DETROIT — While many of his players jetted off to Mexico, Florida or the Caribbean over the 4 Nations Face-Off, Minnesota Wild coach John Hynes was hard at work in Montreal and Boston, serving as a Team USA assistant coach, and therefore didn’t get any time off.
But on Saturday before the Wild’s road game versus the Red Wings, he joked that not having to meet with the media for nearly two weeks was a nice break in itself.
Following Team USA’s overtime loss to Canada in Thursday night’s 4 Nations title game in Boston, Hynes — along with Wild defenseman Brock Faber and forward Matt Boldy — made the flight from the East Coast to Detroit on Friday. All were ready to go by puck drop for the afternoon game at Little Caesars Arena.
After the pace of games in the tournament, with four rosters featuring the best players in the world, Hynes admitted there might be kind of a come-down to coach regular-season NHL hockey again.
“It’s like you’re on a treadmill going 10 miles an hour at 10 incline, and all of a sudden it just stops,” Hynes said. “But yesterday was good, and it’s good to come back and play right away and get around the guys and get right back into it.”
The Wild won two in a row, and five of seven going into the break, and certainly look to continue that momentum with 25 regular-season games remaining after Saturday’s Motor City matinee. But assistant coach Jack Capuano, who ran last week’s practices while Hynes was gone, said they almost treated this week like a mini training camp and restart to the season.
“The practices leading into this are really important because guys have been off, so we hit some foundational things to get back,” Hynes said. “Now, it’s the final stretch run of the season, so we wanna make sure we get off to a good start and get to the game that gives us a chance to win.”
Coaches notoriously borrow ideas from one another for practice and in-game strategy. Just having spent nearly two weeks in the trenches of international hockey working with NHL colleagues like Mike Sullivan, John Tortorella and David Quinn, Hynes admitted there were some ideas he picked up from others, and likely some ideas that others picked up from him.
“It’s all about trying to find a way to win, so no one holds back,” Hynes said. “You get different ways to practice. There’s some different things to present, some system tweaks that either reinforce what you’re doing or some things where you like, ‘I like that maybe a little bit better.’
“So, I always find in those events, it’s great. You come back with not only things from the coaches, but with the level of player in dealing with those guys. Just things that they see, or things that they say on the bench at key critical times.”
The Wild’s three players from Team Sweden — goalie Filip Gustavsson, defenseman Jonas Brodin and forward Joel Eriksson Ek — returned to Minnesota and practiced with the Wild on Friday, making the trip to Detroit on the team plane Friday afternoon.
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