JB
Desk Chair Coach
As Grouch notes it is a feature of the MS7 years. Paul Chapman has been the strength and conditioning coach for 24 years (which includes plenty of NCAA runs) so I don't think it is that program.
Conditioning sucks. Nobody loves dry land practice, stadium stairs, etc. that all start with off season work and then captains practices. Then you get on the ice and no puck practices suck. It is a necessary grind and even elite athletes it needs to be demanded and encouraged and inspired. "The legs feed the wolf"... "you aren't going to have anything in the 3rd period if you don't build your legs now"... these aren't just made up lines in a movie.
I don't think it is a size problem. I don't think it is a talent problem. I don't think it is a will problem. The coach doesn't demand better so the players aren't putting in enough time. They are reaching the bar he is establishing.
Complete Side note, skating in the dark in Norway wasn't made up for a movie... https://www.si.com/olympics/2014/10/28/reminder-what-we-can-be-1980-us-olympic-hockey-team-si-60
There was a moment of truth for this team. A moment when they became one. It was back in September of 1979 when they were playing a game in Norway. It ended in a 4-4 tie, and Brooks, to say the least, was dissatisfied. "We're going to skate some time today," he told them afterward. Then he sent them back onto the ice.
Forward Dave Silk recalls it this way: "There were 30 or 40 people still in the stands. First they thought we were putting on a skating exhibition, and they cheered. After a while they realized the coach was mad at us for not playing hard, and they booed. Then they got bored and left. Then the workers got bored, and they turned off the lights."
Doing Herbies in the dark ... it's terrifying. But they did them. Schneider happened to have been thrown out of the game, and he had already changed into his street clothes. He was watching in horror as his teammates went up and back, up and back. Again and again and again. But instead of feeling reprieved, he felt guilty. "Should I get my skates on, Patty?" he asked Assistant Coach Craig Patrick. "Cool it, Buzz," Patrick replied.
It ended at last, and Brooks had the players coast slowly around the rink so that the lactic acid could work itself out of their muscles. And that was when Forward Mark Johnson broke his stick over the boards. Mark Johnson, who made the team go. Mark Johnson, who was its hardest worker, its smartest player. Mark Johnson, whom Brooks never, ever had to yell at. And you know what Brooks said--screamed--after skating those kids within an inch of their lives? "If I ever see a kid hit a stick on the boards again, I'll skate you till you die!" They believed him. And they would have died, just to spite him. Says Silk, "I can remember times when I was so mad at him I tried to skate so hard I'd collapse, so I could say to him, 'See what you did?' " But they weren't an all-star team anymore. They were together in this, all for one. And Brooks was the enemy. And don't think he didn't know it. It was a lonely year by design, all right.
Yes it is a different time. Players transfer. Playing on an Olympic team is different. Still if he hadn't demanded more they wouldn't have put in the work. Today you need to inspire more rather than demand and still you need to set a bar and challenge the team to exceed it.
Played bball against Gale in high school. He was a very good bball player. My job was to play him man to man and keep him from scoring his average which I did. He and Dennis Sargent also from Littleton both played bball at UNH. IIRC correctly Littleton won a couple of bball championships back to back with them.
