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This article was published 18/4/2015 (1981 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Randy Carlyle is sitting just under the roof of the Honda Center and about as far away from the ice as possible. He hates it.

"I’m ready to coach again. I’m ready to coach now. It’s not that I’m going crazy, but I love coaching," said the 58-year-old Carlyle, looking and feeling better than he has in a long time, with a bit of a tan and a sound back, after having recovered from successful surgery.

NATHAN DENETTE / THE CANADIAN PRESS FILES Randy Carlyle is itching to get back behind the bench.

"The game itself, it’s a great game. I’ve done it all my life and been a player and a coach. I’ve been involved. It’s what I do. I like the adrenaline, for sure. Going to the games I’ve been going to here in Anaheim, you get to look at it from a different perspective. But down there on the bench, just off the ice, you get into the ebbs and flows and you recognize certain things. It’s the excitement of sports and competition. I miss it a lot. It’s one thing to sit back for a couple weeks. But then after that, it’s kind of like well, ‘I’m supposed to be doing something here, am I not?’ "

Carlyle was dismissed by the Toronto Maple Leafs in January. The team was 21-16-3 at the time and holding down a playoff spot. They won just nine of 42 games after Carlyle was clipped and dropped to 27th in the league, miles from the post-season.

If Carlyle was the problem, firing him sure didn’t result in a fix. He’s been vindicated to some extent. Carlyle is a Stanley Cup champion and winner of 362 regular season-games and seven playoff series as a head coach in the NHL.

In the days after Leafs GM Dave Nonis called Carlyle and told him he was out, the Sudbury, Ont., native gave a few interviews to Toronto media.

Mostly, he said the politically correct things. Then he disappeared, first heading north to Sudbury for his brother-in-law’s funeral and then retreating to his off-season home north of San Diego.

I’m a coach. I want to coach. That’s what I do... I want to be in hockey. It’s what I do. In a lot of ways, it’s who I am.

Carlyle seemed relieved when he was fired. But that soon passed. Did he get mad when it became evident to anyone watching his work in Toronto had been an over-achievement rather than a failure?

"No. Not angry. Disappointed, you know, the way some things go down. The reactions of certain individuals. Whatever, you get disappointed," said Carlyle, who won the Norris Trophy as a player with the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Stanley Cup as head coach of the Anaheim Ducks. "But you understand that this is the game and this is part of it and if you’re not prepared to live it, then I don’t think you should be part of it. And it’s not easy. I think life’s not easy, and everybody gets dealt a bad hand every once and a while. What are you gonna do? You move on. I’m ready to move on."

Carlyle was hired by Brian Burke to run the Leafs bench. The two won a Cup in Anaheim and they understood each other and had built a trust. When Burke was fired and Nonis promoted, Carlyle was still on stable footing. But when Brendan Shanahan was made president of the Leafs, the coach had to start fresh. To prove himself worthy of his post.

When the Leafs lost four of five in early January, it was a convenient time to blame the coach.

"There’s certain things, the way the team was playing, the way the group responded, you know, historically has been that they couldn’t pull themselves out of a tailspin. That’s the most difficult part for anybody going in, and anybody as a coach, to try and find a way to change that, you know?," said Carlyle. "I mean, we did everything — it’s not like we sat back and said we’re going to let this happen or let that happen.

"That group, in our mind as a coaching staff, we felt that they had to be able to have the freedom to skate, because they’re a skating hockey club, they’re a transition hockey club. And believe me, we tried to preach defence in a lot of areas, but we felt that we had good enough goaltending and if we could transition the puck, then we could be an effective, dangerous hockey club. They weren’t going to be a shutdown team, that group is not prepared to be a shutdown team. That’s maximizing the strength of your roster and what you have. You have to find a way to get people, the people that you have in place, and use them to their strengths and put something in place that will give them the best chance for success."

Lots has been written and said about the way the Leafs played defence. Or didn’t play defence. Leafs management ground their teeth about the lack of defensive commitment from star players such as Phil Kessel.

Toronto Star columnist Dave Feschuk wrote a column prior to this season quoting a minor hockey coach recounting a speech made by Leafs assistant coach Steve Spott at a coaching clinic.

"Spott said Carlyle’s attitude was that we’re fired before (Kessel is) out of here, the hierarchy doesn’t want to deal with Phil. He scores 30 (goals) a year and that’s all they want," wrote Feschuk, quoting one of the seminar attendees. "(Spott said) Phil hates coaches. He hates Randy. He hates me and I don’t even know him yet."

Eventually, management laid the poor defensive performance at Carlyle’s feet. He says he told management the group of players they’d assembled weren’t going to commit to a defence-first style of game.

"More than once, to say the least. You know, the biggest issue for us as a coaching staff was getting them to be able to compete and to try and be inside, because that’s what today’s hockey is all about," said Carlyle. "That was the most difficult and most frustrating part, is that we couldn’t convince them to get inside and compete day in, day out."

Carlyle has been fired twice now in his NHL coaching career and traded as a player. He’s cut players and likely made decisions that ended the careers of some. He understands the business. But don’t expect him to be Zen-like about a decision that placed an overload of blame at his feet.

"We didn’t win enough hockey games. The bottom line is that when you get removed from positions, 90 per cent of the time it’s because you haven’t won enough hockey games. When you get fired, there’s various reasons, and they obviously thought that there was going to be a change in that group of players with the change of a coach," said Carlyle, when asked if the precipitous fall the Leafs took after his firing vindicates him as a coach.

"It’s not for me to criticize or for me to gloat. All I know is that we went to work every day and tried to provide leadership and strength to that group, and that’s what I believe is the coach’s job. They eliminate all the excuses when they fire the coach, and it then lays responsibility back to who? I ask you the question? You remove the coach — and not just in this situation — and they’re expecting the group to revitalize themselves or re-energize. To change. Well, to me in a lot of ways it’s hard to change people who don’t want to change."

Ducks captain Ryan Getzlaf won a Stanley Cup under Carlyle and was a central player in Anaheim when GM Bob Murray fired Carlyle during the 2011-12 season. Carlyle has a reputation for being hard on players and more than one of his former charges has sniped about his inability to grow and maintain personal relationships with players.

Getzlaf, however, called Carlyle a "great coach" when asked on Saturday morning.

"He’s great at running a bench. To me that was his niche. He was great at being involved in the game and knowing what matchups he wanted and keeping them," said Getzlaf. "I’ve been away from him for a while. When I was young, he did a great job at keeping us accountable. He taught me a lot when I was young."

Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau has known Carlyle since 1976 when they became teammates in the Toronto Maple Leafs organization playing for the old Dallas Black Hawks in the Central Hockey League.

Boudreau says Carlyle will be behind a bench in the NHL next season.

"You can only watch your daughter ride horses for so long," said Boudreau. "Randy is one of the best bench coaches in the game. He’s a stubborn match coach. And if you’re not willing to be as stubborn as him, he’ll get you. He’s prepared and he’s innovative. Nobody has as many face-off plays as him. You have to always be looking at his bench to see what he’s up to. You have to be ready to coach against him."

Vacancies are popping up in the NHL with Buffalo, Philadelphia and Toronto firing their coaches. Nonis was himself fired earlier this week, as well as interim head coach Peter Horachek and the rest of the Leafs coaching staff.

Changes in Boston, Detroit and San Jose also strong possibilities.

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Carlyle needs the right kind of GM. one he can work with comfortably.

"You want to work with people that have a vision similar to yours. I think that’s the most important thing, is that you look at who you’re going to work with and what kind of hockey club. Again, it’s a people game, it’s a people sport. If you have good people, usually you’ll have an opportunity to have success. Winning in the NHL is not easy," he said.

Carlyle has another year on his contract with the Leafs and could be content to just collect cheques. But that’s not going to happen. Not if he can help it.

"I’m a coach. I want to coach. That’s what I do. Every day at four in the afternoon I have to begin fighting my wife for the remote when the games from the East come on the TV," he said. "I want to be in hockey. It’s what I do. In a lot of ways, it’s who I am."

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @garylawless