Hynes Making Most of Workdays with Preds in New-Look Training Camp

Approximately 20 minutes prior to the start of Tuesday's training camp session at Bridgestone Arena, Predators Head Coach John Hynes stepped onto the ice, still in a hoodie and running shoes, and suctioned three white boards with the diagram of a rink to the glass.
He used five of those canvases yesterday.
The work of a head coach in charge of an NHL club is never finished, especially when there are only two weeks to prepare with a full complement of players. After a four-month pause. For the postseason.

But that's the task at hand for Hynes, who is essentially holding his first training camp as Nashville's bench boss, after joining the team in January.
Just when his team seemed to be heading in a desirable direction in March, everything came to a halt. In July, hockey has returned, and Hynes couldn't be happier to be back at the drawing board.
"There's a new normal for all of us, but to just see the guys back in meetings, on the ice, it's probably the most back to normal [we've had in the hockey world]," Hynes said Monday. "Just the excitement to be with the players, it's really what we love doing. Coaches love to coach. It's the best part of the job… and the players enjoy it… [Monday] was a really good day, and I think our group is leaving the arena energized, ready to go and we've just got to continue to build on it."
That's exactly what happened on Tuesday during Day 2 of Predators Training Camp Presented by Vanderbilt Health, as Hynes and his staff upped the pace and the energy level on the ice.
In a way, the baseline of what Hynes is teaching is already there. He had more than two months with his team before the pause, and while he certainly used practice and meeting time wisely, there is only so much one can implement when there's a game to play every other day.
Now, the timing to get things done is just about perfect.
"The games are so important when you get into the regular season, but when you're in training camp, even though it's a shortened training camp right now… you have an opportunity to meet and you have an opportunity to practice," Hynes said. "The sole focus is on your installation, your execution, your attention to detail, your practice habits, your systematic details without having to have a ton of competition against other teams. That should help elite athletes, NHL-type players, if you're really concise in your video [and showing them] exactly what you want to have them have them do.

"The nice thing is, that's where our focus is. I came in January, and in February, we were still trying to do some of these things at a much lower level. But you're going every other day playing hockey games, traveling and dealing with those sorts of factors, sometimes it takes away a little bit of how much you can get done in practice. Right now, it's all about execution and detail."
No element is too small at this level, especially when Game 1 of Nashville's Stanley Cup Qualifier against Arizona in Edmonton is less than three weeks away.
But even before the Preds returned to the ice as a full squad, Hynes made a point of keeping in close contact with everyone. That led into Phase 2 with voluntary, small-group workouts, and after the start of Phase 3 Monday, all the preparation that went into that next step seemed to achieve the intended result.
"I wasn't sure if we were going to get 20, 30 good minutes [on Monday], but I thought [we had] that basically for the whole practice," Hynes said. "The intensity level, the speed and the pace were good, and I'd say that the biggest surprise was how well the execution was. Sometimes you could get a little bit rusty even though they were in small groups [in Phase 2]. But overall, we feel like we accomplished a lot. I think the players are leaving feeling good about what they did today, and that's positive heading into tomorrow."
Roughly 20 minutes into Tuesday's practice, one of those whiteboards fell to the ice in the midst of a drill. After a few quick pounds of his fist to the glass, the apparatus was back on display, ready for the next round of blue marker to fill it up with the letters "F" and "D" all over the map.
These workdays over the next two weeks won't always be perfect. Sometimes the execution won't be there. The tools may fail every once in a while, too. But if the first two days on the ice are any indication, Hynes likes what he sees - and his team is ready to finish what they started.
"We feel like we took some steps prior to the [pause], and we spent a lot of time as coaches talking with our players about certain situations," Hynes said. "Now, here we are, Day One of camp, and what you practice and what you emphasize speaks volumes of the importance [of what we're doing]… We've got to continue to make sure that we really work through camp and we're ready to perform at a high level."