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He didn’t call anyone’s mother this time for a health report, but it’s bound to generate nearly as much noise just as training camp starts today: Dave Feschuk reported on Steve Spott’s talk at a coaching clinic and got some scuttlebutt via unnamed coaches in attendance. The main subject was Phil Kessel, who it should be noted Feschuk has disparaged in the past (doesn’t mean this latest report is 100% untrue, it’s just history worth remembering).

We’ll leave the Kessel stuff to your own interpretation. The thing is – Feschuk can extract these quotes from a bunch of different sources, frame his own context and disregard the tone of Spott’s original story entirely, for all we know. Just note that high scoring, offensively-creative players having their own ideas on what’s best when it comes to generating offense, and having to make compromises with their coaches is not exactly novel in hockey. These conversations and disagreements happen in the player-coach relationship at the highest level of the game. In the end, as acknowledged the article itself, it seems that was the main point Spott was trying to get across, to coaches who may want to one day be in his position, about the importance of managing personality and player types at the highest level.

Update – As Randy Carlyle addressed rather effectively today:

When it came to some of the tweaks these anonymous coaches told Feschuk Spott talked about: The weird thing about “don’t ever trust a forward” to cover when pinching is that they would be rewiring the defence to play more conservatively rather than cracking down on that rather crucial lack of trust due to the forwards playing irresponsibly. It seems backward. The Leafs have 15 NHL-ready forwards plus a handful of youngsters trying to figure into the mix; they can’t get the majority on board for basic support play and defensive responsibility? Having a mobile defence that can activate on the rush or on a pinch down the wall has become crucial in the modern game. Two head coaches in a row have struggled to snap this team out of a rush-reliant mentality and maybe this is an attempt to adjust to the realities of the team’s makeup; it’s just hard to see it winning, if true.

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Media Day:

Coverage gets underway at 9 a.m. David Nonis will address the media at 12 p.m. followed by Randy Carlyle.

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