In The Power of Positive Thinking, his groundbreaking 1952 bestseller, Dr. Norman Vincent Peale offered this advice on how to overcome an obstacle: "Just stand up to it, that's all, and don't give way under it, and it will finally break. You will break it. Something has to break, and it won't be you, it will be the obstacle."
Peale wasn't addressing hockey or hockey coaches, but few have taken his advice to heart more than Calgary Flames coach Bob Hartley. Hartley, a 54-year-old former factory worker from Hawkesbury, Ont., who once filled the Stanley Cup with minnows and used it as a bait bucket, espouses similarly upbeat sentiments.
He will say things like: "For me, I never lose. I just don't always win." Or: "I want everyone to believe that, in any given moment, they can make a difference."
Hartley is the second coach in Flames history to be known for a relentlessly sunny disposition in the face of challenging times. The first was Badger Bob Johnson, who came along in 1982 from the University of Wisconsin and, in time, won over a jaded group of professional athletes with sayings such as, "It's a great day for hockey."
Hartley has that motivational gene too, although he tends to speckle his commentary with more humour than Johnson ever did.
So, for example, before the playoffs started, when his Flames were about to play a veteran Vancouver Canucks team, Hartley noted that he would happily go to a local drugstore and buy a few cases of experience, if they were available.
The Flames opened the season as 100-1 long shots to win the Stanley Cup, the same odds as the Buffalo Sabres.
But while the Sabres lived down to expectations this season, Hartley led the Flames to a berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2009, earning him a nomination for the Jack Adams Award, given to the NHL's coach of the year. Hartley is a finalist along with the Nashville Predators' Peter Laviolette and the New York Rangers' Alain Vigneault.
The statistical case for Hartley is easy to make: The Flames made a 20-point season-over-season improvement, the biggest jump among Western Conference teams and the third-highest in the league overall.
They were also exceptional at 11th-hour comebacks. Calgary tied for first in overtime wins (nine), was ranked second in third-period goal differential (plus-31), and third in wins when trailing after two periods (10). The Flames also recorded 1,557 blocked shots, the highest single-season total since the statistic was introduced.
Twenty-first-century coaches need to be motivators, teachers, psychologists and tacticians, but there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for success. In many ways, Hartley is the antithesis of John Tortorella, who won a Stanley Cup in 2004 with the Tampa Bay Lightning while working for general manager Jay Feaster, who originally hired Hartley to coach Calgary back in May of 2012. Tortorella's my-way-or-the-highway approach eventually wears players down, but can – and has been – effective in short spurts.
Hartley, who came to Calgary from Zurich after leading the ZSC Lions to a Swiss league championship, tends to be more evangelical. He constantly tells his players they need to develop a boxer's mentality – if you get knocked down, you get back up again.
Hartley's own life is a reflection of how that approach can work.
Unable to attend university in Ottawa after his father died when he was 17, Hartley spent eight years doing factory work in his hometown of Hawkesbury – four of them in the paper mill and, after it closed, four in a glass factory that manufactured automobile windshields. Hartley volunteered as a goalie coach with the local Junior A team, the Hawkesbury Hawks; eventually he became the head coach and transformed a nine-win team into a league champion.
The Flames opened the season as 100-1 longshots to win the Stanley Cup, the same odds as the Buffalo Sabres.
But while the Sabres lived down to expectations this season, Hartley led the Flames to a berth in the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2009, earning him a nomination for the Jack Adams Award, given to the NHL's coach of the year. Hartley is a finalist along with the Nashville Predators' Peter Laviolette and the New York Rangers' Alain Vigneault.
The statistical case for Hartley is easy to make: The Flames made a 20-point season-over-season improvement, the biggest jump among Western Conference teams and the third-highest in the league overall.
They were also exceptional at 11th-hour comebacks. Calgary tied for first in overtime wins (nine), was ranked second in third-period goal differential (plus-31), and third in wins when trailing after two periods (10). The Flames also recorded 1,557 blocked shots, the highest single-season total since the statistic was introduced.
Twenty-first-century coaches need to be motivators, teachers, psychologists and tacticians, but there is no one-size-fits-all recipe for success. In many ways, Hartley is the antithesis of John Tortorella, who won a Stanley Cup in 2004 with the Tampa Bay Lightning while working for general manager Jay Feaster, who originally hired Hartley to coach Calgary back in May of 2012. Tortorella's my-way-or-the-highway approach eventually wears players down, but can – and has been – effective in short spurts.
Hartley, who came to Calgary from Zurich after leading the ZSC Lions to a Swiss league championship, tends to be more evangelical. He constantly tells his players they need to develop a boxer's mentality – if you get knocked down, you get back up again.
Hartley's own life is a reflection of how that approach can work.
Unable to attend university in Ottawa after his father died when he was 17, Hartley spent eight years doing factory work in his hometown of Hawkesbury – four of them in the paper mill and, after it closed, four in a factory that manufactured automobile windshields. Hartley volunteered as a goalie coach with the local Junior A team, the Hawkesbury Hawks; eventually he became the head coach and transformed a nine-win team into a league champion.
From there, Hartley moved through the ranks quickly: a Quebec Major Junior Hockey League championship with the 1993 Laval Titan; a 1997 Calder Cup with the Hershey Bears; a 2001 Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche. Arguably, his greatest NHL achievement came far away from the spotlight: guiding the 2007 Atlanta Thrashers to their one-and-only playoff appearance.
Hartley believes the only way a team can succeed is if it develops a family-first mentality – and that may be the best way to explain how the lightly regarded Flames made the playoffs and beat a higher-ranked team to reach the second round.
After the Minnesota Wild were eliminated Thursday night, seven teams remained in contention for the 2015 Stanley Cup. Calgary – scheduled to play Game 4 of its series against the heavily favoured Anaheim Ducks here Friday – was one. Who saw that coming?
"I don't think we ever saw ourselves as underdogs," insisted forward Joe Colborne. "From Day 1 of camp, Bob said, 'We're a playoff team, I don't care what anyone else says,' and we believed that coming out of camp. We just kept overcoming these hurdles, and that's a credit to our coaching staff.
"In here, he's great at inspiring the confidence – that we're always in the fight and that we have the team in here to do some damage."
Hartley said neither he nor his team took the preseason predictions personally. "I make predictions, too," he said. "This is for fun. But at the same time, it was never about proving people wrong, it was about proving us right. The day I would be a head coach at the NHL level and I don't believe I can take an organization to the playoffs, I will go home. We play to be in the playoffs. We play to win a Stanley Cup."
Philosophically, Hartley says he strives to instill "belief or commitment – that you are going to challenge a group of athletes to make a run for it – and respect the fans. This is a game. The Scotiabank Saddledome is always full. Last year, we got standing ovations after losses twice. That's something I've never seen in my career.
"We're going to go and work just because we are paid to be pros? Not on my watch. We're representing a community, fans who come into the building to see us play hard. There's a strong bond. We just lay out the plan, expect a commitment from everyone, and we're fortunate. We're coaching a great group of athletes, and they're respecting our game plan."
Hartley's greatest motivational achievement this season was keeping the attitude positive after the Flames lost team captain Mark Giordano to a torn biceps tendon in March. The Flames were in the thick of the playoff race at the time, but Giordano was their top player, a Norris and Hart Trophy candidate. Yet the Flames were 12-6-3 in the 21 regular-season games Giordano missed to earn third place in the Pacific Division.
So the Jack Adams nomination was no surprise.
"It wasn't unexpected in our room," said Giordano. "The way our season's gone, the way the predictions were at the start of the year, you ask anyone around the league, 'Who's the hardest team to play against work-wise?' I think we're right up there with anyone.
"Our coaching staff's done a great job, first with the work ethic, which is there every night, but also with the details we play with. That's why we are where we are."
Hartley says what he likes best about coaching is the teaching aspect of it.
"I believe a big mistake that can be done at the NHL level is, we think NHL players don't have anything to learn anymore," said Hartley. "I challenge myself. I challenge my partners to learn every day. Looking at my experience in Zurich, Jacques Cloutier and I went there looking for the challenge. We were bringing NHL experience, I think we brought a lot of details. But on the flip side, just watching minor-hockey practices, watching kids in the gym at six and seven years old, dealing with another culture, I can tell you today I came back from Switzerland as a better coach."
Hartley clearly has a soft spot in his heart for the honest-workman player. He is always referencing role players Eric Messier and Dan Hinote from his Colorado days. In Calgary, players such as Lance Bouma, the shot-blocking forward who had a career year this season with 16 goals, appeal to Hartley's blue-collar ethic.
"If you work hard with Bob, you're going to have a good chance for success and play a lot," said Bouma. "That's something you want out of coaches – when they reward hard work. They're good to work for."
But there is more to Hartley than just the supportive father figure. Internally, outside of those light-hearted media scrums, he can be demanding too.
"You guys don't see the hard side of him," said Colborne, "but you have to have that too. The thing that I've appreciated from Day 1 is his communication skills. He's such a great communicator. You know where you stand with him."
What forward David Jones appreciates about Hartley is that he doesn't play favourites.
"Everyone's on an even level," said Jones. "He demands hard work and discipline and playing the right way from everyone. He's shown he's not afraid to take you out of the lineup if you're not playing the right way, or if you're not playing well. That's all you can ask for – that the coach be honest with you, and have everyone on the same page. And if you're not pulling your weight, you don't deserve to play."
Hartley shrugs off the Jack Adams nomination, saying it's unimportant with the Flames immersed in the playoffs.
"It's far from being a priority for me," he said. "I'm having fun. I love this city. I really hope this is my last stop. Those things, for me, coach of the year or just being a nominee, are a true reflection of our team. As a coach, you can stand on the ice with your whistle or you can stand behind the bench and have the nicest suit, but if you don't have any players, you're not going to get anything accomplished. Everything we've done as a team this year, the credit goes to our players."