Last year’s blunder is this season’s bright idea. Devils forward Ilya Kovalchuk says a little communication makes all the difference.
Moving lifetime left wing Kovalchuk away from the position where he earned his $100 million contract was a decision that will be forever cited among those that cost John MacLean his head-coaching job last season.
Kovalchuk came into training camp this year under Pete DeBoer with little enthusiasm for a repeat switch.
“That was enough experimenting last year, right?” he said on the day he reported for his physical.
So it’s something of a surprise that he says he’s satisfied, even glad, to be back on right wing.
“You never know,” Kovalchuk said. “When the team wasn’t doing do well, and I was struggling, [DeBoer] asked me if I wanted to try to do that. He showed me a couple of examples of how it could be better for me and for the team.”
As the Devils play a back-to-back pair at Tampa Bay tonight and Florida tomorrow, Kovalchuk is on right wing, captain Zach Parise on the left and rookie Adam Henrique in the middle. Kovalchuk is 4-3-7 in seven games on a team that has been starved for scoring lately.
It seems likely that Travis Zajac (Achilles surgery) will eventually slide between Kovalchuk and Parise after he starts his season, perhaps this weekend. That would be exactly the same setup that became the poster child for MacLean’s 33-game tenure.
Kovalchuk was upbe
at at the start of that experiment last season.
“To play with those two guys, I’d play in goal,” Kovalchuk said the first day of last year’s camp. “That’s my first experience [as a right wing]. Hopefully it’s a good one.”
It wasn’t. Parise underwent surgery after 12 games and MacLean was gone 21 later. After his “enough experimenting” declaration, it seemed unlikely it would be tried again. But that didn’t stop DeBoer.
“He showed me on tape what he wanted from me and what I should do to be better. I saw that, I listened, and I liked that,” Kovalchuk said. “They asked me and I took it as a challenge. I like it.
“To play with those guys, I’ll play anywhere,” Kovalchuk said, an echo of September, 2010.
It’s the different voice that Kovalchuk says matters.
“When you talk to the coaches and communicate with them, it’s one thing. When you don’t, it’s another thing,” Kovalchuk said. “It was a tough adjustment.
“You were told to play right wing and you never played there. You think it’s easy, but it’s not. It takes a lot of adjustment, especially in your own zone. It takes a lot of time this year, too. Now it seems like normal, especially playing with Zach. It was an easy adjustment this year.”
* Johan Hedberg is expected to face the Lightning tonight and Martin Brodeur the Panthers tomorrow. . . . The Devils have lost 5-of-7, with only victories coming after regulation. . . .Anton Volchenkov (hand) is not on the trip, while Friday callups Matt Taormina and Alexander Urbom remain with the team.