Toronto

With the opening of training camp just a day away, Sun columnist Steve Simmons sat down with coach Randy Carlyle for a lengthy interview to address last season, this season, Carlyle’s future, and the controversies that forever surround the Toronto Maple Leafs. Here, in Part 1 of the Carlyle Conversation, he talks about being accused of being a coaching dinosaur, analytics, his approach to the coming season, outgoing CEO Tim Leiweke and his apparent problem with James Reimer:

ON THIS SEASON BEING ALL ABOUT CARLYLE

“This season is not about me, not at all. It’s about the Toronto Maple Leafs. It’ll never be about me. I’m a sidebar. I’m the tsetse fly on the wall. This season is about the Maple Leafs. It’s about our team. It’s about our players. It’s about our organization.

“The reality is, we have to win more games. Simple as that. Winning cures pretty much everything.

“Losing is hard. This is why we’re bald and we’re grey and you ask yourself, ‘Why do I do this for a living?’ You carry the losses with you. And in this market, you carry it a little big longer and a lot louder.

“You have to have short-term memory. You have to be able to move on to the next practice, the next game, turn the page and keep your emotions so you make the decisions that are best for your group.”

ON THOSE WHO CONSIDER CARLYLE A COACHING DINOSAUR

“They’ve never walked a mile in my shoes. How many of them have coached? How many of them have been behind a bench at any level? They can say whatever they have. They’re going to, but I don’t give two flips about it.

“I could go and criticize the auto mechanic who is working on my car. Meanwhile, he’s got 10 years of education and experience behind him. I could still criticize him, but is that auto mechanic really going to give a s--t what I have to say about him?

“I’m open to criticism. That’s part of the job. Especially here. Those are things you can’t control. You do your best, the best way you know it. So why sweat it if you can’t control it?”

ON TIM LEIWEKE’S CONTROVERSIAL WORDS, AT THE END OF SEASON AND RECENTLY

“It doesn’t make it easier. It doesn’t help us.

“That’s what this market can be sometimes. There always seems to be an event taking place that’s newsworthy. I have no control over that most of the time. I’d rather those comments be somewhere else.

“I know our players. I know we have character. I think we’ve tried dramatically and will continue to try to change the culture of our team. We’re criticized for it because of a lack of success. I understand that.

“To me (Leiweke’s comments about Leafs culture and lack of character) it just another hurdle for us. Here it is, we have to deal with it. We know who has character. We know who has challenges in that area. If players didn’t have character, they wouldn’t be on our team. But there are degrees of character. Where is someone in their career? How old are they? How established are they? Where are they in their lives? All those are factors. To generalize and say this team doesn’t have character — I don’t even know if the comment was directed at us or some other team under the Maple Leafs umbrella.”

ON DAVID CLARKSON

“He can’t be what he was last year. He knows that. It’s a reset for David Clarkson. The whole David Clarkson issue last year started poorly and extended into the season. He became something he wasn’t.

“The thing about Clarkie is — and we went back and reviewed all his time in New Jersey— he’s not a player who has the puck much. He has the puck from top of the circle on in. He didn’t carry the puck through the neutral zone. He wasn’t attacking with the puck. He gave the puck and moved. Our challenge is to try and find the right mix to help David Clarkson be what he can be. We know he’s a much better player than what he performed here.

“If he can’t do it, I don’t know.”

ON HIS GOALTENDERS AND PARTICULARLY JAMES REIMER

“We go into camp with a 1A and a 1B. I always like to make sure both guys know they have an opportunity to play for us. I’ve never really had a true clearcut No. 1.

“You have to recognize what Jonathan Bernier did for our hockey club last year. You have to respect that. Reims has to show the maturity to understand his job — and for him and I to have the conversations we’ve had, I believe he does understand it.

“James is a young man who had a tremendous amount of success the year before. Last year didn’t happen the way he envisioned it to happen. As a coach, you play the hand you’re dealt. We’re going to put the goaltender in that gives us the best chance to win. That’s never going to change.”

ON HIS SEMI-SPAT WITH REIMER

“It was outrageous (publicly). I said what I said. (‘He played OK.’) It’s over. Him and I were OK two days after that. But it stayed around, that’s part of the market. I made a mistake. I didn’t think that winning goal in Detroit was a very good goal. And then I came and met the press before the press met the goalie. I came out too soon. And that will never happen again. That’s human, but I will not put myself in that position again, put myself in front of the media in that short a time span after the game.”

ON HIS USE AND BELIEF IN ANALYTICS

“For us as coaches, we will never, ever, turn down an opportunity to use a tool that can be helpful — and we never have. It would be like saying, ‘No player on our team is using new graphite sticks. We’re going to stay with wood because that’s how it’s always been.’ That’s crazy. There are tools that are available, and we’ve used varying stats — our own stats — to make points within our dressing room.

“You use those numbers to teach and you can use it as a teaching tool and to make players more accountable. You can say to a player, ‘If you do this, you will be better, we will be better.’

“As a coach, you’re a salesman. You’re selling a program that you believe in and some people are easier to sell than others. Some people are difficult, some people just say I’m doing it my way, some buy everything. You have to make everyone understand that in the best interests of the team, you have to do this to succeed.

“I don’t foresee any problems dealing with our (analytics department).”

ON FEELING GOING IN TO TRAINING CAMP

“I’m nervous. You always go into camp nervous about your team. Did we do this? Do we have that? How are we going to handle this? Is this forechecking scheme going to work? Is this neutral-zone scheme going to work?

“We’re going to have close to 60 players, which is something different for us. We think with that (large a number) we can run a more efficient camp. You split into two groups of 30 and can scrimmage with each group. With the CBA rules and number of pre-season games, you have to have bodies. We already have people banged up, so you need depth. But you don’t feel optimistic or pessimistic going into camp, you’re more nervous with a feeling of anticipation than anything else.”

(Tomorrow: In Part 2 of the Carlyle Conversation, the coach of the Maple Leafs talks about Phil Kessel and Dion Phaneuf, his future, the Leafs collapse of last season, Nazem Kadri and more.)

steve.simmons@sunmedia.ca

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