Prepping for tonight’s visit to Central-leading Detroit, coach Jacques Lemaire worked the Devils on their “neutral zone coverage” yesterday. It wasn’t the inventor teaching the trap, it was the perfector demonstrating the updated version.
This is Lemaire’s third go-round with the Devils, and it can be easy to forget just who he is and what he has done. The 6-0-1 streak the suddenly red-hot Devils take to Detroit is not an accident, though it might seem like a miracle.
“He’s the smartest hockey man I know — partly because he’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met,” said Doug Risebrough, whose best move as former Wild general manager was hiring Lemaire as that team’s first coach.
“Jacques is bright in a lot of things. He’s smart to start with, and he has a huge, huge passion for the game,” said Risebrough, now a consultant with the Rangers. “Over all those years, between his intelligence and his passion, he figured a lot of things out.
“He’s the best coach I’ve ever seen at understanding goaltending,” he said. “Most guys don’t understand goaltending. Head coaches go get goaltending coaches, but he understands goaltending. He understands defensemen as well as anyone that ever played defense.
“I’ve seen a lot of guys work on intuition, and a lot of guys work on intelligence. One or the other. Jacques can do both,” Risebrough added. “Not always at the same time. Sometimes he’ll do something because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, and other times he’ll spend three hours talking about what’s the right thing to do because he wants to analyze it. A lot of guys are successful because they have one or the other. Not a lot of guys have both.”
Risebrough won four Stanley Cups playing with Lemaire, who won eight as a player and another coaching the 1995 Devils.
“The best two-way player I’ve ever seen play the game,” Risebrough said. “He gave [Minnesota] instant credibility. At his introductory press conference, someone asked him what it will be like coming to an expansion team and losing. His answer was ‘I don’t like losing. We won’t lose.’ Three years later we went to the semifinals.”
Risebrough and Lemaire won Stanley Cups under Scotty Bowman, and Risebrough did not shy from a comparison between the two Cup-winning coaches.
“Scotty was a master of working with the best,” Risebrough said. “Put him down as the best with the best teams because he had the best players. And I don’t think that’s an easy circumstance.
“Jacques is a little the other way, always able to make something when people don’t expect much.”
The Devils’ current rebirth would be such an example.
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Martin Brodeur is expected to start vs. the Red Wings. . . . Colin White remains out with a lower body injury. . . . The Devils are 0-9 in Detroit since 1996-97.