Former player Jay Leach ready to take the reigns of Providence Bruins

PROVIDENCE — Mike Sullivan, the two-time Stanley Cup-winning coach with the Pittsburgh Penguins, began his coaching career with the Providence Bruins in 2002.

He had recently retired from playing and quickly made the transition to the coaching ranks. It was evident from Day 1 he had the passion, knowledge, and conviction to become a successful coach in pro hockey.

Jay Leach is cut from the same cloth.

Listening to him discuss hockey, the players, systems and philosophies, and it's eerily similar to Sullivan.

Leach, 37, played 11 seasons in pro hockey, mostly at the AHL level, but does have 70 games of NHL experience. The former defenseman was the type of player who needed to grind it out and out-think his opponents in order to be successful.

After spending the last three seasons as an assistant coach in Germany, Wilkes-Barre/Scranton (AHL) and for the P-Bruins, respectively, Leach was named Providence’s head coach on July 31.

He spent the offseason reading books and watching documentaries as he prepares for his first official coaching job in professional hockey (he served as interim head coach for Wilkes-Barre for a few weeks during the 2015-16 season).

Call it research, but part of his summer reading included “The Cubs Way: The Zen of Building the Best Team in Baseball and Breaking the Curse.” Leach also watched the HBO series “The Defiant Ones” about how Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine built a music empire worth billions.

Leach is doing everything he can to be prepared for the upcoming season.

“You only get conviction through your work,” Leach said. “That’s the way I see it. That’s the way I was able to play. Sully puts in the work and there’s no other way to do it. I can only hope to be like that.”

Leach understands what it’s like to live on minimum salary as a player. He remembers the countless bus rides and what it was like to eat at some roadside diner at 3 a.m. as a team. He has plenty of experiences to draw upon as a coach in order to relate to his players.

It was during his collegiate career at Providence College when he realized he wanted to coach some day. He was named team captain his senior season and enjoyed that role.

“As I played throughout my career, I always sort of drifted towards that leadership role – a lot of it was my circumstance. I was mostly a player at this level, mentoring kids younger than me. It just felt comfortable to me,” he said.

Leach wasn’t the most talented player on the ice, so he had to analyze the game differently in order to have success and remain employed. He dissected the game as a coach would.

“It wasn’t just a go-out-there-and-play thing,” he explained. “I had to break it down, work on it and then go out there and apply it. That process is very similar to coaching, and now I’m able to relay that process to the players.”

There comes a time in every athlete’s career when they know it’s time to retire.

“No one really tells you how it’s going to go when it ends,” Leach said.

Leach evaluated his life and career, and realized it was time, even though he could have prolonged his playing days for at least a couple of more seasons in the AHL.

“It was time for me to get a different path,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to play again in the NHL, so I just got to a point where it was just time. I’ve always been a guy who wants to strive for something.”

Leach felt he maximized his potential, so he stepped away. He knew he wanted to stay in the game in some capacity, but wasn’t sure of the opportunities available.

“It’s hard. You’re in this weird space,” he said. “The hockey world doesn’t know you’ve stopped playing, or if they do they know you’re in a weird place and they’re not looking at you as a guy they want to hire. You’re almost back to Square 1 with life.

“You’ve had this 12-year experience as a professional hockey player, something you’ve thought about your entire life, and now it’s done. You have this experience in your back pocket and you don’t know what to do with it.”

So, it became a question of, now what?

He landed a job with STX, a lacrosse company that was getting into the hockey business. It was a six-month stint as a salesman, one he admits he wasn’t very good at, but he learned life lessons and business skills.

“It helped me with my organizational skills,” Leach said.

Still, it wasn’t the path he wanted.

At the time when Leach was trying to figure out his future, then-Bruins assistant coach Geoff Ward left the organization and became the head coach of Mannheim of the German Elite League. He invited Leach to join the coaching staff.

“It was scary,” Leach said. “I had never been overseas, but Geoff was just the best guy and if there’s a coach out there that you want to talk hockey with, there’s no one better than Geoff Ward. He’s been at every level. He’s done it all and has this spectrum of experience that you can talk to him about on a daily basis.”

Immediately, Ward trusted Leach to handle the team’s defense and penalty kill. The first-year coach worked hard, studied and became a student of his new craft.

“I was really impressed with him right away when I first met with him,” Ward said. “He’s a personable guy. He’s got good ideas. He’s a student of the game and you can see that very quickly. He was an honest pro and he earned his living. He sort of had an idea what he wanted to do after hockey because he put his time in, as far as studying the game.

“He’s going to be a really good head coach. He’s prepared to put in the work, which is one of the biggest things, obviously. He does a really good job of studying the opposition and understanding his own team and what he needs to do to get the most out of them. He has what all coaches need these days, and that’s being a good communicator. You need to understand how to motivate each individual player and he can certainly do that.”

In order to have success in any business, surrounding yourself with the right people is important. Leach was fortunate to learn about coaching from some of the best in the game.

During his playing career, Leach played for Sullivan in Boston, Jacques Lemaire and Brent Sutter in New Jersey, Todd McLellan in San Jose, along with Scott Gordon in Providence.

“As a player, I was really paying attention to the way they taught, what they taught,” Leach said.

Now that he’s joined the coaching fraternity, no one is surprised.

“He’s a character guy,” Gordon said. “He did everything right. He had the right attitude and work ethic. He became the captain because he was able to get the message across from inside the room. He put in a lot of pride to do things the right way.

“He’s a smart guy. He puts in the time to get better and improve his skills as far as being a coach and how he handles situations. There’s no reason he shouldn’t be successful at it. He’s got a lot of things that will work to his advantage.”

Leach has worked as an assistant coach under Ward, Sullivan and Clark Donatelli in Wilkes-Barre, and Kevin Dean in Providence. Each coach impacted Leach in a different way.

Before Sullivan was promoted to Pittsburgh in December 2015, Leach learned quite a bit during those three and a half months.

“It was an explosion of knowledge working with Sully. He’s a unique guy,” Leach said. “I’m thankful I was able to sponge it all up.”

Donatelli taught Leach about building relationships with your players and the environment you need to create. Dean, who was promoted to assistant coach of the Bruins, created a fun and challenging environment last season.

“I’ve been lucky,” Leach said. “I’ve experienced and learned a lot from those four guys in three years.”

Leach’s career path wasn’t an easy one. He’ll draw from that experience and help the young players in the Bruins’ organization become better pros on and off the ice.

“Embrace the struggle,” he said.

He’s proof it will pay dividends.