BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — As bonding sessions go, this one was lively, picturesque and ultimately critical to the future of the Wisconsin men's hockey program.
A month before Mike Eaves was to begin his 14th season as coach of the Badgers, he borrowed a rural, lakeside condo from a close friend and brought his new staff together to get better acquainted.
Significant changes were made after the 2014-15 season in which the Badgers struggled to a 4-26-5 overall record. Assistants Gary Shuchuk and Matt Walsh were dismissed and Zach Remiker, the director of hockey operations, left after four seasons in that role to start his own business.
Eaves filled those openings with men of varying degrees of familiarity. Assistant coach JB Bittner was a relative unknown outside of what was revealed during the interview process. Associate head coach Luke Strand had links to Eaves through multiple parties, but there were unknowns. Meanwhile, director of hockey operations John Hamre had previously worked with Eaves.
The three-day retreat to the shores of Castle Rock Lake in August was designed to get everyone on the same page. As far as the three coaches are concerned, that session laid the foundation for a remodeling project that's about to take a major step.
Wisconsin begins the unofficial second half of the regular season Friday and Saturday when it hosts Ohio State in a Big Ten Conference series at the Kohl Center.
The Badgers (4-7-5 overall, 1-2-1 with four points in the Big Ten) are noticeably better than last season, but it remains to be seen how that will translate over the next 18 games.
They've beaten the top-ranked team in the nation on the road — a convincing 3-1 decision over North Dakota on Nov. 6 — and twice failed to win when owning a lead in the third period.
They've played one of the tougher non-league schedules in the nation — outside of first-year NCAA Division I independent Arizona State the cumulative record is 63-35-20 (.619) — but have failed to win five games in which they owned a multi-goal advantage.
They've made major improvements on special teams — the penalty kill (87.9 success ratio) and power play (22.4 conversion rate) rank seventh and 13th in the nation, respectively — but attention to detail in the defensive zone remains spotty.
The challenge for Eaves and his new staff is to take the lessons learned from the first half and apply them to the second with a lineup that has nine first-year players. That's especially vital now as Wisconsin heads into a stretch where it plays 10 of its next 12 games at home.
"It's an opportunity for us to make some hay here," Eaves said. "We saw some things in the first half that we like and now we have to build on those things and being able to do it in our own rink and not travel as much is an opportunity, so that's our push here."
The surge has roots back to the summer when Eaves overhauled his staff. Bittner, regarded as a rising star in the ranks, came from Tri-City of the U.S. Hockey League. Strand, a well-known entity from playing and coaching in the state, came from Madison of the USHL. Hamre, who worked with Eaves at the U.S. National Team Developmental Program from 2000 to '02, came from the high school ranks in Minnesota.
That process gave way to a scheduled retreat near Mauston. The four men talked hockey over coffee, dinner, barbequing and golf. They talked the game over watching video, scribbling on white boards and reading from various papers and books.
"It was great because there were no distractions," Eaves said. "It was just the four of us there. We watched video. I had some papers I wanted to share with them. We had white boards up and we were making notes and taking them down. We spent literally the whole time together."
Bittner, a two-time captain who graduated from Ohio State in 2005, said the days were consumed by conversation.
"We chatted hockey for seven, eight, nine hours," he said.
Strand, who played at UW-Eau Claire and professionally with the old Madison Monsters of the United Hockey League, said it was apparent right away that the men had some big things in common.
"We share a passion," he said. "That's the easy way to say it. We all love the rink. We all love hockey. At the end of the day we're all in it for everybody here."
Eaves said he reviewed every system he had "just to find out where our thoughts and philosophies were and creating an interior structure of what we wanted to do."
It was beneficial that Eaves and Strand are limbs on the Kevin Constantine coaching tree. Eaves became acquainted with Constantine's highly detailed systems when the two worked together in the NHL with the Pittsburgh Penguins from 1997 to 2000. Strand worked with Constantine when the two were with Houston of the American Hockey League from 2007 to '09. Troy Ward, a former Wisconsin assistant under Eaves and a mentor to Strand, also worked extensively with Constantine.
"One of the things that truly helped is the fact that both Luke and I had worked for Kevin, so there was a lot of verbiage there," Eaves said. "It was like talking to a guy I'd coached with before. There was a lot of common ground."
Bittner, meanwhile, said his connections with Ward and Sioux City coach Jay Varaday, another Constantine disciple, helped him understand the concepts.
"I had crossed paths with some people from that coaching culture before, so I knew what it was: extremely detailed, a lot of video, details of the game and doing things the right way," Bittner said. "I've never met a coach that's from that tree that people say, 'He doesn't know what he's doing.' They know the game inside and out. There's not a lot that they miss."
Eaves went through each system and ended with a question: Was it successful for you? That opened the door to a lot of give and take. It also fostered a sense of comfort.
"There were no wrong answers," Strand said. "There were thoughts. There were experiences behind people's inquisitiveness."
Some of the system changes that have taken place since last season — specifically in the defensive zone — were born out of that retreat. Eaves said Strand was a strong proponent of the idea.
"He felt comfortable enough that it would help us because it would take time and space away," Eaves said. "Because he had that expertise and experience, we said, 'Let's roll with it.' "
Strand said that change was a big step toward getting everyone on the same page regarding structure and pace of play.
"The hardest part about being a head coach is something new," he said, mindful of a role he's had at UW-Eau Claire, an NCAA Division III program, and at USHL stops in Sioux City and Madison. "He's got to take new ideas in and he's got to decide which ones are yes and which ones are no."
During the get-together Bittner and Strand were limited by their lack of knowledge about the players on the Wisconsin roster. That's no longer the case.
"We didn't know the soul of the player and now we have a pretty good handle on that," Strand said.
Not every item was crossed off the to-do list during the retreat, but an important collaborative process had begun.
"I can honestly tell you when we left there we still had a lot of work to do, but it was an ice breaker," Eaves said.
Bittner has settled into his role as the prime recruiter, meaning he's on the road constantly, including a recent trip to Europe.
"He's a dog on a bone," Eaves said.
Bittner said Eaves, whose 2006 club won the NCAA title and whose 2010 outfit reached the Frozen Four championship game, is one of the top five coaches in the country, but he's only as good as the players he has on hand.
"It's not glamorous to be on the road sometimes and getting back at 2 or 3 in the morning," Bittner said. "But there's hundreds of people that would want to be in my spot and have the job that I have. I don't see it as work."
The biggest eye-opener for Bittner since he began his new job?
"You can count on one hand the number of NCAA programs that are as prestigious as the University of Wisconsin," he said. "Everybody knows the hockey program. Everybody knows the rink's unbelievable and the facilities and campus are so good.
"What got me is ... how good the academics are here and how much support people have for that side of things. I went to a Big Ten school. I didn't really realize that or know how good this school is academic-wise."
Strand, meanwhile, has embraced a prominent presence at practices and in games. His primary focus is on defense and the penalty kill.
"I think we've all kind of filtered into areas that we're really excited about doing every day," he said. "At the same time there's enough crossover where we get to share ideas."
What was Strand's biggest cultural lesson coming to Wisconsin?
"The dynamic of the athletic department as far as the programs here and the time spent and the hours you see put in," he said. "You're not the only one working, that's for sure, because you see guys here working different hours of the day. Student-athletes studying at different times. When you watch other (Wisconsin) sports on TV, you know all the hours those student-athletes have gone through."
Watching both assistants at practice, Eaves is struck by their expertise.
"When we have been able to delegate Luke at one end and JB at the other, I can sit back and watch both ends and you can tell the guys have been around the game a long time," he said. "They are excellent in their teaching and their delivery of the message to the team and that's a really good thing for our staff."
Eaves said a notebook was kept during their summertime retreat and it's been used as reference material more than once during the season.
"We did get a lot done," he said of the gathering. "We plowed through a lot of areas."
The end result was a sense of goodwill and comfort for Eaves.
"I remember leaving there thinking, 'These are good people. They're good hockey men. They've had different experiences,' " he said. "Based on that I knew were going in the right direction."
