Nine-time champion will work with front office staff, coaching
staff; will arrive on Saturday; Tippett leaves after week in St. Louis
ST. LOUIS -- Wanting to have another set of eyes, and another voice at their disposal for ideas, the Blues have hired nine-time Stanley Cup champion Larry Robinson to a position of senior consultant on Thursday.
Robinson played in 1,384 regular-season games and 227 playoff games during his 20-year NHL career with the Montreal Canadiens (1972-89) and the Los Angeles Kings (1989-92). He was a member of six Cup-winning teams with the Canadiens and won the Norris Trophy as the NHL's top defenseman twice before being inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1995, and was named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players on Jan. 27.
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| (St. Louis Blues photo)
Nine-time Stanley Cup champion Larry Robinson joins the Blues as a
senior consultant. He most recently worked with the San Jose Sharks.
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Robinson also won the Stanley Cup in 1995, 2000 and 2003 as a coach or assistant with the New Jersey Devils.
Robinson was most recently with the San Jose Sharks as associate head coach and director of player development.
"I talked to him when I found out he wasn't going back to San Jose last year," Blues general manager Doug Armstrong said. "It was probably in May, about what he wanted to do. He was at the point now in his life where he wanted some separation from the game, not a commitment that was necessary day-to-day but one that would be attached to it.
"I talked to Mike (Yeo) ... it just felt like going to someone like Larry Robinson, he's done an awful lot on the ice, to consulting, to working with someone like Lou Lamoriello, who I have a ton of respect for, to coaching a Stanley Cup-caliber team. He's going to be able to share experiences. Certainly in talking to Mike, it's another ... something that I knew about him, but I love the affirmation of 'Would you like Larry Robinson to come in and share his ideas?' He was like a kid in a candy store like, 'How quickly can he get here and how often can he come?' It's great that Mike wants to tap into the experiences of someone like Larry. I talked to Dave Taylor, who played with Mike, Darryl Sydor, who played with Mike and worked for Mike (in Minnesota and Houston of the AHL), Lou Lamoriello and Marty Brodeur, everything comes back that someone with great personality that's going to work very well, obviously what he's accomplished is just a great fit."
Robinson joins a cast in the Blues front office that are part Stanley Cup winners, Hall of Famers and Hall of Famer to be. That list includes assistant GM Brodeur, senior advisor to the general manager Al MacInnis, vice president of hockey operations Dave Taylor. Brett Hull, vice president of business operations, is asked often to consult on things and Bernie Federko, analyst at Fox Sports Midwest, is also on hand.
It's another voice at Yeo's disposal.
"For me, that's something that I've always been interested is that idea of having a resource like that, that you can turn to, somebody that you can have a chat with and just take from their experience to learn from," Yeo said of Robinson. "You look at a guy like Larry, his career as a player, his career as a coach, what he's accomplished, what he's experienced. It would be really difficult not to find a way you could use him and not to find a way you could learn from him. I think it's going to be a great thing for me and for our group.
"I love it, for me personally. I'm pretty stubborn and I'm pretty strong-minded as far as things that I believe in and certain things that I want to see take place. But at the same time, I need to grow, as a coach. Just like players need to grow. If we want to win a Stanley Cup, we have to get better, each individual. I'm asking our players to do that, to buy into that. It wouldn't be serving them properly if I wasn't asking them to do the same thing. I've got a lot of things that I really believe in, but I'm committed to learning some other ideas and have some other voices around that's going to continue to push our group going forward, so I think it's going to be a great thing."
Armstrong said Robinson will join the team on Saturday for the home preseason game against the Dallas Stars and be on hand a couple times a month, at best, to lend his services.
"He'll be with us for the next week getting to know our team," Armstrong said. "Then he's going to be in and out, maybe once or twice a month depending. There's no set timetable, but he'll be watching our game and we'll all bounce ideas off of him.
"There's a lot of great hockey minds. We're always trying to get better and learn and I believe that for us to ask the players to get better, we have to try and get better and having these people around to bounce ideas off of, whether it's a Brett Hull to talk to young player about scoring or Al MacInnis and we saw what Marty did with coaching last year, these are things that are just invaluable."
Yeo is looking forward to the opportunity.
"It's going to be somebody who is, I would say, a little bit removed," Yeo said. "They are able to take the emotion away. He's not going to have any biases whereas a lot of times if we get caught up in what's going on day-to-day, he's going to be a little bit removed from that, he's going to see a little bit of a different picture and give us a bit of a different perspective and it's up to me to decide how we use that. In a lot of ways, it's like adding another extremely qualified, really good assistant coach, but I would say it's much bigger than that."
While the Blues are saying hello to Robinson, they said goodbye to former Arizona Coyotes coach Dave Tippett, who was in St. Louis for a week to simply lend a hand and give a differing voice to the opening week of training camp.
Armstrong said Tippett was not under consideration for some sort of full-time position.
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| (Arizona Coyotes photo)
Former Coyotes coach Dave Tippett was in St. Louis since the start of
training camp in an advisory role and left on Thursday.
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"What we wanted for Dave to come in here and do was share ideas and let him feel comfortable and let him gain something out of it," Armstrong said. "This is a job Larry has."
Tippett, who mutually parted ways with the organization as coach of the Coyotes after last season, was another voice at Yeo's disposal.
"I had a great relationship with 'Tipp' when I played with him and when he coached me," Yeo said. "I enjoyed his presence around and again, it's a fresh set of eyes coming in in a different perspective. It's nice to have one of those guys who have been around with that much experience just to compare. It's nice for me just to say, 'This is what we're doing today. What would you do in this situation?' Whether it's comparing drills or even ideas or thoughts about the game. It challenges you as a coach and as a leader to get better and to learn and I enjoy that."
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