Impact of establishing player communication, team identity early in season

The Coaches Room is a regular feature throughout the 2026-27 season by former NHL coaches and assistants who turn their critical gaze to the game and explain it through the lens of a teacher.

In this edition, Kevin Dean, former assistant coach of the Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks, discusses the importance of communication with players and developing an identity, in conjunction with implementing a system, is during the early part of the NHL season.

Systems are important in hockey, particularly in the NHL. It’s the blueprint of how a team plays.

But the reason a team plays the way it does is just as important. It is necessary to have a system and an investment in the players in equal measure. That’s what you see from good teams at any level.

If a coach can get his players to play to the best of their ability, the chosen system will work better. If you can get 75 percent of your players at their best, you are going to probably have success. You're going to win.

Look, I am a fan of the Milwaukee Brewers and what they just did was incredible in winning the World Series.

That's not a high-end team talent-wise, but every player on that team was pretty much playing as well as you can play, right? That's the magic of a good coach. How do you get eight out of every 10 of your players to be at, or near, their best?

Focusing on maximizing the individual can be successful. Hockey is the ultimate team sport, so why not maximize the team’s potential by maximizing the pieces within the team? That is not to say each player is on his own page, but that each player has a role that has been communicated by the coach and accepted by the player.

The first month of the season in the NHL is the time when this happens most intensely. It’s time to develop culture, define roles and put the system in place. Notice where the system landed in that order: third.

Look at the teams Bruce Cassidy had when he was with the Boston Bruins and the Vegas Golden Knights. He made the game simple for his teams. The message was we are going to skate, compete at the puck and commit to playing hard without it.

We had slow starts in Providence of the American Hockey League when we were there. The first 10 games weren't usually very good for us, but he would come in and tell the players we are going to compete at the puck and we are going to skate.

Every day we hit them over the head with a little bit of structure but the message was about accountability and competition and each player playing an assigned role to bring something to the team. There were conversations with players about their roles and the expectations we had.

By American Thanksgiving, we’d have the system down and we’d start rolling. Like clockwork, we did it every season.

I think the way Bruce got his players to play well was by telling his players they were going to skate and attack, compete without the puck. When they have the puck, they’re going to score. That’s fun for players; it is what they want.

I still believe players want to be held accountable, but the way you do it matters. It has to be an open and honest conversation and you do that by getting to know your players. There is a need to hold your players accountable, but it’s paramount that each knows there is a personal investment by the staff.

In the end, players want to know their roles and they want to know why things are being done the way they are being asked to do them.

It’s as important that the coaching staff look a player in the eye and say block that shot for your teammate, compete at that puck, win that puck battle for your teammate. Those are going to be the building blocks of a system.

This is going on in almost every dressing room in the NHL right now.

Yes, there is work on systems and that will continue throughout the season.

But now is the time to set the bar for expectations, to have conversations with players about their roles and why they are important to the success of the team.

You look at a team like the Carolina Hurricanes. They’ve been good for the better part of a decade and they won it all last season. Now, they are playing well again; no Stanley Cup hangover.

That mindset comes from their coach Rod Brind’Amour and the expectations he has for his players. They understand their roles and they execute them. That makes the team better.

Mark Jankowski was out injured but is making his way back and he is a good example.

Here is a first-round pick who has been around a bit. Brind’Amour explained to him that he could be a really good bottom-six center, kill penalties, win face-offs and be a huge part in what the Hurricanes do to win games.

The magic for Brind’Amour is he convinces his players they can be a part of something special, but each player will have a specific role. Does the player want to do it or not?

Every night, it seems the Hurricanes have a majority of their players going. That exemplifies Brind’Amour’s brilliance as a coach.  At the end of the day, it boils down to his ability, through honest and direct communication, to maximize each player’s contribution to the team. They know their roles, are accountable to those roles and they thrive playing them.

An investment in every individual, as much as any system, has to be the bedrock of a good team.