Todd Nelson: Freeing The Yak

There are dozens and dozens of factors, big and small, in the maturation of a professional hockey player. But usually, there is one factor that ultimately helps a player achieve critical mass, which is when the athlete turns into a productive performer: coaching.

The impact of coaching varies from player to player, and the reason for that is simple: everyone is different, and responds to various stimulus in very different ways. It is usually up to the coach to decipher those signs, and to formulate a plan of attack.

But this is not merely a matter of X’s and O’s. It is one thing to teach a player a system. It is quite another to inspire confidence in that player to use their skills at just the right time, and in just the right circumstance, in order to maximize the benefits of the system. That results in winning battles, in winning shifts, and…in winning games.

Enter the young relationship between Oilers Interim Head Coach Todd Nelson, the under-performing, #1 over-all Oilers draft pick Nail Yakupov, and the unexpected decision by the former to go with the latter in Saturday’s shoot-out…a decision which ultimately won the game for the Oilers.

You don’t need me to chronicle the trials and tribulations of Yakupov. In a hockey-savvy market like Edmonton, that gets done to death. But surely we can all agree that so far this early in his career, Nail Yakupov has not lived up to his pedigree. The bigger question is: Why not?

Well, if we are ladling out blame for Nail Yakupov’s poor development, Craig MacTavish surely gets a big helping. We have already seen Yak “good”: It was in his first NHL season, under then head coach Ralph Krueger. Krueger had a lot of shortcomings, but an inability to inspire Yakupov was not among them.

When Krueger was fired, Yakupov lost a mentor who believed in him, showed faith in him, and who was rewarded handsomely for doing so, as Yakupov proceeded to lead all NHL rookies that year in Goals Scored. Sadly, that all came crashing down when Dallas Eakins took over.

Eakins was not wrong to demand that Yakupov be a more complete player. No, where Eakins failed was in how he attempted to inspire this in Yakupov, and failed to communicate with him. Both were good individuals. But it was painfully clear that Eakins and Yak together were like oil and water.

It can be argued that professional athletes, paid what they are, should “suck it up” and damn well do what their coach tells them to do. The problem with that contention is that we’re talking about two human beings here, imperfect ones, for whom feelings can easily become issues.

It’s life. Why do spouses divorce? Often, it’s because the human condition is such that two personalities just do not mesh, even though the physical attraction may have been enough to initially bring you together and initially make you think that it could work.

I have seen this movie countless times, over my career, first while playing the game as an amateur, then while covering it professionally. The coach failed to win over the player. The player failed to win over the coach. Or…both.

But when Todd Nelson tapped Nail Yakupov on the back Saturday night in South Florida, and did what no other NHL coach had ever done with this player before, Nelson took a vital step in winning him over: he showed confidence in him.

How did Nail Yakupov respond? Well, in kind, of course, by re-paying his coach’s confidence, something Yakupov had not necessarily earned, and Yakupov even admitted as much in his comments after the game.

Watch this player from this point onward to go to the wall for this coach, and for the coach to continue to reward him with opportunity. I believe what we saw Saturday night was Todd Nelson “freeing the Yak”.

And if I’m right, that alone may be reason enough for Craig MacTavish to make up for his first mistake…by hiring his Interim Coach…Permanently.