Source: USA TODAY
NASHVILLE ? If history is a guide, Predators coach Barry Trotz might use the term ?lower body injury? a lot during the 2013 lockout-shortened schedule.
According to Predators TV analyst Terry Crisp, who coached the Tampa Bay Lightning during the lockout-shortened 48-game season in 1995, and radio analyst Stu Grimson, who played for the Detroit Red Wings and Anaheim Mighty Ducks that year, groin muscle injuries were the biggest issue.
With players not properly warmed up for the short-season sprint, muscle pulls and tears, especially the groin, became common. There were also other issues, like travel and sloppy play, but injuries could be the biggest problem for all teams in the upcoming 48-game season.
In 1995, Crisp?s Lightning went 17-28-3 and missed the playoffs. Grimson played 31 games for the Mighty Ducks and 11 games for the Red Wings.
Recently Crisp and Grimson sat down with The Tennessean to discuss the 48-game slate, both from coaching and playing perspectives. Here are their words:
Terry Crisp
?Probably the biggest thing to do as a coaching staff is ramp it up fast. There?s not such thing as easing into it. You know right away two things: first off you have a shortened training camp, and secondly you better come out of the blocks firing as hard as you can fire.
?Every other coach and every other team has the same message to start hard and start fast. The first shortened season was almost a treat with how training camp was run. You didn?t have 50 guys to weed out and you didn?t have to figure out the farm team. You had your team and maybe two extra guys at the most, maybe three with injuries. What I liked best about it was, you could go immediately into your systems. You didn?t have to have all those drills. You could do your breakouts, regroups and attacks and your special teams. You had your team. That was it.
?We shortened our practices. Also you didn?t have two weeks to get the players in shape, which caused some issues. The groins were the biggest thing. You didn?t want the frigging groins pulled. Most of these guys now have been skating all along this year, so it may not be as much of the issue as it was for us back then.
?My biggest worry was the groins, because once you pull a groin, you knew what you would have to do next. The only thing good for a groin is rest and you don?t have time to rest in a 48-game schedule. You didn?t have a privilege of that.
?With Tampa, we were one of the underdogs and a brand new team, that started in 1992. I felt if we came out hard and had a hot goalie, we could do some damage. I thought the 48-game schedule benefited our team. Unfortunately it didn?t. It should have, but it didn?t work out that way.?
Stu Grimson
?It was a very strange season. When you?ve been at this game a while, your body kind of gets on a seasonal clock, and a 48-game schedule kind of sets it on its rear. You drop into the season at the most interesting and exciting part of the year, in mid-January, when you?re normally just starting to pay attention to where everybody sits in the standings in terms of the playoffs.
?The first 10 games are different from NHL hockey. It was a little bit scrambling and a little less positional. Guys are playing largely on adrenaline. But at about the 10- to 12-game mark, I thought things settled down, and it looked a lot like NHL hockey again.
?The interesting part about it is every night the stakes are higher. You?re essentially playing a four-point game every time out there. You?re playing somebody in your conference, somebody who has a direct bearing on where you seed out in the playoffs. It was a lot of fun.
?You can?t get it all back in a week. It takes some time, and there?s a price to be paid if you try to get it all back too early. You don?t want to press too terribly hard.
?Rest is just as important as cranking it up physically to get back to game-like conditions.
?When you?ve got kind of a condensed training camp like this without exhibition games and you drop right into NHL-style conditions, you run the risk of lower body issues like groin injuries if you?re not looking after yourself and minding the pace at which you come back.
?When I was with Anaheim at the start of the lockout, we viewed it as a bit of an advantage because we weren?t traveling long distances to the Eastern Conference It was about midway through that schedule where we realized we were out of the mix, so I dropped into Detroit shortly after that. That was a team that had a lot of things going for it, and made the Stanley Cup Final.?
Josh Cooper also writes for The (Nashville) Tennessean
Copyright ? 2013 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
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