AHL head coach Manny Malhotra sees connection between winning and team culture, saying “it goes hand-and-hand.”
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Malhotra’s thoughts are similar. There’s a direct line between winning and culture, he says.
“It goes hand-in-hand,” said Malhotra, 44, who played 16 seasons in the NHL. “There’s an attitude that has to be within the room. And then once the success begins and once you start seeing the results, it snowballs. It grows out of that. When things are going well and guys see results, they just want to do it more.
“When you have guys who are pushing each other from a motivational standpoint, from a skill and ability standpoint, it pushes the play as a team but it also internally motivates guys to want to be better.”
Culture comes in part from the types of personalities on your team, having the “right people in place to drive the bus,” to borrow a phrase from Malhotra. He also believes that that’s a teachable skill, and it can transfer from Abbotsford to Vancouver when a player is called up to the big club.
“There are so many things in hockey that are learned behaviours,” Malhotra continued. “Guys have to understand how hard you have to work, how hard you have to compete to win puck battles, how being in the right place at the right time is so important. When you look at the best teams in any league, they’re usually the best structured and the hardest to play against.
“All those things are learned behaviours. When you have the right people in place and you have the right people who are pushing those kind of habits and are having success with it, guys see that and want to emulate it.”
Malhotra played for seven NHL teams, he got into 991 regular-season games. That’s No. 13 among the 258 players selected in the 1998 NHL Draft. Malhotra was the No. 7 overall pick by the New York Rangers that year, a Mississauga, Ont., native who had starred with the OHL’s Guelph Storm.
Malhotra signed with Vancouver on July 1, 2010, inking a three-year deal as a free agent after playing the season before with the San Jose Sharks.
Ask him about his memories with the Canucks and he goes first to those ties among the players.
“I’ve always said that the relationships you make are my favourite part of the game. It’s the meeting of different guys and being a part of their journey,” Malhotra explained. “Especially in those years with the Canucks. We had such good teams, and the journeys we went on every year, make you think back about how we continually grew as a team week by week and we just got better. We pushed each other. We had some fun. We had some down times.
“Any time you see somebody from that team, there’s that bond knowing what a special part of history we were for the Canucks and just thinking back to the energy in the city and the buzz. It was an amazing time for us.”
That collection of Canuck players is beloved to this day by the fans. It’s easy to wonder how much more they would be revered if they had won that Game 7 against the Bruins.
The first Canuck squad to bring a Cup home likely gets a full team statue outside of Rogers Arena. That’s how badly the fans want a championship here.
“We were as close as you could be without winning the ultimate prize,” Malhotra said. “It just goes to show that it is that hard. For as good as we were and everything we did, we were one game shy.
“It’s a cliche but it’s the absolute truth: winning is hard. One team gets to win. You think about the (regular-season) schedule and how hard it is to make it into the dance and then to win four consecutive series? It grinds. That’s why it’s the ultimate prize. It takes everything out of you. There are so many things that have to take place to be successful.”
There was ample adversity along the way, and with Malhotra included. On March 16 that season a puck deflected off an opponent’s stick and caught him in the eye. He was initially listed as out for the season but returned to play in the final against Boston.
Malhotra didn’t agree. He landed a pro tryout contract with the AHL’s Charlotte Checkers to start 2013-14. He parlayed eight games there into a one-year deal to finish the campaign with the Carolina Hurricanes, and then played the following season with the Montreal Canadiens. His final pro games came in 2015-16 with the AHL’s Lake Erie Monsters.
“When you’re a part of a staff, you have your certain tasks and your certain players. When you’re running the whole shop, you’re in on everything — the day-to-day, the systems, the personnel, the staff,” Malhotra said. “It’s been a steep learning curve, but it’s something that I’ve really enjoyed.”
And, as you would expect, getting back to the NHL as a head coach remains a goal.
“As a player, you strive for certain things. You put your head down and you work for certain goals,” he said. “As a coach, it’s the same kind of mindset. You want to achieve the goals you set out for. That (running an NHL bench) is something I strive for in my future, recognizing there’s a lot of learning that needs to take place.”
Chilliwack (16-5-2-0) leads the BCHL’s Coastal Conference. Caleb Malhotra has three goals and 15 points through 23 games. That puts the 6-foot, 170 pound, left handed shot seventh in team scoring. Five of the six players in front of him on the Chiefs’ scoring list are 20-year-olds; the other is 19.
“Everything happens for a reason,” Manny said. “This worked out perfectly. To be able to be close and be someone to lean on when he needs somebody, but also far enough that he can partake in the junior experience of living away and growing up on your own a little bit. It’s a great balance for us.”