Why Senators coach Travis Green should be considered for Jack Adams Award

OTTAWA — It’s hard to measure the impact of coaching until you see it.

Ottawa Senators head coach Travis Green has transformed his team from perennial underachievers to a playoff contender in his first season in charge, and that’s why he deserves to be in the Jack Adams conversation. Washington’s Spencer Carbery may be the favourite for the award, with others in the mix including Jim Montgomery, Dean Evason and Scott Arniel. Nevertheless, there’s a case to be made for Green.

The Senators’ core is principally the same as previous seasons, but the way they play is as different as Ottawa weather on Christmas Day and Canada Day.  

That’s coaching.

“Right at the start of training camp, he (Green) harped on stuff that we’ve been struggling with in years past,” Drake Batherson told Sportsnet.ca. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job cleaning most of it up, and I think that’s why we’re in the position we are today.”

In the past, Ottawa had the ability to score against anyone with their young, talented forwards but their defensive zone coverage was an absolute gong show. This season Ottawa is one of the better defensive teams in the league, exemplified in Ottawa allowing just three goals in two games on the weekend.

Statistics from Natural Stat Trick

That’s what general manager Steve Staios wanted when he hired Green.

“I think it’s been clear that the culture has changed,” Staios told Sportsnet.ca.

Years of a losing culture is hard to break. Just gaze over to Buffalo and Detroit that still have no clear pathway to return to the playoffs anytime soon, while Ottawa almost certainly will be in the playoffs by season’s end. Green has moulded Ottawa into a winning culture through that defensive emphasis.

Look no further than the focal points of the team, including Tim Stutzle, Brady Tkachuk, Thomas Chabot and Batherson, all of whom were mediocre to porous defensive players who didn’t “play the right way” before this season.

However, all of those players have improved defensive metrics this season, with each of them rising into the top half of the league in expected goals allowed per game at five-on-five. It has resulted in wins.

“I’ve learned a lot from him. Especially (on) the defensive side of things,” Tkachuk said. “He’s just been great for the group, with his messaging and learning. It’s easy to see now when he shows the mistakes that we’ve made and how we can correct them.”

The players deserve a lot of credit for the change, but so does Green.

Transformations and cultures take time to reform. In Ottawa’s first 20 games, its record was 8-11-1. The team was playing relatively well, but old habits were still ever-present, squandering early leads conjoined with mental lapses. But the players stuck by Green, and he stood by them. Following their fifth straight loss in November with negativity and trade rumours swirling around their captain Tkachuk, Green defended his leader.

“My God, to go after a guy because he’s emotional and wants to win? Like, really?” Green said. “We want all our players to be emotional and want to win. To challenge a guy like that, I’m probably being light, like, I think it’s crazy.”

Ottawa would then go on a 10-2-1 run that thrust them into a playoff spot.

Leadership.

Green didn’t wait for September to foster those relationships. Soon after he was hired, he went to Europe to meet some of his core.

“He actually flew all the way out to (Czechia) just to have lunch with Brady, Shane (Pinto) and me,” Jake Sanderson told Sportsnet.ca.  “So that’s pretty cool.”

In today’s NHL, yelling and screaming just for the sake of it has shown itself not to be an effective coaching tactic. We won’t name names, but there has been a tidal shift of old school coaches leaving the game for more modern-day communicative coaches. Green can be prickly in public, but with his players, it’s patience and constant communication.

“He expected me to be a top 200-foot player,” said Stutzle on the Coming in Hot podcast. “And he gave me time too. It wasn’t like he expected me to be one from day one of training camp. He said you’re going to learn a lot and can learn a lot of new things.”

Modern-day players want to be coached hard but with grace.

“He’s a players’ coach,” Sanderson said. “He knows when we need rest, but at the same time, (he knows) when we need a good skate, and he’ll give it to us. I love everything he’s done for our team so far.”

Green has also conveyed a calming demeanour that his team has embodied, a trait that fell by the wayside in previous seasons for a young team that played like one.

“I think he does a good job of keeping everyone at an even keel,” Shane Pinto told Sportsnet.ca.

It was exemplified in Ottawa’s ability to hold onto leads against Columbus on the weekend. Ottawa has a 28-2-1 record when ahead going into the final frame.

A very stoic Green is even known for his speeches.

“When he speaks like, it actually fires me up,” Stutzle said on the Coming in Hot Podcast.

There were many skeptics of Staios’ hiring of Green because of his lack of success with the Vancouver Canucks, but that didn’t dissuade Staios, a believer that coaches get better in their second stints.

“There were a number of reasons why I thought he was the right guy,” Staios said. “He’s got a unique way of being hard and holding players accountable, but also developing that relationship and real, honest, open line of communication.

“I found that one of his differentiators, as I was going through my search, was his experience in Vancouver. I found it interesting that the sort of makeup of the team (in Vancouver), from an age perspective, in particular, kind of mimicked where we were.”

We all get better at whatever we do with practice.

Don’t forget Green was dealt a tough hand in Vancouver with an incomplete roster and yet they were able to overperform at the beginning of his tenure in Vancouver, culminating in a playoff run in 2020.

Heading into the season, when many pundits examined Ottawa, they would say something along the lines of: “If they can ever figure it out, they will be very good.” The Senators have.

Green has not only moulded the Senators into a playoff team for this season, but under his stewardship, they look poised to be a playoff team for years to come. And that’s why Green deserves his name on some ballots for the Jack Adams coach of the year award. 

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