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PITTSBURGH — It was one of those moments every great team looks back on as an epiphany on the way to success.
In 1983, the Edmonton Oilers walked by the New York Islanders' dressing room shortly after the young upstarts had been swept by the veteran Islanders in the Stanley Cup final. They saw the Islanders covered in ice packs and bandages and realized the price to be paid for an NHL championship.
In Pittsburgh, it is already known as The Tirade or The Rant, the night head coach Michel Therrien went off on the Penguins.
Therrien had been coach for all of 11 games on Jan. 10, 2006, when the Penguins looked awful in losing 3-1 to the Oilers at Mellon Arena. Defence was nothing but a concept to the players and Therrien was fed up. He exploded in front of the media afterward, an eruption that quickly made its way to all of the sports highlight shows and then to YouTube.com.
“It's a pathetic performance,” Therrien said. “Half of the team doesn't care. That defensive squad, I am really starting to believe their goal is to be the worst defensive squad in the league. They are doing such a great job to be the worst defensive squad in the league. They turn the puck over. They have no vision. They are soft. I have never seen a bunch of defencemen as soft as this.
“We should take 50 per cent of their salaries because they play only 50 per cent of the time.”
Two years four months later, the Penguins are in the Stanley Cup final for the first time in 16 years. The reason is not so much their explosive offence but the commitment to defence by their big stars – Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Marian Hossa and Sergei Gonchar.
Therrien embarrassed his players that night and he got their attention. It was a start, but he still had to sell the defensive game to his players. He did it, as all good coaches do, by getting the team leaders like Crosby, Gonchar and Ryan Malone onboard.
“When your leaders buy into it, the rest will follow,” Therrien said shortly after the Penguins beat the Philadelphia Flyers 6-0 on Sunday to win the Eastern Conference final in five games.
“Since Day 1, we've been working with those guys,” he added. “We've been teaching them the way that we think that we're going to have success. And they buy into it. They believe in it. They know when they execute what we're supposed to do, we get a chance for success. That goes from your leaders.”
Four of the defencemen on the team the night Therrien went ballistic are mainstays today – Gonchar, Ryan Whitney, Rob Scuderi and Brooks Orpik.
“I was a little embarrassed,” Whitney told The Canadian Press. “I was a rookie and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, I'm going to hear about this one from my buddies.' He let us have it.
“From that night until today, I think we've done a pretty good job of becoming a good defensive team.”
Considering where the Penguins were two years ago, they arrived at the Cup final remarkably fast. Their coach said his players are quick studies, learning much from their five-game visit to the playoffs a year ago and putting even that small experience to work. It didn't hurt when general manager Ray Shero landed Hossa and Pascal Dupuis, who are now Crosby's linemates, at the trade deadline along with defenceman Hal Gill.
“We don't have much experience, but we compensate with a lot of things,” Therrien said. “We compensate with passion. We play a mature game for a young team. When you put those two together, then this is a team that wants to learn.
“We're coming from a long way away. The short amount of experience we got last year gave a lot of confidence to the players. They knew what to expect when we started the playoffs. And I believe Ray Shero did a great job. We were missing some pieces of the puzzle at the trade deadline. It was crucial for us. All those three guys that we brought in, they really bought in right away to the team concept.”
