Nov. 18, 2004

By Dave Starman
Special to CollegeSports.com

As Michigan State gets ready for another meeting with archrival Michigan, I sat down with Spartans' head coach Rick Comley in his office in East Lansing to just talk about coaching. This is the first in a series of talks with college hockey's great coaches.

Comley is in his third year at Michigan State and his 31st year as a head coach. He is just one of seven coaches to record 600 victories and won an NCAA title with Northern Michigan in 1991. His coaching career started at his alma mater of Lake Superior State before continuing on to Northern Michigan and Michigan State.

DS: Do you remember your first experience coaching?

RC: My first hockey coaching experience was as the assistant coach at Lake Superior State University. I had never coached any thing else. They had a freshman team, so I came back and helped (then head coach Ron Mason) by coaching that JV team for about 10 games. That was my first exposure to it.

DS: Did you ever really dissect the game during your playing career?

RC: Yes, I think I did. I wasn't a gifted skater so I played hard, I was a tough player who and had my share of scraps. I wasn't blessed with great speed or ability, and I always played with older players. I had to fight to survive, and I think that's what actually got me into the coaching profession.

DS: What was the influence of athletic director Ron Mason on your career?

RC: His influence was monumental. I played for him, and had great respect for him, and I was a captain for him. I saw him function as a coach; saw how he used the leaders of a hockey team. One thing I always regretted was that I was only able to be an assistant for one year. Then I became a head coach at 26 years old. We remained close friends; we worked together in the summers, stayed in contact. The friendship grew and grew. We always joked that I would always come back and work with him someday. He'd be the head coach, I'd be the assistant, and we'd finish up that way. We're back together again, just not in that capacity.

DS: Is being an assistant coach important to being a head coach at this level?

RC: I sure think so! I had to struggle and try to learn so much about handling a team and the emotions and the issues and learning to handle your own emotions. You need to be in that role for 5, 6, 7 years to truly be ready to be a head coach, or you just have to learn under fire.

DS: What are some of the earliest lessons you learned as a coach?

RC: They start right away. As a young coach, you start coaching on emotion. You're hyper, you're boisterous, you start screaming and yelling, and you're reacting to people. The thing I learned very early was that I need to be open and honest and fair, but to react. I always put a saying on the back of my door that says "Confront and Demand". Every time I have gone away from that I have had problems. When I have dealt with things that way, it has turned out well.

DS: Part of coaching is scouting and evaluating. Can you differentiate between the eyes of the coach and the eyes of the scout even though they are in the same body?

RC: I don't think so. You scout like you coach. Not only are you trying to pick out the best player in a game you might see, but you are also looking for a player you can coach. You never go wrong when you recruit a player who has characteristics you believe in. You do go wrong occasionally, when you think you can take that that product and make it out of clay and make it the perfect player, because that doesn't work.

DS: When you are scouting, are there certain characteristics that you are looking for players to display to you?

RC: Oh yes. It has gotten tougher and tougher for coaches to get out. That has been frustrating for me, because I used to get out much more. Everyone thinks that they have to find players who can skate or needs to be able to do this or that. I start with hockey sense. I want a kid who can think the game, then I want a kid with good skills, then I want a kid who can skate, then he must be able to compete. If they are deficient in one of those areas, it really shows up when they get here. I start with the head.

DS: The great coaches adapt to the changes to the game. What worked in one era might not work in the next one. Have you adapted to the changes you have seen in the game?

RC: The thing you learn over time in coaching is that you might have a set style and a belief in the game, but you have to tweak your style to the talent level you have accumulated or ended up with. You can't just say " We're going to play this way and only this way" -- every good coach does tweak a little bit, and I think adjustments over the years happen in reflection to how players and society changes over the years. The game in my opinion is still the same game it was 50 years ago; the core basics of it are the same. Coaches have had to change how they handle players based on life values, the players they have versus the players they might have had 50 years ago.

DS: Success and frustrations are part of this profession. How does a coach learn to separate those two emotions and keep an even keel?

RC: Only time can do that. I think when you are young you live and die with each win and loss. You carry each loss, and you're angry with wins. The longer you are in it, you learn to accept wins and just enjoy them without being too critical of them. You learn to put losses in their place. As you grow as a coach, the best thing you can do is have your own family because you get to see them be coached by other people, and ultimately that makes you a better coach.

DS: For a team to be successful, or be considered a success, is there a trait they have to display or a level they have to achieve to be called a success?

RC: I think there are lots of them. They have to come together and like each other, and there are certain characteristics they have to have. There obviously has to be a certain talent level to be successful. Teams that have good character, that like to be together, that spend time together, that are willing to sacrifice for each other, all those good qualities that lead to that pyramid of success. It's called a pyramid of success for a reason; you just can't just drop the puck and accumulate that success.

DS: There are several books by professional league coaches, NHL or NBA coaches, who talk about that point of character players, that they would not bring in players who have a suspect past or are not reputable citizens. Then it seems they all do, and there are many examples of teams that sign players who have arrest records, or histories of domestic violence, or were just self centered egomaniacs. In the college ranks, it seems you just can't afford to do that.

RC: Coaches of high level teams do have set standards and set beliefs, but at times take chances on players.

DS: How much of coaching comes from your experiences and philosophies as a player?

RC: I don't think you ever separate that. You always remember what you were, and what you did, and what made you successful. There are traits that you take from that and take into your coaching. It's a real talent to make you sure you don't assume that you were better than you were (laughs), and have this picture out there that isn't true because you could get into real trouble.

DS: What is the role of assistants on a college hockey team?

RC: Different coaches use their assistants in different ways. I like them to be actively involved in coaching. Their number one role, their critical role, is recruiting. Not to have them make final decisions, but in identifying the narrow pool that you can go out and put your stamp on. If you don't get that from your assistants then you are dead in the water. Then you are trying to mold and shape a team that doesn't have the talent that you want or like. That being said, I like to make sure that they have roles and responsibilities within the team, both on and off the ice, and that the players learn to respect them for having some authority instead of being a first name basis or friends.

DS: What should the relationship between the coach and the player? Some coaches get accused of being too close to their players; some are accused of being too distant. Is there a general rule, or is there a perfect coach-player relationship?

RC: I don't think there is, and I don't think there has to be. The relationship should be built on respect, and if you treat them fairly, that should happen. I have always told every player that played for me that "We will not have any problems if you want to be as good as I want you to be. If you don't, then we will have issues and I will push you much harder than you want to be pushed, because I believe you can get to a certain spot and you might you think you are already there."

If you talk to the players that I have coached over all of the years, the one thing that they accept now is in comments to me like "I never realized at the time" or "I never knew at that time", or "I really understand now the morals and the standards and the work ethic that were instilled in me by the way you coached." I don't think I'm the best coach in the world, and I think other people are better at certain things -- that's for sure. I do think that I have had a very consistent approach.

DS: When I was an assistant coach in the minor leagues, I had a coach that once took me into the dressing room after a game that really caused us to battle through some adversity. We didn't do very well in that situation. He grabbed me - took me to the dressing room and said, "Watch this."

He just read them the riot act, and when the rant was over, and certain players started to admit they did not prepare well for this game, he turned to me and said "They became a team tonight. We may lose a couple in a row after this, but they have come together." And he was right, because the level of accountability went right up. Is there a time when you can seize the moment like that?

RC: At the college level we're working with very different athletes. There are so many pressures on them like academic pressure, social pressure, and athletic pressure. In college that could take longer because of some of the distractions that are out there. Also, we can't waste games like that to learn a lesson because every game counts. We play a limited schedule, and you can waste a whole year if you are not careful.

DS: Is there are particular bench philosophy you subscribe to?

RC: Oh yes. Bench organization is critical. Otherwise there is just to much confusion. First and foremost is you can't lose your control. As mad as you can get at officials, once you lose it, your players will soon follow suit. Organization is the number one skill of coaching, and it develops over time. Adapting and recognizing what is going on out there is part of it. That's where systems come in, and that's critical. You have to know how to tweak and counter and that's why I like to prepare my teams to be able to so more than one thing. I don't like to be a left wing lock team only; I like to be able to do many things depending on how our opponent adjusts.

DS: Talk about matchups dominate conversations between coaches. Some are "match" coaches and some force you to match. Others don't worry about at all. What are your thoughts on matching lines?

RC: I have had teams where I'm not quite as good as the other team and you can clearly identify their best player, and when you do that you can put a mark on that guy. I have yet to see shadowing work over two games. It can work very well for one game. I think that's bench management where you know the other team wants to match you, and you have to decide if you want to match. If you want it, it means that your guy is usually not being shut down, and is keeping the best player on the other team on the bench. Sometimes you accept matching because you like the ice time your guy is getting against the lack of ice time your guy is getting. That enters into the matching philosophy.

DS: How do you handle the pregame dressing room? RC: I don't get very emotional before the game. I like to talk to them after the warmup to make sure the focus is there and the thoughts are right. You have to give them some room, but you can't let them be too loose and stupid because they can get real giddy on you, but they do have to be relaxed enough to go out and play. A lot of times you let that develop over time, and some teams are real good at it and some aren't, and that's when you have to step in and do something about it.

Dave Starman serves as an analyst on CSTV Friday Night Hockey and contributes weekly to CollegeSports.com. Starman has coached professionally and in the amateur ranks and is currently the head Northeastern scout for the USHL's defending champion Waterloo Black Hawks.