in the right way and making good decisions and sound decisions on the ice. And again, it's a million dollar question because everyone is so fundamentally strong right now when it comes to being coached and individually, you know, game plan tactics as well as team practice strategy that, you know, and you need to have players that can actually break the ball in a little bit. Certainly. Yeah. That's very well. So enough of the serious stuff. Let's get to the truly important stuff. The reason why I invited you on the show, I used the guys of having a thoughtful conversation about coaching tactics and implementing analytical concepts. But the real reason I wanted to have you on was to give you. out about the 2016 World Cup of hockey and the game you were behind the bench for against Team North America when you were coaching team Sweden. And I'm not sure if you talked about this elsewhere publicly or or whatnot. And I'm not surely sure how many people even care. Like this is an event that happened over five years ago. I know that there's a cult following for it. And whenever

I tweet about it or I show video that I know people get excited about it, I do think there's a certain level of nostalgia for the event. It's been so long since we got to see an event of that sort a competitive setting with a best on best tournament. And I guess it is a timely conversation for us to have now with the recent news that the NHL won't be going to the Olympics this year again, once again depriving us of that sort of tournament. But, you know, it's a, it's a game that's near and dear to my heart. It's certainly the signature game with that tournament.

You got a front row seat for us. So I just wanted to kind of unpack it all for you, like the entire experience. Obviously, the incentives were different for your team versus team North America. once the game got into overtime, you know, they had an advance. And I think they weren't aware of it at the moment. And they were just kind of playing. And so it wasn't necessarily like a do or die type of elimination game for you. But I imagine it's also, you know, something that you literally had a front row seat for.

And it's a game that is remembered very prominently. Like it's one of the few memories of a game that I have that really is edged in my mind from start to finish. And I know that it kind of captured the attention of everyone. like everyone was talking about, everyone still is talking about it. So I kind of just wanted to get into that a little bit with you. What was the, what were your kind of lasting memories of that game in particular, or I guess the event as a whole in terms of how you remember it five plus years now? Yeah, that was my first, first experience, a head coach too for the national team.

Obviously, at level, I'd been with the team for a long time, but I was the first time as a head coach. And, you know, we did get the toughest schedule. that's at least what the it was a big draw and all that stuff. We had a really tough schedule and we'd play back to back. So we knew this game was going to be really, really tough.

You know, I have to win in the first two games. We're still not ahead of making the playoffs because of other results in that. We needed a tie. At the end of a day, we needed a tie. But we knew it was going to be a really, really tough game. And we knew we've seen them, obviously, Team North Carolina can play in those other games

and we see them, you know, also in exhibition games. we know how explosive it were at that point of time. So for us, the big discussion we have, should we start matched right away with, you know, we had a Marcus Kruger line with Hegelene and Silverberg, which was a very, very solid line that can definitely, you know, be matched against the McDavid line and potentially be solid that way.

But we decided before the game that meant we're going to go ahead because we were successful in other two games against Russia and Finland, went into that game, we win in both those games that we're starting out. And you remember the start. I mean, it was two nothing. And, you know, they had a couple breakaways that are penalty shot. I mean, we're just, oh, how do we stop the bleeding?

And that point of time, obviously, we made a change in the coaching and the pro wrestling line against the McDavid line and then did an awesome job and a really good job rest of the game. And obviously put out the fire a little bit to start out of the game. And I think we, you know, we got that goal by Forsberg in the first period, which was a huge goal for us. And then after that, I think we slowly, because we knew we didn't have that explosiveness when it comes to, we had a lot of smartness on the team. So, you know, the more the game went on, the more game went on. I think we started and eat ourselves into the game.

And at the end, obviously, we got the result. And we, I mean, I even brought the guys in in the last commercial break, hey, they're going to pull the goal here. Just be ready. They're going to pull the goal. They be ready. So they never did that. And it was a little bit of surprise from our part. obviously for us was just we needed to get that tie and we were ahead. And obviously the overtime was going back and forth. We could easily want that game before McKinnon scored that last goal. But yeah, at the end of a day, there was an unbelievable display of skills and speed. And again, we were trying to stop the bleeding to start out the game.

But we also knew if the more the game went on, I think our experience also was showing. Well, it's interesting you bring that up because I didn't really read it. at the time, obviously, and then I've rewatched. And I recommend anyone that that is listening to this if you haven't seen it or whatever. There's a full version on on YouTube. It's over two hours long, but it's just pure joy the entire time. I make a habit of pulling it up every once in a while. If I'm feeling a bit down, it just provides you with a shot of Syracotan, and I feel better instantly because it's such a fun game. But, you know, upon recent rewatches, I do kind of notice, and part of what makes that matchup so fun for me was you see the difference in kind of playing style

or maybe it's such a, it's a wonderful time capsule for where we are at in hockey in terms of the different eras because the game starts off on opening puck drop. It's the Cittians versus McDavid and Matthews. And instantly now, we're watching it. I'm like, oh, that's, that's, that's an interesting matchup and interesting that you kind of went power versus power in that regard. And obviously, I think 10 seconds in or whatever, McDavid has a breakaway, draws a penalty. They wind up scoring. And that's kind of why I wanted to talk to you about it, because I'm really curious about that sort of element of when a game starts like that. I think Eric Carlson referred to it the first couple of minutes as the most

embarrassing stretch he's played through in terms of you guys going down to nothing. And really, if it weren't for Lundquist, it could have been much worse at the time. You know, first off, you come into a game with a game plan. And when things go poorly like that right out of the gate and you said yourself here that you kind of change the matchup, how quick are you to kind of make that adjustment? Do you let things kind of play out? to try to gather your bearings and kind of calibrate, especially when a team is playing as fast as Team North America was at that time.

Do you give your players a chance to sort of ease into the game? Because I think at the end of the first period, it was, you were only down three, too, right? You'd clawed your way back in. You got that Forsburg goal. You had another goal to make it three, two. And so you're heading into the locker room. You're probably feeling pretty good, all things considered all. It could have been much worse.

Like they outplayed us significantly. What's sort of the message in terms of how you're navigating those next 40 minutes? because obviously I think at that point you had kind of corralled the game a little bit. It definitely got much more control. And you didn't wind up giving up another goal against until the overtime when McKinnon scored. So clearly something went well for you defensively beyond just having Henrik Lundquist. But what was that kind of conversation and adjustment like, you know, from being down to nothing? And then even after the first of your mission in terms of just because the game clearly shifted in terms of the tempo it was being played at.

Yeah. You know, and like again, you have to make it a change. after what happened. It's not game 55 in a regular season. We do an experiment here, you know. We need to win this game or we need in our case we need at least get into a tie. So we made that change pretty quickly. I would say probably four or five shifts into it. Yeah, it was, you know, one of those things when you're walking in, you know, what I's walking in straight to a wall, especially for me as a coach, was like, how do you stop the bleeding? And I think the game plan obviously worked, but. You know, when you're going into the third period, or between the second and third period, you have so much experience in that locker room, too. And if you look at the first game against Rush, a two, one game or even a wetschkin scored very late in that game

and also the one thing game against Finland. I mean, our foundation and our structure was so solid in those games, but also played in a slower pace, obviously. But we knew this because it was back to back for us. They were arrested going into this game. We knew this game was going to be really tough for us. So obviously, I'm tremendously proud of the way we turned the events around in that game. But also, I believe it's quite a better experience in our locker room that everybody paid dividend at the end.

Yeah, well, and I think it helps, as a cinematic experience, it helps now that we've gotten to see a lot of the key players kind of involved, develop into what they are today. And I imagine, you know, you mentioned that you knew that they were going to play very fast. you'd obviously seen them in different games before you went, went up at the head against them, that, you know, they had a lot of skill and they were fast. But I think I have to remind myself that, you know, at the time, we'd only seen Connor McDavid for 45 NHL games at that moment. Austin Matthews hadn't even entered the league. Nathan McKinnon certainly wasn't the player he is now.

So it's one of those teams that is obviously over time. You look at it and you go, oh, my God, I can't believe they had all those players. They're in a different stage of their career. But it was such an interesting stylistic matchup because your team, not to diminish the skill level because you obviously had Forsberg and Landisg and Baxter and a bunch of great NHL players. But it was clearly a team that was built more from the net out. It was very defensively strong.

The blue line was the best of the tournament. So I love those matchups in terms of when two teams are just so different in terms of the way they're constructed, not to mention that you had this kind of inexperienced team where it's like, oh, we don't know what we're going to get from them compared to this veteran Swedish group where it was like, all right, this is like the most rock solid team in the tournament. We know exactly what I get from them. It was fascinating. I'm very curious about that sort of interplay between, you know,

coaching a team that you know what you're going to get and going up against a team that is just so unpredictable in that regard. Yeah, and that's just it. And that's what we were like, we're talking before the game, what we should do with the patch up and everything else. But since we're so successful in other two games and we felt the construction and everything else was in place, that we want to continue on that successful part or stretch of games. But when you see it's going the other way.

It's obviously the skill and everything else on the opponents, especially the speed of the game. You have to make a change. But again, you know, as a coach, you're playing with the cards you have. And for me, as a Swedish national team, head coach, you're picking your own team. And so we know, we knew exactly what you're saying. I mean, you know, Hank was very, very still on the top of this game. We also knew our defense was going to be, you know, one of the best, if not the best, defensive core in the tournament.

So somehow you need to get the games into your favors. And I think we, most of that tournament, unfortunately, you know, in the semifinals game, you know, was a bad boss later. We lost that game. But defensively over the course of the tournament, I think we delivered. And with a very solid performance, you know, you just wish, like you said, you know, maybe a couple more goalscores on that team. And we were playing that final game against Canada.

Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the thing that really I took away from that game, obviously there was a bunch of great players on both sides. It was, you know, Nathan McKinnon scores the overtime winner. Obviously, a bit bittersweet for you, but just kind of, you know, all these years later, like he's pretty, you could see the player that he'd wind up turning into. Right. At the time, he's still kind of struggling offensively that avalanche team wasn't what it is today. But you could kind of see that the power and the speed and the skill that he put on display.

And I imagine that's what makes him such a nightmare matchup because he used. he was fast enough to skate with Eric Carlson, but he was strong enough to, you know, go head to head in power with Matthias Echholm. Like, it's kind of like you almost, how do you even match up with a player like that? Because you can't necessarily just pick one type of defenseman. It's kind of, he can beat you both ways,

so you're kind of screwed either way. It was such a fascinating matchup to see him kind of be the player. He wasn't at that player at the time, but he wound up becoming that all these years later. Yeah, and I had a pleasure of obviously coaching against both McKinnan and McDavid at the U-18. level. So I knew that they were good players, obviously, maybe not established NHL players at that point of time, but, you know, we knew that we were going to be very, very good. And we knew that the speed was their game. But again, I mean, I got to play the cards I had. And, and, you know, that's what we have to do as coaches. You'd be picking a team with what you think you have the best chance of winning. And, you know, you have the cards you have. But, you know, I was, I was, it was an interesting tournament for me, too, being the first time, being the head coach of a team and then still, being a third place team in that tournament, obviously we would love to play against Canada in the last few games in the finals.

But Team Europe had also a very experienced team with Charra and, you know, Copart and whatnot. So they had a very experienced team. And you can see it was a little bit of a chess game in the semifinals. And unfortunately, they had the last call on that one. But no, it was an unbelievable experience. It was a fun experience. Like you said, it was a little bit of the new hockey was. put me in play by the

young North American team. It was entertaining. I would say very entertaining for people what I heard afterwards. Obviously, I'm so involved in coaching my team. I'm not really a spectator, but it was a fun game and it was a fun tournament for sure.

Okay. Are you busy guys? So we're going to end here quickly. I have a couple rapid fire questions that I've got for you. Favorite player that you've gotten a chance to work with? I really don't. I can't say one one player. I have been fortunate to to coach so many. Do you have a most talented player?

Maybe it might not even translate it to actual on-ice performance or the most points or the most goals, but just the player that you got to see that you were like this guy, the things he can do with the puck, I just can't believe it. The best turnaround turnaround performance for me was when we got the, you know,

Daniel and Henrik back for the 2013 world championship because we were not playing well. very well in that tournament and suddenly, you know, both of them came in and did an unbelievable turnaround job for us to win the tournament, but see how, you know, not only how talent and how good they were, but also see how much leadership they took on and what a big, and show the passion, how much they cared about everyone in the locker room and took care of everyone. That was to me, you know, an unbelievable, like I said, not just talent wise, but also as a, as leaders and everything else and that that was a special moment for me and obviously be fortunate to coach him a couple more

times but yeah no that's that's something stick up for me i'm glad you brought that up obviously they were my favorite players growing up here at my kuber so i'm always interested to talk about the cities i imagine they were they must have been slightly you know maybe not challenging but more different to coach than your typical players because obviously there was two of them but also like what they did was so unique and different than everyone else in terms of the way they operated and the way they see the ice. I imagine there's an element as a coach of kind of just getting out of their way a little bit and just be like, yeah, the thing you guys did on that last shift, that was good.

Keep doing that as opposed to kind of trying to micromanage them too much because they obviously seem to have stumbled upon a formula that was working for them, especially at that time. Yeah. And when it comes to 2013 team was, you know, especially how were we going to use them, you know, what situations and why not. So, you know, as a coach needs to need to make sure that they get the right repetitions is that when they were again those repetitions as well. So there was a combination of that.

But at the same time, I think, you know, when you're coaching these talented players and the top-notch, world-class players, is you're there to help them out. Like you help them out in a sense of being successful at that point of time. Everything when it comes to system-wise or help them out, you know,

different things and play, like you said, you know, play in a free mind. I like to use that word of quote, play with a free mind and play towards their strengths. And obviously, you know, when it comes to Daniel and Enrique, I mean, the way they're moving the puck and the way that they can slow the game down

and make a controlled game, you need to play in that, allow them, even though you might have a different situation with the other lines. So, you know, I think that's the biggest takeoff I have from the national team of coaching some of the best in the world

is you can allow them to be who they are and not trying to change them. Number one, number two is to, you know, in what situation, so how are you going to use them and be very clear of their role on that team and have that discussion with them. And I think that's the biggest thing for those players to be able to play free. I told my pal Jack Khan that I was doing a podcast with you and he told me to ask you about Kent Johnson and your connection with him. Yeah, I know, I don't, I remember when Ken was born, actually, but I know Kent's dad for a long

time I actually hire me for a coaching job back in the days many, many moons ago down in Texas. So, you know, Jay and I've been keeping, you know, contact and, you know, I've been, you know, a good friend with Jay for since then, I've talked about 25 years now, 20 years ago, 20 years ago, 20 years ago. And, you know, he keep asking questions about their kids. A couple of times I've been visiting them as well, and he's come over with both, you know, with Kent and all. also his older brother Kyle coming over to Sweden and visiting and, you know, practicing with teams and I helped him out with that as well. But overall it's just, you know, Ken's dad, Jay, it's just a very good friend of mine.

Yeah, the things that kid can do with the puck, unfortunately, his world junior experience got cut short here the other day, but you already got to see a bit of a glimpse of it. And I can't wait to see how his game translates to the NHL level because just some of the stuff that he does with the puck is, you know, we're talking about Zegris earlier. It's very similar in terms of that creativity and just, It's like almost a video game when he's out there.

Yeah, and it was funny because, you know, Jay, I was talking about when McKenzie was probably five or six years old, maybe a little bit older than that. But, you know, actually his older brother Cal was there too. We actually came in to run a couple of camps in BC. You know, the biggest thing that we, I think we changed in mind on a couple of people there was that we allow, we played a lot of scrimmage games.

We allow a lot of, let them find a way. you know, don't just start doing tactics when at that age. You just do more of, you know, let them play and then play a free mind again with a lot of small area, scrimmage type of deals. And, you know, I think, and, you know, at least what Jay told me, they implement and I used that quite a bit, you know, we can't think how growing up, and all the players they were playing with, you know, when the younger years. And I think that's a little bit of what you see right now with how, you know,

Kent's playing, you know, with a free mind. and he has no afraid to make, you know, obviously change the game by making a move that probably no one ever seen or try to do something outside of the box. And I know that Jay and obviously, Kent's coaches growing up, I've been allowing him to do them.

I think that's where you see the product of right now. Well, there you have it. The Rickard-Gronberg interview has promised. Rickard was great. It was really fun to chat with him. Hopefully that came across when you were listening. You can tell that, he thinks about a lot of this stuff about how to get better at his craft and work on all these

details. And obviously, you know, the job itself has changed so much over the years probably since he started to what it is now. And so seeing him, you know, embrace, uh, evolving and adapting and, uh, you know, taking a new information and figuring out ways to get better at it is really cool. And, and you'd think that that goes without saying, but you'd be surprised, even at the NHL level, um, how rooted in, in their ways certain coaches can be in. So it's awesome. to hear someone who is a coach, obviously not at the NHL level, but is a successful one and professional leagues, talk about this way.

And so hopefully, you know, I'd selfishly love to see him in the NHL one day. I think it'd be awesome having such a thoughtful and creative guy in the league. And I strongly suspect, you know, obviously depending on the situation he fell into and, you know, the players he had. But I suspect he do pretty well if given the right opportunity. So, you know, he really seems to get it.

And I think, I think that would be a really interesting possibility. Anyways, that's going to be it for today's episode of the PDOCAST. We are going to be back with regularly scheduled programming and new shows starting tomorrow. In the schedule for the rest of the week, we've got our pal Matt Porter coming on to talk about David Pasternak and the next big mega contract he's going to be signing. Kevin Woodley will be in studio and we're going to talk about goalies. And our pal Harmon Dial will we also be joining on Friday for the mailbag. So feel free to send in questions for any of those. if you know you've got something on your mind if if you want to hear any of those guests in particular

to talk about something i know kevin woodley is a is a big favorite of everyone who listens to their pediocast and if you've got some intricacies about the goalie position or evaluating goalies that are that are on your mind certainly fire those away and and i'll i'll bring them up when we have them on the show in the meantime uh if you want to help us out and show the the pdo cast some love uh that would be greatly appreciated go hammer that five star button on whatever platform you listen us and we'll be back tomorrow with more so thank you for listening to the hockey pdo cast streaming on the sports net radio network