Utah Mammoth head coach André Tourigny is known around the hockey world as “Bear.”
After a tough game, he can sometimes bare his teeth — but when he gathered with reporters in the press conference room at the Mammoth Ice Center on Monday afternoon, his personality resembled that of a teddy bear more than a grizzly.
That’s because he was there to talk about his fresh multi-year contract extension.
“I feel really blessed,” Tourigny said after dishing his thanks to ownership, management and the players.
Coaching gigs in the NHL are anything but stable, so job security means a lot. Tourigny had one year remaining on his existing contract, and although terms of the extension were not announced, it does guarantee him several more years’ worth of income.
Tourigny is the fourth-longest-tenured head coach in the NHL (going back to his Arizona days), and with Carolina’s recent Stanley Cup victory, he becomes the longest-tenured head coach who has not won the Cup with his current team.
“It’s unreal,” he said of the achievement.
With the extension comes a responsibility to lead the team to greater heights — something Tourigny has done in each of his five NHL seasons thus far.
“Bear’s done a great job,” said GM Bill Armstrong, who also met with the media on Monday. He’s got our group to grow a little bit each year and point totals have grown. He’s done an amazing job at keeping great relationships with our players with a good environment. And, you know, he’s been able to drive us into the playoffs and get a little bit better each year and take that next step."
That improvement, Tourigny said, comes from a growth mindset.
“Every day, we are curious about ‘What can we do better?’ ‘What can we learn from that situation?’ ‘What can we learn from the last game?’ ‘What can we learn from the last win or the last loss’ ... and stuff like that,” he said. “I think there is a very high level of desire to improve and to always get better.”
“... When you have that mindset, it helps you through the peaks and the valleys. You lose 6-1 last night? Well, you show up today with the same mindset of, ‘OK, what can we do better?’ And the next game you win against a top team, a good game, you win 3-2. Don’t go too high. Next day you show up: ‘What can we do better?’”
Tourigny will have additional help, too.
Adam Foote, who spent the last four seasons coaching the Vancouver Canucks (three as an assistant and one as a head coach), joins the staff. His primary task will be helping the defensemen — an area of the game where he’s more qualified than most, given his 19-season career as one of the NHL’s premier shutdown defensemen.
Existing assistant coach Blaine Forsythe received a multi-year contract extension alongside Tourigny. Forsythe runs the power play, an area that left something to be desired last season, particularly in the playoffs.
Armstrong has confidence in him, though. From the Olympic break to the end of last season, the Mammoth’s power play operated at 30% — the third-best rate in the league during that stretch, behind only the eventual Cup-winning Hurricanes and Foote’s Canucks.
“He’s an experienced guy at it. They’re hard to find. Our group has a lot of belief in Blaine,” Armstrong said, noting that the players also have a high level of respect for him.
What is André Tourigny’s coaching philosophy?
Tourigny provided a glimpse into his operations Monday. Here are some of the things he emphasizes.
Love and growth
It may have been the day after Father’s Day, but Tourigny credited his mother for teaching him how to be happy.
“I always say my mom starts smiling and talking before she wakes up in the morning,” he remarked. “She’s always happy. I was not like that all the time, but throughout my path, I realized that’s where culture grows.”
He applies that philosophy in his job.
“You need love. You need people who care about you. You need people who have the knowledge. You need people who push you,” he said.
His players appreciate the way he coaches.
“He’s always been a guy that’s coming out and checking in on us when we’re eating breakfast in the morning and just really relating to the players,” said associate captain Lawson Crouse, the longest-tenured player on the team, in his exit interview.
“He truly cares about all of us and it shows when he’s a coach. His love and passion for the game, his commitment, his mindset, everything. It’s a lot of fun to play for a coach like that and I have nothing but respect for him.”
Honesty and vulnerability
A lot of coaches attack their players’ vulnerabilities in an attempt to motivate them more. That’s not Tourigny’s style.
“Everybody — all of us in the room here — we all have weaknesses," he said. “We can have honest conversations and try to improve those things, or we can lie to ourselves and think nobody knows, which everybody knows.
“... That’s not the way we operate. We’re really honest, we have open discussions. Honest discussions, but we do it with respect, energy, enthusiasm and we have fun.”
Exceeding the status quo
There’s no such thing as “good enough” unless you’re the best in the world at what you do. To Tourigny, the notion of doing something because “that’s the way we’ve always done it” is a path to defeat.
“There’s stuff we’re doing good, but it doesn’t mean it’s good enough,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we cannot be better. We need to have that growth mindset where we always look to perform better, we always look to outperform our potential.”
