WORLD CUP OF HOCKEY

September 15, 2016

Stan Bowman

Todd McLellan

Q. Todd, with such a young group, what are the challenges in trying to get them to gel so fast in a short time?

TODD McLELLAN: Well, there's a lot of them. First of all, the inexperience, so just determining the pecking order within the locker room, who's the alpha and who's going to be the followers. I think the players are sorting that out as we go along. They're doing a good job of it.

Trying to figure out combinations of players, whether it's linemates, two of them, pairs. It's a big task for us because this group has never played together. Some of the other teams have played nationally for a long time, and they have commonality -- I don't know if that's a word, but something that's common when it comes to linemates.

And then the mindset. We're a fast, exciting team one way, and we can be pretty exciting going the other way. So just getting them to understand that the risk-reward part of it is going to become real important as the tournament wears on, if we can limit the risk, if we're giving up ten risky plays a night, if we can take that down to seven or eight, that will give us a much better chance of winning. So a lot of challenges.

Short-term we have to pick our poison as a staff, where do we want to go and what do we want to focus on. But I think our group has done a good job in coming together to this point.

Q. On that point then, you've had several tries at feeding Connor McDavid with different wingers and you keep changing, which probably tells me you haven't found the chemistry that you'd like. On the national team, Sidney Crosby took a long time to find the right wingers. What is involved with finding the right guys to play with your captain and the way Connor plays?

TODD McLELLAN: Well, that's a good observation, but we're not just thinking about Conner, we're thinking about the group as a whole. As we move players around, and we have for three games straight, it is about all four line combinations, not just the individual. I think Connor's play has improved as the tournament has gone on. He hasn't hit the score sheet, but he's been very dangerous around the net in creating plays. We're trying to find players that will complement him in the way he skates and handles the puck.

We're also beginning to think about what line matches might occur. I don't think we've seen a lot of that heading into the tournament. It's generally play all four lines and try and get everybody up and running. So we've got to think about that, as well.

But it's the whole before the part really right now for us.

Q. Todd, you mentioned earlier that Connor has been really dangerous around the net. You mentioned last week this idea that he sort of went through this kind of feeling-out process to start last year with asking for permission. Did you see any of that at all as he's getting to this new level and sorting that out with his competition here?

TODD McLELLAN: The group as a whole is going through that right now. They're not selfish enough, which is odd because you think of a team environment you want, and coaches always talk about how selfishness will kill your team, but as we get to that hashmark area, the tops of the circle area, we're too content on contributing the puck to somebody else, and a lot of times we take an offensive chance and turn it into nothing.

Last night I thought our team finally bought into the selfishness from the hashmarks down, shooting the puck, getting it back, and I don't know if that's a good word, but that happens when you put a young group like this together. They don't want to be that individual that everybody else is looking at not making a play. But sometimes the play is going to the pads and creating it.

Q. (No microphone) was that a thought going in, that they had played together in Columbus, and what's your assessment of those guys and how they've played?

TODD McLELLAN: Definitely a thought on constructing the team and also playing and rolling out pairs. I thought their best nights were the first two. I thought they had a little bit of a tougher night last night, which is okay. The competition level went up. The heavier forecheck came. I'm glad that we could experience that, not only them as a pair but us as a team. I think we'll be better for it with a couple practice days. It's not getting any easier. Our group knows that. So to have experienced that will certainly help them as a pair and us as a team.

Q. Stan, the three goalies that you have on this team, I think a year ago it's fair to say that maybe you and Peter were concerned in that specific area of the team given the limited options in general because of the age. Now that you have these three guys and the years that they had, how relieved were you as a management team?

STAN BOWMAN: Yeah, what a difference a year makes. I know we started this process about a year ago, and our first meeting I know when we got together, that was the main topic was got a lot of high-powered offensive players. We've got some good young defensemen, and we had some questions in goal. We had some potential. You had heard a lot about John Gibson. You hadn't really heard much at all about Matt Murray or Connor Hellebuyck at that point, and then you fast forward to today, and it's been a total transformation.

I think we've got three goalies now that we're very comfortable with, and I think it just goes to show you how things can change and how players improve over a short amount of time.

Certainly they need an opportunity, which all three of them got, and then once they get that opportunity, you want to see what they can do with it. I think they all showed that they can be relied upon to win games. You know, it was comforting as we got through the year to see that they were given the chance to shine and they all ran with it.

As we sit here today, there's no concern at all with our goaltending. I think we've got three guys that can all win us games.

Q. Todd, in the evolution of our game, what are the factors in your mind that have a allowed so many of these young players to become great at such a young age?

TODD McLELLAN: Good question. I think technology has certainly played a role in it, the ability to access video and shifts and moments in a game instantly when they still have it relative in their mind. They can look at situations and almost teach themselves. I think that's played a big part in it. I think the courage that young people have today is a little bit different. They're breaking down the old-school barriers, if you will. They aren't quite as respectful of the elder player, and I mean that the right way. Don't take that the wrong way. They respect the game, and the older players in the game, but they have a little more courage to go out and play against them. Where that came from, I don't know, but I sense that.

They have courage to make some riskier plays in the game. Maybe the game is getting so young that we have to put them back out as coaches when they make those mistakes and they feel that. They feel a little more confident. Off the top of my head, those are some of the areas where I think it's changed.

Q. Todd, you said the guys are still trying to figure out who's a leader, who's a follower. Johnny Guadreau was your leading scorer in the pre-tournament games. Does he have a chance to be the face of this team if you guys make some noise?

TODD McLELLAN: Yes, and I'm cautious there to single out an individual. For us to be successful, we're going to need a bunch of faces, and those faces are going to pop up at different moments. It may be Ryan Murray blocking a shot. It could be Seth Jones going back to get a puck and breaking out at a critical moment. I don't think we're just going to have one individual that takes charge of our team and leads us through the forest. It's going to be a group event. Johnny will play a huge role in that. Obviously he can control and dictate the tempo of a game just through his puck ability and his vision, but I don't think it will come down to one. I think it'll come down to the group.

Q. What has Auston Matthews done since the start of the tournament to both impress you and maybe increase his role in this team, and is there anything about his game that surprises you at all?

TODD McLELLAN: Yeah, that's an easy one for me to answer. He's just got better every day. He kind of follows our motto. I know there's other teams that have adopted that, as well, but we've got to maximize our time together, and Austin has done that. He came in as a -- if I said an unknown, that wouldn't be fair to him, but an unknown at this level. I think he's just got better every day. He's shown that he's going to be responsible on both sides of the puck, has a great sense of how to use his body on the ice. He's a big man that protects pucks well. He's able to use speed when he needs it. He's able to slow it down and protect it when he needs to use it. He hasn't taken a backseat to anybody, respectfully, but he has not been shy in the locker room. He's not been afraid on the ice. He's a pretty exciting player right now.

Certainly the Leafs will have a fun one to watch for many years.

Q. Now that you're here and the team is assembled, I'm curious what the role of a manager does. Are you hands on in any way? Are you involved in any decision making? And is it bittersweet in any way to have Brandon Saad on your team again?

STAN BOWMAN: It's funny you say that because when Peter and I showed up, we said to these guys, okay, now it's your job to go win. No, obviously the lion's share of our work was picking the team, but what we want to try to do now is be a support. We've got some really, really smart minds here as coaches and we're here to be sort of a sounding board. Any observations we see or things maybe to consider, but obviously these guys have coached for a long time, so we leave that up to them. You try to be a support whenever you can in that way.

As far as Brandon goes, it's great to have him part of the group. We had a lot of success together. He was a great member of the Blackhawks. You share those moments and the Stanley Cup victories and the times you never forget, and hopefully we can experience another great championship here if you want to call it that. It's fun. He's a great kid.

Q. Todd, you knew there were a lot of centers, somebody was going to have to move, and you've had interchangeable parts. Eichel is a guy who's seemed to struggle at times, you've seen the flashes at times on the wing. How have you evaluated using him out there and how much do you think the movement is going to keep going even as you're playing games?

TODD McLELLAN: Well, that was the initial question of obstacles that we have to overcome, that was a big one for us, as well, trying to determine who could play out of position and find those combinations. And Jack has been able to play on the wing. He's played in the middle the last 15 minutes of the game, 10 minutes, 15 minutes of the game. Last night we put him back into the middle.

I think most of these players that play in the center ice position are better there than they are on the wing. It's just we can't line five guys up at the face-off circle, drop the puck and let them all take the draw.

In Jack's case, I feel that there's more in his game that's going to come out as the tournament goes on, and that may mean a positional change, getting him back to where he's probably a little more comfortable. But I do know that for us to have success, we have to get some production through that center ice position, whether it's Connor, Jack, Nug, all the way down through different centermen. And there's risk and reward. You look at who you might be playing against. Do you need a very responsible, low-risk centerman maybe that's heavier and will just focus on defending? Do you need an offensive attack guy? It all depends on how you build your lines.

Q. You were talking about the evolution of the game earlier on, and there's been an emerging trend of players using private coaches in the off-season like Adam Oates and Darryl Belfry. Are you supportive of that move, or do you see it as counterproductive and maybe even as a threat to the coaches what you're trying to instill in these athletes?

TODD McLELLAN: Well, I think the athlete has to use any avenue he or she, even in women's hockey, can take to become a better individual, to work on those individual skills.

Now, you have to take that individual skill work and fit it into a team framework and environment, and I think a lot of the skills coaches do a tremendous job. They've got great ideas, great technique, and they're working on some of the things that we can't work on during the season because it's just overwhelming the amount of -- or the lack of time that we have with travel, games and that type of stuff. So it's nice to have that on the side.

The cautionary part of it is that the coaches outside, the players within, and the existing coaching staffs tend to have to be on the same page. We might be asking to play a certain role on the power play, and if his personal coach is asking him to do something different, it's not going to work. It just isn't, because there's going to be a huge disconnect. He's going to get torn between club coach and personal coach and who loses there is the player more than anybody.

So far it's worked well. I don't anticipate many problems. The coaches that are doing it, you think of Adam in particular, he's played the game. He's coached -- he knows it from both sides, and he knows what it's like to be a good teammate, so I don't think we have many issues there.

Q. Stan, I believe, unlike Todd, this is your first time being involved with a team with Connor McDavid on it. Is it fair to say at this point when he's involved with any team, whether this team or the NHL team, there's just a different kind of buzz around that club?

STAN BOWMAN: That's a great point, and it is pretty neat. You hear a lot about him from the outside, and it's fun to watch him play. Now to be associated on a team when he's part of it, it's pretty fun. Incredibly talented player, exciting to watch. I think the sky's the limit as far as what he can do. And I think Todd said it best, though, it's understandable to get a lot of questions about Connor, but this is a team, and he's one of the guys on the team. He's going to be a big part of it, but he's not the whole team.

I think when you have special players like that, it's similar in Chicago, you get a lot of questions about Patrick Kane or Jonathan Toews, and rightfully so, but they're just one of the 12 forwards. I think Connor has done a great job of just trying to go out there and do his job, and I see his game coming into form here. I think he's gotten better each night, and I expect him to continue that trend as we go here.

It's a lot of fun to watch him. Exciting player, and he's going to be a great player in this game for a long time.

Q. The Czechs just came through here and a lot of guys talk about Michal Kempny coming over. One of the guys said the challenge is going to be the transition coming to a new country. What do you do as an organization to help with that? You did it successfully last year with Panarin. And when you get like that, what kind of impact does it have on your organization?

STAN BOWMAN: Well, that's the biggest question with these players is how quickly can they transition. I know a year ago when we were talking about Panarin, I tried to caution everybody like let's just wait and see here, and obviously he sort of blew it out of the water with his play.

But it's not simple. It's not as easy as people might think. You're coming over to a totally different culture, different language and different game in the sense that the rink is smaller, things happen quicker. So that's the one adjustment. I'm not sure how quick it'll happen.

As a defenseman it's different than a forward coming over. You're defending different angles and you have more time probably on a bigger rink, so the quickness of your decisions is something he's going to have to get used to, but I've seen him play briefly. We obviously played against him last night. I thought he played a strong game. He played almost 25 minutes.

So I think he has the ability to make that transition quickly.

Off the ice is another challenge. I think he's got to learn the language to be able to communicate. I think having Michael Rozsíval around is going to help in that regard, similar with what we have with Panarin. I always try to tell people, just imagine you were going to go live in the Czech Republic and you don't speak the language. It's hard. You spend an hour or two at the rink in a game, you're there for a couple hours, and then you go away, and it's a totally different world.

Michael, from the times I've spoken to him, he's pretty mature that way. I think he's going to be okay, but we have to be understanding that it's not going to happen in an instant. It's going to be a process.

Q. Todd, with a team as young and talented as this one, do you have to adjust your coaching style, especially in a tournament that's this short?

TODD McLELLAN: I don't think we adjust our style or who we are. I think that would be a big mistake on our behalf. I have to be Todd McLellan. David Tippett and the rest of the staff have to be who they are. They have to continue to carry themselves and work the room and work the bench the same way they have. What we have to realize is the length of tournament. We have to realize what our strengths and weaknesses are. We have to play to our strengths, which in turn might be our weakness sometimes, too. We have to get out of the way. We've got to give them enough structure to play the game freely and not slow them down because that's our strength, and we have to still be willing to hold players accountable for responsibility situations.

Our team is going to play with some risk. It's fun to watch them do that. But can we limit it in certain areas of the ice and at certain times of the game to allow us to have success? That's what we're here for, we're here to win, but I want the players to enjoy it and to play to their strengths, and that's how we've approached it.

Q. Are there any other major differences between coaching this team and coaching an NHL team?

TODD McLELLAN: Oh, absolutely. With the NHL team, there isn't 20 guys standing up and putting their leg over the board every power play. Here they're all on the ice and you've got to put 15 of them back on the players' bench. You know, and even with our team, shot blocking and stuff like that, a lot of times the third- and the fourth-line players are a little bit more responsible when it comes to that, and here we don't have a lot of third- and fourth-line players, so it's dramatically different.

I think this team would be -- it's great to coach it short-term. I said this yesterday. Long-term if this was your team during the year, we'd really be excited about the prospects of having all the talent. But I think we'd run into a lot of road blocks along the way because of the limited ice time, and they're thoroughbreds. They want to run, they want to get going and some of them don't get out of the gate because the coach holds them back, but that's just the way it is. There's not enough ice time to go around.

Q. Can you update us on Duncan Keith's health, and when that decision was made that he's not going to come to the tournament, was that his decision or your decision, and then as GM of this team, do you recuse yourself from making that decision?

STAN BOWMAN: Yeah, that was Duncan's decision. It was something he felt he wouldn't be able to perform to the level that he needs to in a tournament like this. Our job in that is to support whatever -- he's the one that's got to get on the ice, so if he didn't feel he was able to do that, then you have to respect that.

But he's doing better. I think time will tell. I haven't spoken to him. We've been here with this team for the last couple weeks. I haven't heard any bad news in terms of that. I think it's going to be one of those things we'll get a better feel for that when we're back at the end of this tournament. We'll get some updates on his performance. But no, we didn't pressure him not to play, it was more the way he felt, and I guess he just decided it wasn't going to work for him.

Q. Question about the game against Russia. You led the Canadian National Team on the last national championship in Prague and beat the final Russian team. A lot of our players were in this Russian team. Can the experience of the final help your team in World Cup?

STAN BOWMAN: I believe it can. That's a good question. They've maintained their staff generally and their style of play is somewhat similar. Their personnel is incredibly different. I think the makeup of their team, their best players are here right now. Our makeup of our team with the North American team is a little bit younger. I do believe we'll have our hands full with any team we play, not just the Russians. But having an idea of how the game may be played and how it'll feel from a coaching perspective may help us prepare our team. I'd like to think it will. But until we're done experiencing it, we won't know the answer.