Fan Poll: The next player to coach success story?

November 10th, 2008 by Paul Tutka

Not sure how many newer fans and followers of the game realize how many of the NLL’s current head coaches have actually played in the league in years past.

Nine of the league’s 13 teams in 2009 have coaches that had played in the league previous. The other four have pretty extensive playing careers up here in Canada too.

Current coaches Troy Cordingley (Calgary), Darris Kilgour (Buffalo), Bob Hamley (Edmonton), Derek Keenan (Portland), and Jamie Batley (Chicago) all played pretty important gigs with the Buffalo Bandits during the 90’s, while Dewey Jacobs (Minnesota) was a long time Rochester Knighthawk, Glenn Clark (Toronto) obviously won a bunch of Cups with the Toronto Rock, Tom Ryan (Boston) is starting his pro coaching career in the same city he broke into the MILL in, and even new Rochester head honcho, Paul Suggate, played way back in the mid 70’s for Maryland in the old school NLL.

With that said, in pro indoor ball, does coaching at the highest level of the game require a guy that’s played at that same level?

The consensus greatest coach ever in this league, the late Les Bartley, was a self professed “not very good player”, who never came close to playing at the pro level, but obviously transitioned that into one of the most successful coaching stints the NLL has ever seen.

We’ve seen successful coaches up here in the summer loop get passed over for past pro players for NLL coaching spots, sometimes with good results and sometimes with pretty rough results.

Outside of Bob McMahon and Ed Comeau, the rest of the league’s coach of the year nods have gone to coaches who have played in the NLL before, right up to a very deserving Adam Mueller last winter.

If you look at some of the other major pro sports, although all have former players running benches, none are at the same ratio as the NLL or have as many former high profile players heading up the show.

One unnamed NLL GM once told me that the quality of coaching at the junior and even senior level up here in Canada during the summer months is virtually non-existent and that a very, very, very small percentage of them would be able to cut it in the NLL. With a small rotation of past coaches moving around in recent years, plus the fact that former pro players are getting a lot of gigs at this level, it appears that the GM I spoke to isn’t in the minority with his views.

Also, check out our very own Ted Jenner’s article from last winter, looking at the lack of quality coaching for the pro level, and who may be up for a new gig. He was already right with one of his picks in Jeff Dowling, who landed in San Jose over the summer. Some great discussion was sparked on the forums too, but few if any of the coaches suggested appear to be on any team’s radar for now or the future, especially considering with three new coaching gigs filled this summer, really none of the suggestions on the boards made the jump or were even considered for the jump during the league’s most recent hiring process.

Not trying to imply anything either way, all of the above are just observations made from over the years.

Anyways, this week for the Fan Poll, we wanted to know what you thought about players turning into pro coaches; past, present and future.

Some of the questions were based on what we asked the players last year but we tossed some new stuff in there this week too.

We’ll check back in on Friday with the results and definitely hit up the boards with your opinions.