By Thomas Drance (The Athletic)
Manny Malhotra’s first season as a professional head coach with the Abbotsford Canucks was a revelation.
The 45-year-old bench boss, formerly an ace defensive centreman for the Vancouver Canucks during some of the most successful seasons in franchise history, capped off his wildly impressive rookie campaign at the American Hockey League level by leading Vancouver’s top minor-league affiliate to a Calder Cup victory last June. It was the first professional championship, at any level, in franchise history.
Malhotra’s instantaneous AHL success has put him squarely on every industry short list for best up-and-coming young head coaches in the sport.
“I think the whole experience was extremely eye-opening for me,” Malhotra told The Athletic this week during a one-on-one interview, when asked about what he learned during his remarkable first season behind the bench in Abbotsford. “The whole day-to-day aspect of everything, being on top of every department and every system and having your finger on the pulse of everything, it does take a lot.
“The biggest thing (I learned) coaching-wise, and I suppose it’s understood, or common knowledge, but as a coach we ask guys to do certain things or to play a certain way. You can demand it, you can ask it. Ultimately, however, it’s the player’s decision about whether they want to do it or not.”
There’s a certain humility to this answer — an awareness of both the limitations inherent in coaching and an acknowledgement of the power of partnership.
Professional hockey players, after all, aren’t typically paid — outside of graduated playoff bonuses, which increase in value the deeper a team goes on a playoff run — for playoff games. Players draw their salary during the regular season.
To win in the playoffs, and especially in the Calder Cup playoffs, requires something more. It involves a group of players to want it, work for it and sustain the extremely high level of competitive juice needed to hoist the Calder Cup across multiple extra months of AHL hockey.
That Abbotsford’s players made that decision last spring, and that it left such a significant impression on Malhotra, is both fascinating and telling.
“Looking at how the season went and how the playoffs went and watching the evolution of our group and understanding how the team bought into it,” Malhotra continued, “By the end of it, they policed themselves. They drove the bus. They were committed to doing whatever it took to win.
“They got a taste of winning, they wanted to win and they liked it. For me, it’s that understanding that we can ask players whatever we want, but until they’re committed, or to use the cliche term ‘bought in,’ nothing can really happen.”
Across a 15-minute conversation this week, The Athletic touched base with Malhotra to discuss his Calder Cup-winning experience last season, the value of acknowledging ambition at the AHL level, and what he learned about several of his star players, who will be competing for NHL jobs at Canucks training camp next month, during the club’s Calder Cup run last spring.
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