New York Islanders head coach Patrick Roy did his best Herb Brooks impersonation at practice on Wednesday.
New York Islanders head coach Patrick Roy did his best Herb Brooks impersonation at practice on Wednesday.
EAST MEADOW, NY -- New York Islanders head coach Patrick Roy did his best Herb Brooks impersonation at practice on Wednesday.
After back-to-back losses where the compete level wasn't high enough, Roy pushed his players to the max.
Starting with dump-and-chase drills between a forward and a defenseman, Roy progressed the drill, making the players wait for the puck to bounce off the end walls before going to battle.
Following the 1-on-1's, Roy had the Islanders doing odd-man rushes with backchecking:
Then it was back to the in-tight work, 2-on-2's from the slot on down:
After that, Roy had his players line up on the goal line and skated them hard to close out to the skate. The players were gassed by the end of it:
"The legs feed the wolf, gentlemen," Roy was probably thinking. "I can't promise you we'll be the best team [at the Stadium Series showdown on Sunday], but we will be the best conditioned. That I can promise you."
Again, probably what Roy was thinking.
We were waiting for Roy to start yelling "again" for assistant coach Benoit Desrosiers to blow his whistle.
When we got into the locker room, the players certainly were feeling it.
The drills and skating weren't punishment. Everything Roy does is to get the Islanders playing to the best of their abilities.
"Today was about fundamentals," Roy said. "We've been talking a lot about the structure and how we want to play, but there's one part of our game that I think needs to improve, and that's the competitive level. Today was a good day for that. And that's what I mentioned to the guys. I wanted to have good practice today working hard. It was the only time really we could do a thing like this. So, we took advantage of the schedule to do this today.
"I feel like it's going to help our game. I think it's going to help our turnovers and make us a better hockey club, period."
The Hockey News asked Roy what a skate like this tells him about his group.
"I was very pleased. I don't like this either. But unfortunately, sometimes you have to do it," Roy said. "And I just go with what I learned from the past, the years that I had the chance to win, and I just felt like it was a good moment. I'm not gonna use the word complacent because my English vocabulary is not big enough, but I feel like sometimes, we forget those things.
"And I think it's a big part of the game how you go into those battles, how you compete in every area, and I feel like it makes more and more of a difference between winning and losing. There's things that numbers cannot show. And that's one of them."
Islanders captain Anders Lee said this was what the doctor ordered.
"It's exactly what we needed," Lee said. "We got four days here. We don't have a game in between. We can go at it. It's a great time for this, a great effort, and we have plenty of time to recover, plenty of time to rest, and prepare for Sunday. I'm glad we did. I'm glad we got after it.
While Roy learned a lot about the group today, Lee said that a skate like that brings everyone together.
"We all do it together. We all suffer together. We work hard together, and you go through moments like that where everyone's getting pushed, everyone's pushing each other," Lee said. "I see no reason why it doesn't bring you closer."
Islanders forward Bo Horvat said it was a tone-setter with 29 games to go.
"We did a lot of one-on-one stuff and worked hard, pushed ourselves, and that's what we're gonna need to do for the rest of the year, so it's good to set that tone," Horvat said. "I think this team already has a lot of compete, and it's just a matter of getting outside of our comfort zone and doing it every single night. it was a great way to start today."
THN asked Horvat if he thought the compete level wasn't where it needed to be the last few games.
"It's just that we should never be satisfied with our play," Horvat said. "I mean, I think we always got to expect more from ourselves. We got to expect that it's not going to be easy every single night, just like it's not going to be easy every single day we come in here, so it was a great practice today. Everybody felt good about how hard we worked, and it's just what its gonna take to win every game."
"We're all in this together. We're all fighting for the same thing, and when you're going through a practice like that, and you're seeing how hard guys work and pushing each other and battling, you get a new respect for each other and new respect for the group. And I think it was great."
You can watch Rosner talk Islanders hockey on Hockey Night in New York with co-host Sean Cuthbert live Sunday nights at 8 PM ET during the season at twitch.tv/hockeynightny.