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From the Booth to the Bench
by Alanah McGinley on 07/09/08 at 02:25 PM ET
Comments (5)
From Brett McMurphy at The Tampa Tribune:
The way Barry Melrose sees it - make that saw it - nobody viewed more hockey than he did last season as an ESPN analyst.
“What I like is, no one has watched more hockey than me in the last year, the last five years,” Melrose said. “I’ve probably seen Tampa play 70 times last year and every team on the East Coast probably 70 times and the West Coast teams maybe 50.
“It’s the personnel. There’s not many players in the NHL I don’t have a read on - who I like, who I wouldn’t like. That’s probably the best thing about the NHL and what I know is the personnel.”
The new Lightning coach is the latest to transition from sitting in makeup to making out a lineup.
Filed in: NHL Teams, Tampa Bay Lightning | KK Hockey | Permalink
Tags: barry+melrose, coaching,
Comments
It’s too bad all that hockey he’s watched is irrelevant with dumbasses like Len Barrie owning the team.
They have ZERO top four defensemen now, and the guy thinks he’s making all the right moves.
Posted by Huss from Sarasota, FL on 07/09/08 at 02:35 PM ET
every team on the East Coast probably 70 times and the West Coast teams maybe 50.
By my math, that averages out to about 4.8 games per day, every single day of the season. I’m gonna have to go ahead and call BS on that one.
Posted by shep from california on 07/09/08 at 03:34 PM ET
Nice call out shep! Did you include playoffs? And those games from 93 that he pleasures himself to?
Huss, I know very little about the Bolts, but since Len Barrie hired Melrose, I’m going to agree with you that the ownership is terrible.
Posted by Osrt on 07/09/08 at 04:47 PM ET
Actually, I gotta admit...the numbers seem kind of plausible to me, if his full-time job last season was to watch hockey games.
Seeing each team an average of 60 times a season, remembering that you see two teams per game, comes out to 900 games. 27 weeks in the season means 135 weekdays (without counting any holidays like Christmas). If he works 8 hours a day (plus 30 seconds of on-air time) and skips the commercials and intermissions, he can get through a game in about an hour and a half, which means he could have watched 5.3 games a day. There are 54 weekend days during the season, and if he watches two games live each day (pretty reasonable), that brings his total up to 135 * 5.3 + 108, or 823.5 games just in the regular season alone. Factor in pre-season and post-season, and he could be well above that.
I think his biggest problem is just that he hasn’t coached in so long, he runs the risk of liking and disliking the wrong players.
Posted by Ryan from Toronto on 07/09/08 at 05:56 PM ET
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I’m surprised he had the time to watch any hockey with all that air time that ESPN gave him...I think he was upwards of about 30 seconds a week towards the end. Tough call to leave ESPN (the ‘E’ stands for “Every-sport-except-hockey").
Posted by Andrew from Michigan on 07/09/08 at 01:31 PM ET