Five months, as opposed to 24 hours. For Tony Granato, that is the difference in time he’ll have to prepare for his first game as Avalanche coach — the second time around.
The first time, Dec. 19, 2002, Granato had barely had his retirement papers as a player filed before he was standing behind the Avs’ bench as the replacement for fired head coach Bob Hartley. With only two months of coaching experience of any kind — as an assistant to Hartley — Granato was handed the reins to a team that had been to the Western Conference finals four years running, with Stanley Cups in two of the previous seven seasons.
Despite a 2-1 victory over Edmonton in that first game, and a 72-33-17 record overall, two years later Granato was no longer the head coach. Back to being an assistant, to Joel Quenneville, Granato rededicated himself to learning the coaching craft, and Saturday he began his first full day back at the helm, at Avs training camp.
“This time around, I’ve had all summer to work together as a staff, at the draft, at rookie camp, at training camp,” said Granato, 44. “(I’ve) got a lot more experience going into it. You’re a lot more comfortable with the situation that you’re going into.”
Granato’s winning percentage (.605) remains the highest of any Avs coach in history, and he led the team to a mild upset of Dallas in a 2004 first-round playoff series. But Granato couldn’t shake the perception from some quarters that he was rushed too soon into a head coaching job, and his first year on the job was tarnished by a first-round loss to heavy underdog Minnesota. When the more experienced Quenneville replaced him in 2004, Granato was offered his old job of assistant, but the assumption was that he would refuse and seek another head coaching job.
Despite at least one other offer from another team, he didn’t. He stayed, and despite some questioning his pride for doing so, Granato seems to believe it might have been the best thing that could have happened.
“Again, I think with experience comes maturity. I think I learned a lot in that time, and I think it will benefit me,” he said.
The few players who are still around from his first head coaching stint say it’s too soon to notice any differences in Granato’s style. But there is consensus he handled his demotion to assistant with class, and was a positive influence with the team in the aftermath.
“I enjoyed playing for him my rookie year,” defenseman John-Michael Liles said. “He’s a very passionate coach. I think it was a tough situation (his first year) to be in, with the amount of talent that we had on that team, and the expectations that came with it. But him being an assistant the last few years, he always had a very good rapport with the players, and I think if you asked anybody around the room that has been here, I think they’d say they’re really excited to have him as a head coach this year.”
Ian Laperriere, who was a teammate of Granato’s as a player in Los Angeles, calls him “tough, but fair.”
“He won’t let laziness be part of our game. That’s one thing I’m 100 percent sure about,” Laperriere said. “Everybody is going to have to work hard. He’s going to keep us accountable.”
Granato knows the expectations of the Avalanche and its fans haven’t lessened since his first go-around.
“And that doesn’t bother me, and it never did,” he said. “It comes with the territory.”
Adrian Dater: 303-954-1360 or adater@denverpost.com
