Jay Leach was combing through Jack Studnicka’s game film – a summer project he embarked on to put together teaching points for the young prospect who had played just a handful of games with the Providence Bruins.
By watching Studnicka, he inadvertently was drawn to Jakub Zboril and the improvements the young defenseman had made over the course of the season.
“We were working with (Zboril) to stay in the battles, the starts-and-stops, doing all the hard things, and he had made huge strides throughout the year,” Leach said when reached by phone last week. “But as you coach every day, you don't see it like you would if you step back for a little bit. It’s a nice clip to see and hopefully, we continue to make those strides.”
It doubled as a teaching moment, too, for Leach, who endured a year full of them as his first season as the Providence Bruins head coach.
Now six years removed from a playing career that spanned 500 games in the minor leagues, 70 NHL games spread over six seasons, the 38-year-old Leach is finding his comfort zone behind the P-Bruins bench.
The biggest difference between life as an assistant and the head boss? Making the snap decisions and dictating lineup and personnel changes – which means shouldering the responsibility of it all if it goes wrong.
There’s injuries and players shuttling back and forth to the NHL. In New England, there’s inevitable weather, too, which explained why the rookie coach panicked when an impending Nor’easter was about to hit the first weekend of March.
During a Friday night before their March 3 game in Hartford, Leach, assistants Trent Whitfield and Spencer Carbery, and Providence GM John Ferguson were up past midnight racking their brains to figure out a lineup. They were short two players, the snow was going to make it hard to travel, and the ECHL teams were in the middle of their playoffs.
The resolution was an unlikely one. Colton Saucerman and Brian Ward played against each other that Friday night in New Hampshire in a game between the ECHL’s Manchester Monarchs and Adirondack Thunder.
Leach convinced them to make the drive together after the game to meet the team for their Saturday game in Hartford. When Leach dialed the number he believed would get him in touch with Ward, he was baffled when the prospect’s mother answered on the other end from her house phone.
“Another rookie coach move,” Leach joked. “She was pleasantly surprised to hear her son would be playing for the Providence Bruins. We ended up somehow finagling it so Sauce could drive him down and they both played with us. I had to learn quickly to adapt more or less every day.”
Yet through those gut-wrenching moments where Leach is often his harshest critic, he gets great satisfaction from being able to have a positive influence on prospects and veteran players who may grow to have an impact in the Bruins organization or elsewhere.
Given the Bruins commitment to drafting and developing prospects, Leach plays an essential role as part of the group that helps president Cam Neely, general manager Don Sweeney and coach Bruce Cassidy shape the team’s personnel.
“I thought Jay did a really good job,” Sweeney said at the end of the season. “He was a first-year head coach, not a tremendous amount of experience as a coach, per se, but certainly a wealth of experience in that league and a great teacher. They had a very successful year. the winning environment down there has been very good, and I think the success speaks for itself as our players that move through there and come up here and played.”
Leach has lived the life he’s preaching to his players. He’s experienced the unrelenting grind through the AHL and other leagues with the hope of reaching the NHL and knows how quickly that chance can tick by. He spent five years with the Providence Bruins and six other teams, cycling between the AHL and ECHL, before he made his NHL debut with the Bruins in 2005-06.
At the start of that same season, his defensive partner in Providence was Mark Stuart, who had been drafted No. 23 overall in 2003.
“You have this dynamic, you want to make it to the NHL and you're there to help this kid make it, so you’re almost chewing off your own limbs there because of helping this player but it’s the way it goes,” Leach said. “I look back on that as a fond memory. Then and there was when I realized I enjoyed the development and helping kids along. You’re now 25 or 26, and I was desperately trying to make it to the NHL and I have this kid next to me who’s a wide-eyed rookie doing the same thing. You can choose to accept where you are in the chain of pro hockey or not and that's what I tried to do.”
Stuart went on to play 673 NHL games, including six seasons with the Bruins. Leach played NHL games with the Lightning, Devils, Canadiens, and Sharks, and bounced between the AHL until he played his final game in 2012-13 with the Albany Devils.
Now his goal is to help prospects and veteran players get over that same hump. He helped guide the Providence Bruins to a 45-26-3 season in a loaded Atlantic Division, which ended in the first round of the Calder Cup playoffs. The year before as an assistant, he left his imprint on a team with young players Jake DeBrusk, Sean Kuraly, Matt Grzelcyk, Danton Heinen, and Noel Acciari, players who had a meaningful impact on the Bruins this season and project to be a part of the team’s fabric this season.
Part of the new experience was working with younger prospects such as 20 year-olds Jakob Forsbacka Karlsson and Jeremy Lauzon. The Providence Bruins had seven players who were 20, seven who were 22, and three who were 21. The year prior, when Leach was an assistant, Providence had just one 20-year-old.
“Some of them are raw, and the one thing this past year I learned is there is a huge difference there from 20 to 22 or 23, especially if they're not coming from college,” Leach said. “But they’re at a point in their careers where they can be influenced and we have to make sure we give them a proper structure and you can see that growth.”
Leach’s career as a player shaped a large part of his philosophy as a first-year coach. He quickly realized that not every player sees the game the way he does, which has challenged him to take on new teaching techniques suitable for each player.
As Leach continues to transition into his new role, his philosophy is being influenced by his coaching experiences rather than his playing days.
“Now I’m going to pick and chose certain experiences for guys because they don’t all relate,” Leach said. “Hopefully I can continue to do that and take the experiences I’ve had now as a coach and learn from that as well.”
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The Bruins signed Colby Cave to a two-year, two-way contract Saturday that has a value of $675,00 at the NHL level. Cave was the last of Boston's three restricted free agents to sign. Kuraly and Grzelcyk signed multi-year deals. Cave, a 23-year-old center, has been the alternate captain for the Providence Bruins the last two seasons ... Leach, Kuraly, and Heinen left for China Sunday to represent the Bruins in the team's third annual trip to continue the international growth of hockey. It's a partnership with O.R.G. Packaging, which launched the initiative with a focus on the growth of the game in China. The Bruins are going to Beijing and Shenzhen in September for a pair of preseason games against the Flames. Former Bruins player P.J. Stock and members of the Flames organization also made the trip ... U.S District Judge Susan Richard Nelson issued a 46-page order Friday, which denied class-action status for former NHL players suing the league over head injuries. It's the first significant victory for the league in a landmark lawsuit that was filed almost five years ago. Had they succeeded, more than 5,000 former players would have been allowed to join the case. They've accused the NHL of failing to better prevent head trauma or warn players of such risks while promoting violent play that led to their injuries.
