GENE'S BLOG: Super Dave

When I think Super Dave, it makes me rewind the clock to the 1970s, 80s and 90s and a character called Super Dave Osborne. He was played by Bob Einstein, but I'm not sure anyone would know his real name. Super Dave was considered, according to his Wikipedia page, a naive but optimistic stuntman who was frequently gravely injured when his stunts went spectacularly wrong.
While his stunts failed, his character or his act did not. He was on TV for decades and could be seen on shows such as David Letterman and Johnny Carson. He did commercials for name brand companies such as Nike that included basketball Hall of Famers like Reggie Miller. He may have been a stuntman, but he only played the role of a dummy on TV.
It got me thinking about another Super Dave named Tippett. It comes to mind especially with Monday's opponent being the Seattle Kraken. He is also far from being a dummy. In fact, an expansion franchise would only bring in a highly-intelligent veteran hockey man when starting something literally and figuratively from the ground up.

There is no template, no blueprint, but instead a group awarded a franchise and Seattle finding the best people possible to build a new team for the NHL. The owners and leaders of the Kraken decided Dave Tippett would be one of them. An advisor role in putting together the newest addition to the league was one Tippett couldn't turn down.
He did it and loved it. Helping get Seattle set for its eventual debut in the NHL was a new challenge and one that doesn't come around very often. However, along came the Edmonton Oilers in May 2019. They had an opening behind the bench, and after naming Ken Holland the GM it wasn't long after that he proceeded to name Tippett as the head coach.
It's a case of going from one outstanding opportunity to another. A big difference in the roles is your actual spot in the building of a new franchise or an existing one. With the Kraken, he would have been located in the press box or a suite hundreds of feet away from the action. With the Oilers, he is a mere few feet away from the action. Reach over far enough and you can almost touch it.
The opportunity with Edmonton was simply just too good to pass up. This is a guy who started coaching while still playing back in the mid to late 1990s with the Houston Aeros of the IHL. It's pretty safe to say coaching is running rampant through his blood stream, and turning his back on a this chance wasn't something Tippett could do.
Instead, what he decided to do was jump into a role with a team loaded with top-end talent and begin tinkering to see what he could build. It's not building a new franchise, but an existing one looking for the right person, and they found him.
It's understood by the coach, management, players and, of course, the fans that this is a team on the verge of climbing to the top. Dave Tippett is a man who decided he wanted the challenge. He's won the coach of the year trophy before and has come close to a Stanley Cup by reaching the conference final in his role behind the bench. This is no stunt, but instead real life, and something Super Dave wanted to achieve not in Seattle but Edmonton.