On Monday, Minnesota Wild head coach Mike Yeo dropped in on a Timberwolves practice to pick the brain of head coach Rick Adelman.
Why? He wanted to learn more about running a shortened training camp -- and there’s no better person to ask than Adleman, a veteran of two NBA lockouts.
Here’s more, from the Minnesota Star-Tribune:
[Yeo] chatted with Rick Adelman for about 20 minutes after practice, picking his brain on, among other topics, how to plan and prepare a team to play a condensed, lockout-shortened season.
Adelman has done it twice, most recently with last season’s 66-game sked.
Yeo will get his chance, if the NHL and its players pull their heads out and reach a new labor deal before it gets too late.
Yeo called Adelman’s advice “helpful and insightful.”
“The chance to speak to a person like that with experience and his success, it’s great for a coach like me,” Yeo said.
Last season, NBA training camps opened on Dec. 9 and the regular season started on Dec. 25.
As for the preseason, teams played two exhibition games -- between Dec. 16-22 -- giving coaches and players roughly two weeks to prepare for the regular season.
As mentioned above, Adleman’s gone through this twice. He was coaching the Sacramento Kings during the 1998-99 NBA season, which was limited to 50 contests (and a similarly condensed exhibition campaign.)
It’ll be interesting to see if other NHL coaches follow Yeo’s lead, because few have experience with the shortened season.
Just one active bench boss was a head coach in 1994-95 (LA’s Darryl Sutter was in Chicago) -- meanwhile, the likes of Adam Oates, Dan Bylsma and Kevin Dineen were still playing during that time.