The name on his birth certificate reads, "Edward Walter Olczyk." Probably shows up that way on other legal documents, too.
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Eddie Olczyk, talks to the media at Mellon Arena, after it was announced by Craig Patrick, GM, background at left, that he was the new Penguins coach. (Bill Wade, Post-Gazette) |
But no one who knows him very well calls the new Penguins coach "Ed," the logical shorthand form of his first name.
"That's what my dad's called," he said. "I've always been 'Eddie.' I don't even say it's a pet peeve. That's just me. 'Ed' is a little too formal."
While "Ed" might not strike most folks as a black-tie-and-tails name, Olczyk's preference for "Eddie" underscores that he doesn't care for pretense. Which is part of the reason he is so widely and genuinely liked in hockey circles.
He has had run-ins with a few people over the course of his career -- there was a nasty clash of personalities with Mike Smith, for whom he played in Winnipeg and Chicago, and his dealings with- Mike Keenan in New York were decidedly strained -- but a complete list of his detractors wouldn't fill the margins of a matchbook. Even in large type.
That's a byproduct of Olczyk's exceptional people skills and upbeat personality. He's quick with a handshake, even faster with a smile and friendly word.
"He's an infectious-type person, in a very positive way," Penguins General Manager Craig Patrick said.
A lot like a guy who took over as coach of the Penguins almost 13 years to the day before Olczyk did. Many people, including Patrick, can't resist the temptation to draw parallels between Olczyk and Bob Johnson, the most revered coach in franchise history.
The Penguins won their first Stanley Cup in Johnson's only season behind the bench, just months before he was felled by brain cancer. His stay with the Penguins was brief, but his mark on them was indelible, his legacy enduring.
And while being compared to Johnson could be intimidating to some, Olczyk embraces the idea.
Olczyk said he believes "there are a lot of similarities" between his approach and that of Johnson -- "My love for the game, the way I want people around me to feel good about themselves" -- but acknowledged that Johnson set a standard of coaching proficiency that will not be easy to meet.
Johnson backed up his "It's a great day for hockey" philosophy with quality work during practices and games, when success requires more than a smile and a kind word.
"If I can be half as good as Badger, as far as the technical parts," Olczyk said, "I'll be around coaching for a long time."
Grit and common sense
When training camp convenes in September, Olczyk will find himself working with a handful of established veterans and several dozen prospects of uncertain pedigree.
It won't take long for him to realize that he could use an upgrade at virtually every position, and perhaps a minor miracle or two. And perhaps a guy such as the Eddie Olczyk of 15 or so years ago.
"He was a hybrid," said San Jose General Manger Doug Wilson, one of the NHL's top defensemen when Olczyk broke into the league with Chicago in 1984. "He had a big body but was very skilled."
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Mario Lemieux, the top pick in the 1984 draft, is flanked by No. 2 selection Kirk Muller and Eddie Olczyk, whom the Blackhawks took at No. 3. (UPI photo) | |
That doesn't mean he was the complete package. Olczyk had a lethal wrist shot, but his skating was nothing special and, despite his build, he wasn't a feared hitter.
"I was, by no means, a physical player," Olczyk said. "But I knew where to go to score goals."
And he wasn't reluctant to venture there, even if he was more likely to leave with a welt than a point.
"Eddie was the type of player who went to the net, who paid the price," said Chicago assistant coach Denis Savard, a close friend and former teammate.
While Olczyk's hands made the first impression on some teammates, it was his head for the game that many remember most.
"He was a top-six forward, a guy who could finish on the power play," said ESPN analyst Darren Pang, a goalie with the Blackhawks during the 1980s. "A guy who could go to the net, but was a real common-sense hockey player. A smart player with and without the puck."
Olympic experience
Lou Vairo, a longtime official with the U.S. national program, first learned of Olczyk in a phone call from then-Chicago general manager Bob Pulford in the early 1980s.
"The first time I saw Eddie at a camp, it was a camp for 16-year-old players," Vairo said. "Bob Pulford had phoned me and said, 'I don't know what your people in Illinois are doing, but they missed a good player for your camp.' "
Actually, Vairo's scouts had missed a good 15-year-old. But Olczyk was deemed eligible because he turned 16 during the camp and received one of five tryout slots Vairo had set aside.
He parlayed that into an invitation to a National Sports Festival, and good work there put him on a path that led to the 1984 U.S. Olympic team, coached by Vairo. Never mind that Olczyk was only 17 during the Games in Sarajevo.
"We had much less depth than we thought we'd have," Vairo said. "It gave young players like Eddie and Al Iafrate a chance."
Vairo recalls that he didn't go easy on Olczyk because of his tender age.
"I was pretty mean to him. Pretty demanding of him," Vairo said. "Pushed him really hard."
Olczyk allowed that, "sometimes, it was a little overboard," but while some older teammates complained, he simply shrugged.
"As a young guy, I didn't know any different," Olczyk said.
What he did know was that Team USA's seventh-place finish was a profound disappointment -- "I felt like I let a lot of people down," he said. "I let our team down. I let our country down" -- even though competing in the Olympics had long-term benefits for him.
"I would never trade it for anything," Olczyk said. "That experience helped me to become a pro's pro early in my career."
Home and away
Olczyk was raised in Chicago and grew up dreaming of playing for the Blackhawks. Forget following the team; he practically stalked it.
Witness his reaction when fabled coach Billy Reay lost his job.
"I remember crying when the Hawks put the pink slip under his door," Olczyk said.
Pulford liked Olczyk the prospect enough that he worked out a trade with Los Angeles to secure the third choice in the 1984 entry draft, with the intent of selecting Olczyk. (The Penguins had the first pick and selected Mario Lemieux.)
Pulford then protected his investment by swinging a deal with New Jersey, which had the No. 2 choice and had been making noises about claiming Olczyk instead of Kirk Muller.
The Blackhawks got Olczyk, and he was grafted onto a lineup that ranked among the finest in the Campbell Conference.
Olczyk thrived on a line with Troy Murray and Curt Fraser, and he was a hero in his hometown.
"My first year was great -- we went to the conference final -- and my second year was unbelievable," he said. "But we lost in the first round of the playoffs, and that was the start of the downfall."
That summer, just weeks before the start of his third pro camp, a close friend was murdered in Phoenix.
Burying his buddy was difficult -- "It just really hit me," Olczyk said -- and the season that followed was tough, too.
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How popular was Olczyk as a player? When the Rangers won the Stanley Cup in 1994, he didn't meet the NHL's criteria to have his name engraved on the trophy. But his teammates successfully lobbied the league to have Olczyk's name added to the Cup. (Kevin Larkin, Associated Press) |
"It was a real bad year," he said. "I did not play well. We did not play well."
And Blackhawks partisans didn't take any of it well. Olczyk became a lightning rod for their discontent.
"When things weren't going well for the team, I thought the fans were somewhat brutal on Eddie," Pang said.
Pulford concurred and, after Olczyk's third season in Chicago, sent him to Toronto in a multi-player deal that made 50-goal man Rick Vaive a Blackhawk. Pulford did not arrange the trade solely because of the hostility Olczyk was facing, but he said it was a factor.
Exception to the rule
The change of venue rejuvenated Olczyk. He scored a career-high 42 goals in his first season with the Maple Leafs, sparking a run of five consecutive years with 30 or more goals.
Pulford won't attribute the spike in Olczyk's output to the trade, but he doesn't deny that being freed from the demands of Chicago worked out well for him.
"Maybe he would have stayed here and put up the same numbers," Pulford said. "But the fact is, with the pressure for him playing here, it was better for everybody for him to get out of town and be [viewed as] an ordinary player."
Olczyk became perhaps the first player in recent NHL history to feel less pressure to perform after being traded to Toronto, where the media and public dissect every shift -- sometimes even practice drills -- as a matter of course.
"He was awesome in Toronto," Pang said. "Playing in Toronto was good for him."
Olczyk established himself as a perennial 30-goal man, but eventually he was dealt from Toronto to Winnipeg. After angering Smith, then general manager of the Jets, by taking the team to salary arbitration in 1993, he was sent to the New York Rangers.
He quickly became then-coach Mike Keenan's whipping boy, but earned the respect of his teammates with his professionalism.
"He was able to withstand that [treatment] and keep his mouth closed, be part of the team," said Sam Rosen, play-by-play man on Rangers telecasts. "He didn't gripe or ask to be traded. He just came and did his job."
His teammates recognized that by presenting him with the players' player award -- Olczyk calls it "the greatest individual honor I ever received" -- and with a greater gesture after their 1994 Stanley Cup run.
Although Olczyk did not meet the league criteria for having his name engraved on the Cup -- he didn't dress for a game during the final and appeared in only 37 regular-season games, three below the league-imposed minimum -- Rangers players like Adam Graves and Kevin Lowe lobbied team management to seek league permission to have his name put on the trophy.
The front office, led by then- General Manager Neil Smith, agreed. So, ultimately, did the NHL.
Horseplay
Olczyk has a passion for horse racing, but it isn't entirely true to that he took the Cup to a racetrack when he had temporary custody of it during the summer of 1994.
He took it to two.
First, an evening celebration at The Meadowlands in New Jersey. The next morning, it was off to Belmont Park.
Olczyk says that tales of him having a horse eat out of the Cup aren't true -- "trick photography," he said -- but he did parade it around the winner's circle and plop it down near the finish line.
Olczyk swears that he would rather coach a Stanley Cup champion than own a Kentucky Derby winner and that he prefers people to horses, "even though horses don't talk back." Consider that a reflection of his deep feelings for hockey, not a lack of love for racing.
Before he became a father -- Olczyk and his wife, Diana, have four children -- Olczyk would spend four or five days a week at the track. He has cut back considerably on that, but he still owns one horse and a share of another in Chicago.
"It has always been a love of mine and will continue to be a release for me," he said. "It's a way I love to spend my time. I love the animals, I love the action of the races. I always get more worked up watching my horses run than I did when I was playing."
Throw him in
A lot of years have passed since Pulford, then coaching Chicago, would approach Tommy Ivan, legendary general manager of the Blackhawks, for insights on how to evaluate players at a particular position.
But Pulford still recalls Ivan's answer, and how it never varied.
"I would ask him how you can tell when a goaltender is going to be good," Pulford said. "And he would say, 'Put him in the net and, if he stops the puck, he's a good goaltender.' Coaching is a bit like that."
Certainly, that is the case with Olczyk. He has many of the qualities required of a successful coach. Whether he can parlay them into an effective run with the Penguins is impossible to predict.
"Eddie is getting a chance, and he could be a great coach," Pulford said. "He certainly has knowledge of the game, but lots of people have great knowledge of the game. It's the people-handling ability that makes a great coach, and I think he has every chance to be a great coach."
No matter how well Olczyk and his staff perform during the coming season, though, the Penguins will have some miserable nights. Any team whose lineup is loaded with young players is doomed to that.
Olczyk not only has to understand that, but also accept it, to resist the urge to punish when the situation calls for patience.
"He will be patient," Pulford said. "I think he'll be a teacher and really do a good job that way. I just hope the people in Pittsburgh and management there give him the chance, knowing the material he has to work with."
And even as he teaches, Olczyk must be willing to learn everything from how to know when a struggling goalie should be pulled to when line combinations or defense pairings must be overhauled.
And, most important, how to run a bench during games. How to get favorable personnel matchups, to have the right people on the ice at key times. To not only make split-second decisions, but also act on them.
Olczyk will receive copious amounts of advice from friends and fans and others in coming months. Little, if any, of it figures to be more worthwhile than the counsel Vairo offered.
"Be patient, be persistent and be positive, be practical and demanding, but don't be a realist," he said. "That's a bad word. I like the word 'practical.' He should be allowed to dream. Everybody should be allowed the privilege of dreaming."
Dave Molinari can be reached at 412-263-1144.
Olcyzk: From top prospect to standout player to Penguins coach 
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