Reirden feels ready to take over Stanley Cup champion Capitals

ARLINGTON, Va. -- Todd Reirden is all set for his closeup.

When the Washington Capitals open the season against the Boston Bruins at Capital One Arena on Wednesday (7:30 p.m. ET; NBCSN, TVAS, NHL.TV), most of the focus will be on them raising their first Stanley Cup banner.
But some of the spotlight will be on Reirden, who will be behind the bench for his first game as an NHL coach.
The 47-year-old represents the most significant offseason change for the Capitals, who return all but fourth-line center Jay Beagle and backup goaltender Philipp Grubauer from their lineup for their championship-clinching victory against the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final.
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After four seasons with Washington as an assistant and associate, Reirden was promoted to succeed Barry Trotz on June 29 after Trotz resigned following a contract dispute and was hired as coach of the New York Islanders.
"I definitely feel like I'm ready," Reirden said. "I feel like I was ready a couple of years ago."
Taking over the Stanley Cup champions adds another layer, but Reirden is confident he can handle it.
"This is an interesting challenge in that it's not in a playbook," he said. "It comes through feel and intuition and your pulse of what your players are going through."
Reirden believes his ability to read that pulse is one of his strengths. He has a reputation for helping develop young players but also has a knack for relating to elite players.
He's the only coach to have worked with Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby (during his four seasons as a Penguins assistant) and Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin, and he received a ringing endorsement from each.
"He's able to push guys the right way," Crosby said. "Some guys need to be challenged a little bit more than others. Other guys need a calming influence. He's able to get his message across, and the best coaches are the ones that are able to do that and get the best out of their players."
The Capitals expect the transition to be a smooth one.
"The most important thing is he knows us and we don't have to try to find something new about him," Ovechkin said. "He's been with us all these years, and he has the experience to help us [win] again."
As a player, Reirden was a journeyman, a 6-foot-5 defenseman who, after a college career at Bowling Green, played 13 professional seasons, including 183 NHL games over five seasons with the Edmonton Oilers, St. Louis Blues, Atlanta Thrashers and Phoenix Coyotes. Nothing was given to him.
Jerry York, who coached Reirden at Bowling Green before moving on to Boston College, remembers Reirden as a project who joined his team as a walk-on in 1990. By the end of Reirden's sophomore year, he had worked his way into a regular role and a scholarship.
"It's a great story," York said. "Everybody asks me, 'Did I think he was going to be an NHL coach?' I didn't know if he was going to be an NHL coach. I knew he was going to be a success at something whether it's business or education or whatever because he had that drive about him."
That drive was also evident to Edmonton Oilers coach Todd McLellen, who coached Reirden with Houston in the American Hockey League in 2004-05. McLellan valued Reirden's experience, and when Reirden was sidelined with an injury, he asked him to take on more of a coaching role with young players such as San Jose Sharks defenseman Brent Burns and Minnesota Wild forward Mikko Koivu.
"There's a lot of players that would like to coach when they're done playing until they realize what it's all about," McLellan said. "Some fade quickly and decide to do other things with their lives and that's OK. But Todd, there was never a fade. In fact, it got stronger and stronger as time went on."
After finishing his playing career in Austria in 2007, Reirden returned to Bowling Green as an assistant. At the end of the 2007-08 season, then-Penguins assistant general manager Chuck Fletcher asked Reirden if he'd be interested in helping out with Pittsburgh's AHL affiliate in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton during the 2008 Calder Cup Playoffs.
He was reunited there with former Bowling Green and Cincinnati (AHL) teammate Dan Bylsma, who was an assistant under Todd Richards. It was a volunteer position with no pay, but Reirden immersed himself in it while also mixing in recruiting trips for Bowling Green and driving home to visit his family.
"That's really what you see about him," said Bylsma, who won the Stanley Cup as coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2008-09 and is now a Detroit Red Wings assistant. "He's a student of the game and puts the work in. And he's been doing that as each opportunity has come to him."
When Richards left following the 2007-08 season to join San Jose as an assistant, Reirden became a full-time assistant in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton with Bylsma as the new coach. When Bylsma was promoted to replace Michel Therrien as coach in Pittsburgh 57 games into the 2008-09 season, Reirden became the coach in Wilkes-Barre/Scranton.
Reirden joined Bylsma in Pittsburgh as an assistant in 2010-11 and worked with the defensemen and the power play there for four seasons before being let go and joining Washington in a similar role under Trotz in 2014-15. It wasn't long before he began drawing interest for NHL head coaching jobs.
He was a finalist for the Calgary Flames vacancy in 2016 but was passed over for Glen Gulutzan and had to wait two more years for this chance with the Capitals. Reirden credits Trotz with helping him, though Trotz knew that he might be grooming his eventual successor.
That created a potentially awkward situation last season when Trotz was in the final year of his contract with Reirden theoretically waiting in the wings to replace him. But Reirden said they didn't allow that to become a distraction.
"We always ended every discussion with, 'Let's win the Stanley Cup and then everything will take care of itself,'" Reirden said. "We both are competitive and wanted to win, and we needed each other to help have the success we did with that particular group."
Now that Reirden is in charge, he'll try to apply what he learned from Trotz and his other coaching influences. Among them, he lists York, McLellan, Bylsma and Chicago Blackhawks coach Joel Quenneville, who he played for with the Blues.
Reirden knows he has to be himself though. He was well liked as an assistant and associate coach because of his positivity and honest communication. As the head coach, there might be times when he has to push the players harder, but he doesn't want to change his approach.
"I think some of the success I've been able to have in the development of players over the last eight, nine years has been from being able to relate to different players and put them in a situation where they're in a challenging environment but also enjoy coming to work," Reirden said. "With today's player, you have to be cognizant of the player and understanding that they're looking for guidance and you have to create relationships and have to have communication with them to be able to help push them in the right direction."