Champions then, champions now? Bob Hartley reflects on the Avalanche

Four years ago, Bob Hartley and his wife moved into a new house on the water near his hometown of Hawkesbury, Ontario, near the Quebec border.

Not that the longtime head coach has spent much time there, what with coaching in Russia for the past four seasons and the odd trip to his Florida home in a largely francophone community not far from Fort Lauderdale.

In fact, the other day he had to ask his wife which cupboard the glasses were in.

But there is something comforting about his routine now that the hockey season is finished and his date book is pretty much clear. Well, scratch that. His hockey date book is pretty much clear. His calendar, though, is filled with just the right ingredients.

His two granddaughters aged 2 and 4 are regular visitors to grandma and grandpa’s.

“Suddenly I have a sandbox in my backyard,” Hartley said. “And I have a big room of dolls and all kinds of toys and the garage is full of bicycles. Whatever you need.”

There’s a kind of Zen about Hartley, 61, as he contemplates what is next, if anything, when it comes to a coaching career that began not far from his current home when he was working at the local windshield wiper factory.

Tuesday mornings, he’s gone to play pick-up hockey with old pals, sometimes playing goal, sometimes skating. Then the group goes to a local restaurant for breakfast. If Norman Rockwell was into hockey, this is what he’d be painting.

There is also a kind of confluence of the past and the present and the future in these days as he closely watches his old team the Avalanche try to do what they have not done since Hartley himself was standing behind Colorado's bench: win a Stanley Cup.

It seems improbable that it’s been 21 years since the Avs were in a Stanley Cup Final as they try to unseat the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning in what is one of the most anticipated final series in many years.

Even when he was coaching in Russia for the powerful Avangard Omsk squad, Hartley was still contributing to Quebec media on television and radio and as a result has followed the NHL game closely.

So in that way, Hartley has never been far removed from the NHL game even though his coaching travels have taken him to Switzerland and Latvia along with his most recent experiences in Russia.

Hartley had seen firsthand the Avs’ capabilities a few years before their last Cup run when he was coaching Colorado’s American Hockey League affiliate in Cornwall and joined the big team after the Aces were eliminated from the playoffs. He got a bird’s-eye view as the Avs, behind newly acquired goaltender Patrick Roy, were marching to the 1996 Stanley Cup.

A year later, the Avs’ AHL team was in Hershey and Hartley guided the Bears to a Calder Cup championship. By the fall of 1998 the Avs were Hartley’s team. After two straight trips to the Western Conference Final, he had the Avs in the Final once again in 2001.

Hartley jokes that he’ll be an old man sitting on his rocking chair on the porch and still telling stories of watching Patrick Roy and Martin Brodeur go toe-to-toe over seven games of that seesaw final series.

The teams split the first four games, but the Devils bounced back in Game 5 at the Pepsi Center in Denver and the Avs were out of sync all night long sending them to the brink.

“We had such a bad start. We had a bad start because we tried to win the game in the first 10 minutes,” Hartley recalled. “We got kicked 4-1.”

The next morning provided a memory that will stay with Hartley forever.

After every game, win or lose, Hartley would gather his team and let the players unpack what had happened the night before. What led to a win? How best to address mistakes that led to a loss?

The morning after Game 5?

“It looked like a funeral home to be honest with you,” Hartley said.

They knew the Cup would be at Continental Airlines Arena in New Jersey for Game 6.

“We knew we were in danger of missing history,” the coach said.

Hartley turned to veteran defenseman Ray Bourque, who had been acquired the year before at the trade deadline in the hopes that he might finally reach the goal of winning a Stanley Cup that had eluded him throughout his long, Hall of Fame career. Hartley asked him what he thought.

“My gosh, he was just so good, so good,” Hartley recalled. “He got up, he already had tears in his eyes.”

Bourque confirmed what most believed to be the case, that this was his last season.

He told his teammates that they would decide if he played one or two more games and if they played two more games if it would end with him holding the Stanley Cup.

“And then he sat down. And tears were pouring from his eyes,” Hartley said. “That was the end of the meeting.”

Hartley asked if anyone had anything else to add but the room was silent.

“It was our motivation,” Hartley said of Bourque’s presence on the team and the knowledge that time was running out for the great defenseman. “That was our primary focus.

“I think that Ray had made such an impact on us the year before. You could see his desire, you could see his passion and will to go through fire to get a Cup.”

It was contagious.

Still, it wasn’t easy.

Roy was sensational in New Jersey in a 4-0 win forcing a Game 7 back at home.

Usually Hartley and his coaching staff didn’t touch the players to signal who was going next but rather spoke to them. But the Pepsi Center was so loud that no one could hear a thing. It was difficult to get the right players onto the ice.

And then it was over, and the Avalanche were pouring onto the ice in celebration, Game 7 ending in a 3-1 Colorado victory.

Hartley immediately turned to seek out his family in their regular seats.

“I wanted to face them, to say thank you to them,” Hartley said. “They did many more sacrifices than I did to allow me to have this career.”

He saw his wife and daughter and the owner of his old junior team in Laval who he’d invited to the game. But he didn’t see his son Steve.

But a little while later as he turned to hand the Stanley Cup to one of his assistant Hartley felt his son’s presence.

A security guard who knew the Hartleys had let Steve join the celebration at ice level at a time when only the team members were allowed on the ice.

Steve has just finished his third season as head coach of the Drummondville Voltigeurs of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League. The coaching DNA is strong in the Hartley family it seems.

On the ice that night in 2001 it was captain Joe Sakic who took the Cup from commissioner Gary Bettman.

Sakic was watching from a suite high above the ice at Ball Arena in Denver on Wednesday when the Avs took Game 1 of the ’22 final on an Andre Burakovsky overtime goal as the team’s GM.

That it is Sakic who has presided over the long, slow climb back to the edge of Stanley Cup glory comes as no surprise to Hartley.

“He’s the same Joe, he’s absolutely the same,” Hartley said. “And I’m not surprised. We used to call him ‘Ordinary Joe.’ I think that’s the perfect nickname for him. He was never too high, never too low.”

And Sakic has built the Avs in the same careful manner in which he played the game, always paying attention to the small but important details that separate the good from the great.

“The way that he built this team, he built this team that way that he played, a full 200 feet of ice,” Hartley said.

Sakic’s acquisitions of Josh Manson and Artturi Lehkonen at the trade deadline speak to this broad view of what constitutes a championship caliber team, adding players who pay attention to detail as Sakic did during his playing career.

So, what next for Hartley, who has won at every level he’s coached at and whose resume includes the ’01 Stanley Cup, a Jack Adams Award in 2015 while with the Calgary Flames plus a Gagarin Cup in Russia in ’21?

Hard to tell. He’s had some communication with different teams but he is loath to discuss anything in detail. It’s not his way.

He’s got hockey camps that he’s operated for decades and which have drawn campers from around the world to prepare for in Pennsylvania and in Quebec. He’s got media work he’s been carrying on even while he’s been coaching in Russia and business investments with some pals that have turned out pretty well.

And of course there are still some boxes to unpack and sandboxes to play in and household goods to rediscover.

But make no mistake: whatever comes next, Hartley is a coach. Simple as that. And as a coach, lesson one is that you don’t control when or who you coach. That’s the life.

“I don’t know. I can only speak for myself. I will never retire,” Hartley said. “But at the same time maybe I’ve coached my last game. I don’t know.”