Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Columnist: In Colorado, Bob Hartley was known as “Bobby Heartless”

bob-hartley-stare.jpg

Over at the Denver Post, Adrian Dater has weighed in on the hiring of Bob Hartley as Calgary’s head coach.

Hartley coached in Colorado from 1998-2003 and had a ton of success -- one Stanley Cup, a franchise record 52-win season, four playoff appearances, 49 playoff wins and four Northwest Division titles.

As such, Dater says his opinion of Hartley “will always be positive.” He calls Hartley a genuinely good man, a good coach and a great quote.

But that last bit is important, because Hartley has a reputation for verbally slicing and dicing players -- which leads to this great anecdote from Dater:

He’s a winner. He’s also, without a doubt, the most on-the-go, Type A guy I’ve ever been around for any length of time. Hartley can never sit still and just relax. He’s always fidgeting, his mind always one step ahead of his mouth. If you ask him a question, you can see him fighting the urge to answer after the first words are out of your mouth, because he already knows what the rest of the sentence will be.

He wasn’t always beloved with the Avs. A lot of guys called him “Bobby Heartless.” He was tough on rookies. Whenever they might screw up at training camp and he became annoyed by it, he might say loudly “I smell chocolate fumes” – meaning, a trip to Hershey might be in the offing.

Chocolate fumes. Awesome.

It’s going to be very interesting to see how Hartley’s personality meshes with a veteran-laden Flames team. Miikka Kiprusoff is 35, captain Jarome Iginla is 34, Alex Tanguay is 32 and Mike Cammalleri is 30.

Those are some pretty strong personalities -- they also happen to be the core of the team -- so Hartley will have his work cut out for him.