When Mike Eaves took the head-coaching position for the Wisconsin men’s hockey team, he had no idea what kind of squad he would inherit. Seven months, six games and countless practices later, Eaves is still in the dark, but the light at the end of the tunnel is nearing.
Installing an entirely new system and strategy is never an easy transition, nor is it one that is swift. Eaves’ plan from the moment he inked his contract was to tear down what former head coach Jeff Sauer built and rebuild knowing what duty every cog performs in the program.
Who better to know than the USA’s development coach of the year, right?
Beginning the season by closing practices to the media and public, because they would be a time of intense individual training best suited for the confines of teammates, Eaves knew he would have the task of breaking old tendencies before the new could be built.
“[Practice] is all about getting the foundations set on how we do things,” said Eaves during the first weeks of practice. “The whistle is blowing an awful lot and having people stop where they are and dropping down to give us some push-ups. We have to crawl before we can walk.”
With six non-conference games scheduled before this weekend’s fiasco versus No. 2-ranked Denver, Eaves’ intention was to learn his players and what they could provide during the course of a WCHA conference season. This goal has lead Eaves to use an unorthodox manner concerning not only the team’s lineups, but also their quest to find leadership, which, from the outside, may appear to be in chaotic fashion. Every Badger that finds his name on the roster has played, every Badger upperclassman will don the honor of team captain and/or assistant captain until the end of the calendar year, and every Badger has an equal opportunity of being teamed on any line.
“We got everybody that was on the roster into a game,” Eaves stated. “We had preset a schedule for who was going to be the captains. We don’t know if they can play the way we want them to. We have to analyze what these kids can do, and then we’ll take a look at getting our lineup ready for the Denver weekend.”
Coming from the U.S. National Development program, Eaves knows what it takes to conform and sell players on his brand of hockey. Slowly but surely, the UW team is taking heed, resulting in a 4-2 record heading into conference play.
“With every game we play, guys get a better understanding of what the coaches want,” said senior winger Brad Winchester.
So strict is Eaves in playing everyone before conference play, that he has sat out upperclassmen in favor of younger talent. Citing that the “one thing a coach can do is control ice time,” Eaves hasn’t been bashful about pulling players from the ice for extended periods if errors are committed to get his point across.
“It’s a learning process, and I think we’re still learning,” said sophomore forward Alex Leavitt. “Don’t worry about making mistakes, just try not to make too many.”
The coaching change has proved to be more problematic for the returning players than for the newcomers. Having to disobey the likes of the past instruction that have been engrained for a ranging number of seasons, UW’s older personnel are slowly coinciding with the coaching staff’s objective.
“Coming from the program that we did,” Eaves said. “We were working with young kids, and the lesson they taught us, as coaches, was that we needed to be patient with them. Coming here, that was part of who we are. I think for the guys here, they’ve been playing a certain way for so long that they have to change more than the coaching staff, because we were prepared to be patient.”
It is Eaves and his coaching staff’s persistence and patience of the ideal strategy and the attitude that nothing should be taken for granted that has taken the team by storm. Eaves and his staff don’t care about the returning players’ career statistics, and they don’t care what the newcomers did before they arrived on campus; Eaves and his staff care exclusively what a player’s impact will be in the system.
Eaves may have not have known what he was getting into, but he does know that his persistence will pay off, and he will get results after he acquaints himself with his new surroundings.
“We certainly have a better idea of what our team can do, but we still have a long ways to go,” Eaves remarked after an East Coast split this past weekend. “I still don’t know this team well enough yet.”
