Scott Arniel was chief coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets just over 19 months.
It didn’t go well.
A percentage of victories of 0.439 through these 123 games, including a disastrous 11-25-5 start for the 2011-12 season before being fired, left it bitterly disappointed-at the same time lost and in the way in which he had done his duties.
“I was certainly not satisfied with the work I tried to do,” said Arniel. “If I was going to have a second chance, I wanted to make sure I was ready.”
He thought, studied and prepared for another NHL shot which was far from being insured. More than a decade later – much longer than he hoped – Kingston’s coach, Ontario, took an opportunity that ultimately arrived.
Arniel was promoted by Winnipeg jets from the partner to the head coach in May after the retreat of Rick Bowness.
The club has not only missed a beat, but it took a massive step with the playoffs.
Winnipeg Jets association coach, Scott Arniel, in 2023.
Canadian press / Fred Greenslade
Winnipeg obtained the very first trophy of the presidents of the franchise with the best record of the League at 55-22-4 and a match remaining on the regular season calendar.
The transition to Arniel was transparent after completing Bowness during a pair of absences related to health during the previous two seasons. The familiarity and the established communication routes have borne fruit since it was presented as the boss of the bench of the jets.
“It was not as if I came fresh,” said Arniel. “It helped a lot.”
He was not about to make wholesale changes either.
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Directed by the Vezina’s vegetable goalkeeper twice, Connor Hellebuyck, the identity of the team under Bowness underlined the defensive membership of the best players and not relying on their star goalkeeper to make 40 stops one night.
“Our piece without the washer was exceptional,” said Arniel, a former striker written by the original jets in 1981. “There were certain things on the offensive side that we wanted to improve.”
It turns out that there was a lot of room to grow for a group that ended with 110 points last season to be rebounded in the first round of the playoffs for the second consecutive spring.
Winnipeg’s power game was seated first in the league at 29.4% before Tuesday’s action after finishing 22nd in 2023-24, while the overall offensive for an organization that has not won eliminatory series in a complete NHL campaign since the 2018 Western conference final went from the 15th to equality for fourth.
The jets did not fall defensively – they in fact improved – and once again occupy the first place with the least goals authorized at 2.33 per game, against 2.41 last season.
Arniel is a great reason why.
“You never know how a team will react,” said Winnipeg captain Adam Lowry, about coach changes. “It is intense, but it is really fair.”
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“Modified certain things,” added the Mark Schiefele center. “He also pushed us to try to reach our full potential.”
The former NHL head coach Alain Vigneault, who knows Arniel since their junior days and hired him as a partner of the New York Rangers from 2013 to 2018, is not surprised by success.
“It is not easy to get a first opportunity in the NHL,” said Vigneault. “Getting a second a second, it’s much more difficult. But when you get it, and you are like Scott in a quest for knowledge, I just knew he was going to do a great job.”
Hellebuyck said that Bowness and Arniel, who is in the running for the Jack Adams Prize as a resident of the year, has similar basic principles.
“Bones has really put his mark on us,” said the leader of the league of this season in victories, as a safeguard percentage, on average goals and whitening. “Arnie enters and continues to push the same things, adds some details and lets us go.”
Going from a supporting role to the best work can however present challenges. The relationship between the player and the coach changes when the latter moves to the big chair.
Arniel, who directed the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League from 2006 to 2010, wanted to travel to meet Lowry, Schiefele and defender Josh Morrissey in Calgary during the summer. He detailed imminent system changes and wanted to know any concern among the winnipeg cloakroom leaders.
“There may be disconnection,” said Lowry. “Arnie found this happy medium. He asks and makes requests from us because we know that he respects us, we respect him. ”
Arniel spent one more season in the AHL after the fall of the ax in Columbus before joining the Rangers. He was then assistant to Washington Capitals from 2018 to 2022 before landing on the Winnipeg bench.
The 62-year-old man interviewed for a certain number of opening of head coaches, especially with the jets when Bowness obtained the concert in July 2022.
Lowry thinks that Arniel used the time spent waiting for judiciously.
“Has not changed his identity, but you learn,” said the center. “It is just with the requests and it comes together just in there. This resonates with players when coaches have a responsibility.
“Could not have been better suited.”
It is also one that Arniel was not sure that would be materialized after a ugly act of opening which ended more than 13 years ago with the Blue Jackets.
“He shouldn’t even be in sport,” he said. “But you are still looking for a second chance.”
Arniel takes the best party of hers.
& Copy 2025 the Canadian press