Jeremy Colliton showed the same maturity as an NHL head coach at his end-of-year Zoom press conference on Friday – marking the end of his second season with the Blackhawks – as he did when his players were ready to script at once in a lifelong postseason chance against a better team on paper.
The Hawks defeated the home team Oilers in four games for the best-of-five series in the qualifying round of the postseason tournament, giving Colliton his first career victory in the postseason series in the NHL as head coach. Then they lost to the stacked Stanley Cup caliber Vegas Golden Knights. Chicago fell in five games to Vegas, but lost three that were decided by one goal and showed no signs of stopping.
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The 35-year-old banker made some decisions in Game 5 against the Golden Knights that left some fans and members of the media shaking their heads, but on Friday, Colliton declared each.
On the Zoom call, he was asked about the decision to leave Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews on the bench and not use a timeout near the end of Game 3, plus that John Quenneville came in the lineup for Alex Nylander and played on the topline for Game 5.
“After a series and after every game you see some things you did and you run it back and say there’s another door we could open. All I can do is go ahead and see the reasons why, “Colliton said. “The time-out in Game 3 … First of all, Tazer, they had an offensive zone faceoff at four minutes and didn’t work. They ended up watching for a minute. I think that took a lot out of him. And then, when we got his next shift, I think it was about the two minute mark.He just looked like he had no juice.When he saw him on the couch too, it just felt like he was gauze. it does not think 30 seconds would be enough to get him ready.
“On the other hand, Vegas, they were 40 seconds inside. It was an ice cream. (Max) Pacioretty iced it. The guys they had on the ice (probably not who they wanted), their D- pairing probably, (Nate) Schmidt and (Brayden) McNabb, but the strikers, they had no right hand in the shift for 40 seconds, so we thought our boys were fresh enough, and (Dylan Strome) Stromer, we felt he was a really good game.Faceoff wise, he was our best man that game.It did not succeed.We won the faceoff but we could not create enough.But I am not sure we would have gone any other way if not.
“The thing about Quenneville, we wanted to change it. I thought to the line of Toews, they were excellent in the Edmonton series. I did not think they were very effective in the Vegas series. We tried in games 3 and 4 in order to move on (Patrick Kane) Kaner’s a little bit to change the rotation a bit. We felt like Quenneville … we knew Tazer liked playing with Quenneville. He talked a lot about it that year. he enjoyed playing with him.Just a way to inject a bigger body, physically, good shot.And then it could move us (Brandon) Saad with Strome and (Aex) DeBrincat, and I thought they were probably our best line in Game 5 were.
“You know what? We did not win, so we’ll go back and look at these things and guess this second and ask what we could have done differently. But I thought Quenneville was really good in Game 5. He had four or five solid hits. on the prefix, and adding an element that we probably did not have enough in the series.A few really good defensive plays, a willingness, as we talked about earlier, he skated the puck out of D-zone two, three, four times and took a hit to make a play to get it deep so we could make a change.And those little things, we need more in our group.I thought for a man who came in, he had not played much , can not really ask too much more of him. “
Credit to Colliton for answering the questions and not rushing or refusing to answer them like the weary action another particular head coach displayed this postseason. People may not like some of his answers, but he had answers. Jeremy had reasons for his decisions and like many of the young Hawks who showed promise in Edmonton, he still learns and wants to become even better as a sophomore head coach in his mid – thirties. Also like the players the chance on a big stage against good teams did him a lot of good as a coach and it can only help the Hawks’ chances for a better finish next year.
