Is Ralph Krueger the man to defeat Canada juggernaut?

TORONTO – There are similarities between Ralph Krueger and Mike Babcock. Their international success as hockey coaches. Their cerebral, psychological approach to the game. Their wry humor in postgame press conferences.

And also water skiing.

Water skiing?

“We’re both fanatic water skiers, so we compare our best water ski results on a regular basis, and that’s all we’ve talked about when we run into each other here,” said Krueger, head coach of Team Europe at the World Cup of Hockey.

“He loves water skiing. I love water skiing. His daughter’s one of the best in the world, so I follow her,” said Babcock, head coach of Team Canada at the World Cup of Hockey.

Babcock and Krueger are meeting in the World Cup of Hockey final, a best of three series beginning on Tuesday night between the tournament host – a juggernaut that’s trailed 89 seconds in its four wins – and an underdog European team that was created for wayward players that didn’t have their nations represented in the tournament.

The job Babcock has done for Canada is extraordinary: Managing one of the greatest assemblages of talent ever (and their egos), fine-tuning their machine to the point of effortlessness on the ice. Canada won Olympic gold in Vancouver and Sochi with much of the same core of players, and has dominated the World Cup.

The job Krueger has done is equally extraordinary, and more apparent: Turning a disparate collection of players from over a half-dozen hockey nations in a winning team in a matter of weeks, shocking hockey nations like the United States and Sweden along the way.

And now, for his last trick, Krueger has a chance to score what would be one of the biggest upsets in sports history: Taking out Canada, which might not be completely implausible for Krueger.

Because he’s done it before. Because he has intimate knowledge of how Team Canada operates. Because Mike Babcock let him peek behind the curtain.

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Krueger has coached internationally since 1998. His tenure as head coach of the Swiss national team produced Olympic appearances in 2002, 2006 and 2010. He took a team with few offensive weapons and great goaltending, and he turned it into a dangerous tournament team. (Sound familiar, World Cup fans?)

It was in 2006, in Turin, when Krueger’s Swiss team scored “one of the most startling upsets of the modern Olympic era” according to the New York Times: a 2-0 win to eliminate Canada, in which goalie Martin Gerber made 49 saves. The team had only one NHL non-goalie on its roster.

“I never thought we could do that,” said Mark Streit, the Swiss captain, who is playing for Team Europe in the World Cup under Krueger, “but anything is possible in sports.”

Four years later, it was almost possible again: The Swiss took Canada to a shootout in pool play during the Vancouver Olympics, but fell 3-2 to the hosts.

The Edmonton Oilers had seen enough. They hired Krueger later that year as an associate coach, and then named him head coach for the 2012-13 season.

His tenure would only last one season, going 19-22-7 in the lockout-shortened year. The team’s young core liked him. Management, apparently, didn’t. He was fired after the season by GM Craig MacTavish – infamously, over Skype.

Krueger was still feeling the sting of that firing 12 hours later when his phone rang.

It was Mike Babcock, with an offer.

Tom Renney, with whom Krueger coached in Edmonton, had suggested him as “a guy that might be available for the Olympics.” So Babcock reached out to ask if he would like to join the Team Canada brain trust for the Sochi Games. And Krueger didn’t hesitate to say yes, becoming “Canada’s secret weapon,” according to the Winnipeg Free Press.

In the process, he bonded with Babcock over analyzing the game and Team Canada, after only knowing him informally.

“We would pick the most intense events at Sochi to watch. We would run together. We would speak about hockey nonstop together, and it was the best coaching clinic I could go through with Claude Julien, Ken Hitchcock, Lindy Ruff and Mike Babcock. From the draft in New York right through the Olympic Games I was with them,” he said. “That learning process with Mike and his staff is really a lot of what I brought into Team Europe.”

GM Doug Armstrong of Team Canada said Krueger played a key role in advising the Sochi team that won gold.

“He was a big part of what happened in Sochi. He knows. He sat in. Obviously was part of every coaching meeting, was part of how we were going to beat the European teams,” said Armstrong. “Now he’s got a collection of the European players. He understands how Mike operates. He understands when we were putting that Sochi group together, when Steve Yzerman was putting that Sochi group together, understanding what had success on small ice in Vancouver. So he listened to those meetings on what we thought the difference was, and certainly he’s fully aware of how Mike operates.”

And how his team operates.

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The World Cup of Hockey has been a chance to reflect on Krueger, both the coach and the man.

The man is an insightful, eloquent citizen of the world. He left hockey for English Premier League football in 2014, becoming the director of Southampton FC and the becoming the club’s chairman. Since 2011, he’s been a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership.

The coach has done a brilliant job with Team Europe, helping to shape its identity. It started early when he was named head coach, laying a foundation with Slovak and Swiss players who were upset their nations weren’t involved in the World Cup as standalones. It continued when players from Norway, Germany, Austria, France, Slovenia and Denmark were added to the locker room.

Krueger’s task was two-fold: Find out how this team needed to play, and find out how to motivate them.

The latter part proved surprisingly easy: Krueger and his players approached the World Cup with enthusiasm, because without Team Europe, they would have never gotten the chance to participate in the “best on best” tournament.

“I’m just so pleased that these peripheral countries in the world of hockey have had an opportunity to compete with the best in the world for the first time in their life and to truly believe in being competitive on the way to a semifinal, and then the overtime showed the belief in the group to get to the final,” said Krueger. “That’s not possible when these players show up alone at tournaments. They’re forever fighting relegation in world tournaments. They’re forever fighting just to get to Olympic Games, forget about competing for anything at them.”

He turned the dial on that motivation ever so slightly as the team found instant success against the Americans in the preliminary round: Not only should they be happy to be there, but should be thrilled with the chance to potentially play for a championship on a team that’s exponentially more talented their own country’s national teams.

“I’m from Austria, and Olympics, World Championships, we don’t have a chance to medal. That’s just the way it is. We battle to stay in the ‘A’ group, and we’re there to win one game, and that’s it,” said Thomas Vanek of Austria. “Being on this Team Europe, to me, it gives me an opportunity to beat teams like we did the other day in the U.S., and move forward. But we’re playing a day at a time. Ralph has done a tremendous job with our group to keep us prepared and stay positive.”

As for getting them to play a system, Krueger watched Team Europe get rolled in two games against Team North America in exhibition play. So they tweaked their system, playing a more puck-possession game and hanging back instead of pressing ahead. They would wait for you to make a mistake, and then pounce with their savvy collection of NHL forwards.

The formula worked against Team USA, which overlooked Europe, and against Team Sweden in the semifinals, who played a tentative game for 40 minutes in trying to prevent those mistakes from happening – and, in the process, allowing Europe to go to overtime and eliminate them.

It’s not pretty, and has left the Air Canada Centre in Toronto resembling a mortuary at times. But they’re one of the last two teams standing because of it.

The formula didn’t work, however, in their preliminary loss to Canada, who won 4-1 and absolutely dominated in chances: 83 shot attempts to 53 for Team Europe. But then most formulas don’t work against Canada.

“They’re quite clearly the favorite. The foundation of that group has been built by Mike and the staff since the preparation for Vancouver, and they have so much continuity in the core of that group,” said Krueger in the preliminary round.

Can they be defeated?

“It’ll take a magical day [to beat Canada], it’ll take a world-class goaltending performance, it’ll take something very, very special in a group to be able to beat Canada here on this ice,” he said.

Well, Europe has the goaltending. Jaroslav Halak has been a giant killer, playing the same type of impenetrable netminding that allowed his 2010 Montreal Canadiens to shock the No. 1 seeded Washington Capitals in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and allowed his Slovak team to upset others in the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.

And they have a coach in Ralph Krueger that’s beaten Canada before, and knows their inner workings, and their coach, better than almost any other coach in the tournament.

“I’ve known Ralph since ’04 world championships. Ralph and I are good friends. We talk a lot. He’s a very, very intelligent person,” said Babcock. “He was a good head coach in the National Hockey League. He’s been around a long time, a good coach in Europe. … He has these guys believing and prepared and in the finals. From where they were at one point when they got lit up a couple of times early to now where they are, he’s done a heck of a job.’’

Krueger said there are parallels to his approach and that of Babcock.

“Mike is not bringing complex systems into the players’ heads to block creativity,” said Krueger. “There’s more similarities than differences between us. I’ve blended the Canadian more with the [European] game.”

The results have been outstanding for Krueger’s team. And now that have a chance to face Babcock and Canada for the championship.

“We want to make it difficult for Canada to win the World Cup and we’d like to get in the way of that,” said Krueger.

***

Win or lose, the World Cup has been a victory for Team Europe and their coach.

As the last non-North American team standing, the coach has taken to calling his squad the one ‘all of Europe’ is pulling for to win.

“In a best-on-best tournament for these countries that are important for the game of hockey, that are future-growth countries for the game, I’m just so pleased for all of them. A lot of the presidents are down there from the eight countries we’re representing, but I think we’re representing all the rest, which is about 12 to 13 countries in Europe that cannot play in the top six, and I think that the pride in that group right now is large,” he said.

“I came in here saying that we hoped that a few young children back in those countries get inspired by what we do and become great NHL players in 10 years or 12 years, and if that happens when I’m old and retired, I hope that it was a part of this tournament that did that.”

As for Krueger, the 57-year-old coach has become a hot commodity. There’s been speculation about his returning to the NHL – hey, if he can beat Canada with the Swiss and push Team Europe into the World Cup Final, couldn’t he get Las Vegas a playoff spot?

But while his heart is in hockey, his head’s not there again yet.

“You should never say never about anything in life. Circumstances change. But I didn’t take this job, hunting for a job,” he said. “At the moment, there’s too much going on with Southampton to think about it.

“For now, let’s enjoy this, and see what the future holds.”
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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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