Jan 30, 2003
Ftorek gets Bruins turned around in time
BOSTON (AP) -- Robbie Ftorek's faith in his players might have cost him his job. Instead, it has the Boston Bruins winning again, and trusting in themselves and their leader.
"I was never worried about his job ... because I know what kind of coach he is," forward Joe Thornton said this week after the Bruins extended their unbeaten streak to five games, pulling out of a slump in which they won just three times in 18 tries. "He's a great coach."
Ftorek showed his skill last season, his first in Boston, when he guided the Bruins to the best record in the Eastern Conference -- a shocking turnaround for a team that missed the postseason in the previous two tries. Then the Bruins lost to the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the playoffs, and the same old blame game began anew.
The early exit persuaded management to let Byron Dafoe leave via free agency and open the goaltender's job to a competition between Steve Shields and John Grahame. All-Star Bill Guerin also left for greener pastures, and restricted free agent Kyle McLaren vowed not to return to Boston, meaning the Bruins opened the 2002-03 season without their top goalie, forward and defenseman.
Yet despite injuries that chipped away at the roster from the beginning, the Bruins were off to a 19-4-3 start Dec. 8 -- the best record in the NHL. And they still had McLaren as a trump card to be traded away for whatever piece might be needed.
Then, they started losing.
And losing.
A five-game skid was followed closely by another, and the Bruins were sinking. Ftorek looked over his team -- the same one that started off with all those wins -- and decided that he didn't need to do anything drastic.
"In an 80-game season, you're going to lose a few. I thought it would last a couple of games. I didn't think it would go on so long," defenseman Nick Boynton said. "But we knew we were going to come out of it. It was just a matter of time and effort. We knew we had the same team at the start of the year."
General manager Mike O'Connell said the coach's job was never in jeopardy. But Ftorek knew that he couldn't wait forever.
"I've been through this before," he said.
That's putting it mildly.
Ftorek coached New Jersey to the best record in the Eastern Conference in the 1999-00 season before the Devils went into a slump, losing 10 out of 16 games. He was fired with eight games left in the regular season; New Jersey went on to win the Stanley Cup.
"It's funny how it creeps up," Ftorek said when asked if he learned anything from Bruins' slump that will help him avoid another one.
"You do a lot of thinking about it," he said. "If things start creeping in again, maybe we'll deal with it a little differently than we did last time."
Despite O'Connell's protestations, rumors of Ftorek's demise began circulating as the losing continued. Players say they heard the talk but didn't feel like they had to save their coach's job.
Instead, they responded to the confidence Ftorek showed in them by showing confidence in him.
"Robbie did a tremendous job with us, starting last year," forward Martin Lapointe said. "Guys respect him and would hate for him to get fired. But that's all up to us. Guys have shown they want to play for him.
"We've got a lot of confidence in Robbie, and at the same time he's got a lot of confidence in us."
Despite their up-and-down start, the Bruins head into the All-Star break in the middle of the playoff hunt. They are starting to get some of their injured players back, and the distractions of the goaltender rotation is behind them.
Convinced that Grahame wasn't the solution in goal, O'Connell traded him for a draft pick Jan. 13; then he decided he wasn't impressed with Shields either, and sent McLaren to San Jose in a three-way deal that put Montreal goalie Jeff Hackett in Boston.
Even before Hackett took the ice, the Bruins appeared to be pulling out of their slump. They beat Columbus 7-2 on Jan. 18, then tied Washington and beat Pittsburgh before Hackett posted back-to-back wins -- including a 1-0 shutout of Philadelphia in his Bruins debut.
"The timing of it, it just happened," O'Connell said, denying the trade was designed to spark the team. "I think the players might look at it and say,'It's behind us. This is what's here. Let's move on."'
The Bruins appear to have done so. But they can no more explain this streak than the two that preceded it.
"Things aren't going good for you, and you think it's never going to turn around. But I think always, in the back of our minds, we felt like we had a good team," forward Brian Rolston said. "It's not an easy thing to do, but we did it."
AI
