UPDATE: The Ducks lost their first-round series to the Predators and Bruce Boudreau was fired as coach.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — His knees were sore, and his face was a few different shades of red, a complexion quirk he’s often been associated with in moments of televised elation or anger.
There was an anonymous, unremarkable chair sitting alone in the bowels of Bridgestone Arena, and as Bruce Boudreau sat down, country music star Miranda Lambert crooned just down the hallway during a soundcheck. Boudreau looked at ease and comfortable on his new seat.
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Trying to imagine this would be the scene on a beautiful mid-April day in Nashville during the opening round the 2016 Stanley Cup playoffs in late October, or even on Christmas Day, would have been folly.
Yet, as Boudreau put it while sitting in that chair, “Here I am.”
The Ducks entered the 2015-16 season fresh off an appearance in the conference finals and were anointed one of the top contenders for the Stanley Cup. General manager Bob Murray continued to tweak a loaded roster during the offseason, looking for the final couple of pieces to help secure a second championship in franchise history.
Three weeks into this season, the Anaheim express had already veered violently off the rails. The Ducks lost eight of the first nine games and were dead last in the NHL. There was a five-game road trip to each Central Division outpost. The Ducks limped back to California with zero wins.
The subject of Boudreau’s job security became one of the hottest topics in hockey.
“I couldn’t watch TV,” Boudreau said. “I didn’t want to watch 'NHL Tonight.' I tuned out watching hockey because I get emotional about stuff, and if I had read all of those things … oh, my god.”
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The Ducks had improved in each of the previous three seasons, reaching the first round, then the second round, then the conference finals. Each of the past two seasons had ended with a Game 7 loss to the eventual Stanley Cup champions.
But 2015-16 had been positioned as an all-in, make-or-break campaign for Boudreau and the Ducks, and the start was a disaster.
The payoff for patience
Murray opted for patience instead of drastic action, which is typically the standard NHL playbook in those situations. Boudreau and his players rewarded the GM’s faith.
The Ducks reached Christmas in last place in the Western Conference, and second-to-last in the NHL. One hundred and eight days later, the Ducks went to Washington, where Boudreau’s NHL coaching career began, and defeated the Capitals to clinch a division title.
“I’m grateful that (Murray) did (stay patient),” Boudreau said. “Every day, someone in the media was calling for my head. If you get that constantly, then it just swells and swells. Then it gets on 'Hockey Night (In Canada)' and it is all over Canada. Then it is usually it is a foregone conclusion when you’re on the hot seat like that.
“But (Murray) stayed with us, stayed with me and we started winning and winning and doing the right things. And here I am right now.”
Incredible and improbable have been common occurrences for Boudreau. When he arrived in Washington on Thanksgiving Day in 2007, he was a relative unknown in NHL circles. His new team was also a mess.
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The Capitals reached Christmas Day in last place in the Eastern Conference, and in 29th place in the NHL. Yes, Boudreau has seen the script of the 2015-16 Ducks play out before. On the final day of the 2007-08 season, the Capitals won a game at Verizon Center and celebrated a division title.
To go from worst to first after Christmas in the NHL one time is remarkable. To do it twice in a nine-year coaching career …
“It is a weird thing,” Boudreau said. “You can call it what you want, but when I’m talking to my wife it seems like a neat situation. I think the players play hard for me, and that’s what it shows in the results.”
The list of coaching accomplishments for Boudreau is both long and diverse. He has won eight division titles in nine seasons as an NHL head coach. The ninth season, he was fired by Washington and joined Anaheim a few days later, but couldn’t rescue the already drowning Ducks.
Extend that streak back to his days in the American Hockey League, and in 10 of the past 12 seasons he has won a division crown. The one AHL season in that span that he didn’t, his Hershey Bears finished second and went on to win the Calder Cup.
He’s won big at every level, an odyssey that took him to far-flung hockey ports across the country before finally earning his NHL opportunity. He was the fastest coach in NHL history to 300 wins. He was the fastest coach in NHL history to 400 wins.
Yes, the path to collecting victories is easier in the modern NHL. Scotty Bowman and Al Arbour and Toe Blake didn’t have 4-on-4 or 3-on-3 overtime, or shootouts, to help pad their totals. The current NHL coaches do, and Boudreau has won more regular-season games than all of them since he joined the league — 409, two more than Joel Quenneville since the start of 2007-08.
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He has not won big in the Stanley Cup playoffs, with six Game 7 defeats in seven tries a glaring malfunction for pundits who won’t place Boudreau among the game’s greats until he holds the Stanley Cup above his head.
Boudreau has 41 playoff wins in his NHL career. That’s nearly twice as many as Ken Hitchcock since 2008. It’s more than Todd McLellan. It’s two shy of the career totals for John Tortorella and Dan Bylsma.
His best year yet
If Boudreau’s resume needed any more buttressing, 2015-16 may have been one of his best in the NHL as a coach, regardless of how it ends.
When the Ducks were struggling to win games in the first half of the season, they weren't playing poorly. They couldn’t score, a particularly vexing malady considering the coach and the talent on the roster.
For the second time in his NHL career, Boudreau decided it was time to change course. Before an eight-game losing streak that was broadcast to the world in an HBO sports documentary series, Boudreau’s Capitals were the high-flying kings of fun in the NHL. They were the NHL’s equivalent of the Seven Seconds or Less Suns, hockey’s version of the Air Raid.
When Boudreau asked that group of young, talented Capitals to reprogram their DNA, the team did allow fewer goals and wins followed, but ultimately it didn’t lead to greater success.
This time around, Boudreau was dealing with a more veteran group of players and the leaders in the dressing room, guys like Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry, have all won the Stanley Cup before.
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This wasn’t a total reboot for those players. They understood what was at stake.
“It was the guys. When we had these meetings, they decided that what they wanted most was to win,” Boudreau said. “That’s the most fun, so we do whatever it takes. They started to clamp it down and play pretty good D. We started winning games 1-0 and 2-1, then the power play started to catch fire.”
By getting the players to think defense first, the offense eventually followed. Unlike when Boudreau was in Washington, the Ducks’ ability to possess the puck actually improved with the new plan.
“All the Corsis — first time I’ve ever had a good Corsi,” Boudreau said with a chuckle.
That’s not true, but it is part of Boudreau’s self-deprecating nature. Boudreau has shepherded several great puck possession teams during his NHL days, and while he might not speak all of their lingo, he’s extremely well thought of in the hockey analytics community.
Boudreau is also smart enough to know something that every great NHL coach or leader in society has known — that there is more for him to know and learn. When the decision was made to focus more on the defensive side of the puck, Boudreau leaned on assistant coach Trent Yawney.
Yawney and fellow assistant coach Paul MacLean have two decades of experience between them at the NHL level as either assistants or head coaches. Boudreau had no NHL experience when he arrived with the Capitals, and he had spent his post-playing years developing his coaching chops in places like Fort Wayne, Ind., and Biloxi, Miss., far away from NHL practices to visit or coaches to call.
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Boudreau learned a lot from Roger Neilson during his playing days, and more from Andy Murray during his time in the AHL with the Kings organization, but having two veteran NHL minds next to him on the bench is a relatively new resource.
“I’ve learned a lot. Trent is a very good defensive coach. He’s taught me,” Boudreau said. “A lot of it is how you verbalize it to the players. Some of the stuff, I’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s we used to do but we called it something different.’
“What I had to do was instead of talking about the positives of something to score goals, it was doing the right things to defend goals. That is what is new to me. Usually, I’d say, ‘Look, if we come back and do this and attack the net,’ but instead we’ve talked a lot more about neutral zone defending and D-zone defending.”
Back on the cliff
For all of the success the Ducks had this season, they were quickly back at the cliff’s edge once the postseason began. The Predators won both games in Anaheim to start the series.
Just as they did during the season, the Ducks regrouped, this time leaning heavily on that regular-season experience to ease their collective psyche, and promptly reeled off three straight victories.
They failed to close out the Predators in Game 6, a too-common occurrence during Boudreau’s NHL tenure. He’s now back in a familiar position, needing to win a Game 7 on home ice to advance.
This will be the first Game 7 in Nashville’s franchise history. It will be the eighth of Boudreau’s nine-year coaching career.
Should the Ducks lose, Boudreau’s proverbial seat might again be very warm. If Murray is smart, he will again take stock of the situation and realize he has one of the best coaches in the NHL, and replacing him with one of similar talent is no easy thing.
Should the Ducks win, Boudreau will probably stride to the podium at Honda Center and exhale, before making a joke about his career and the magnitude of the moment.
The truth is, Boudreau does not need to prove anything more to anyone. He waited a long time for his chance in the NHL, longer than someone with his coaching resume probably should have.
He’s proven, at length, that he can win and win big at this level. He’s proven he is the NHL’s magic man, that even the deepest of predicaments can be escaped from.
Sure, winning the Stanley Cup would bolster Boudreau’s place in hockey history. He doesn’t need it to define him, though.