WGR 550: Elliotte Friedman last week when asked coach if Bob Hartley is looking to come back to the NHL.
** NHLRumors.com transcription
“Bob Hartley, we spoke to him yesterday, we taped a podcast with him and he was really good, you know I think that Bob Hartley, I think if you’re a competitor and he is, he clearly is, you want to show that you can still do it. He said ‘yes, he’d like to come back but in the right situation.’ I think it’s a combination of both trying to say the right things and also trying to say, ‘Look, I’m a competitor and I want to come back and show that I still got it, that I can still coach.” And he can coach. There is no question about it.”
Friedman when asked how many teams are going to be interested in a guy like Hartley.
“I think he’s available. There’s no question about that. Look, I wouldn’t be surprised if some people call him. Absolutely. I wouldn’t be surprised about that at all. The thing about Hartley is, I think he’s both compassionate, you know he talks in our interview a lot about Dan Snyder, and man, some of it is very hard to listen to. But, I know guys who played for that team, after Snyder’s accident, and they said that Hartley basically saved that team. The job he did there was unbelievable.
But also, he can be very demanding and very blunt, So he’s got a wide range of things he can do. I think he’d love to coach in the NHL again if won’t come right out and say it.”
Friedman when asked if Hartley is better coaching a young, not established team or is he better off coaching an established team that needs a ‘kick in the pants’ to get over the hump.
“Well I don’t know if it’s a, I don’t know if I would say better, but there was one thing he said in the interview I thought was really interesting Craig, is that he called Ilya Kovalchuk. Kovalchuk didn’t have an NHL job, and don’t forget Hartley had Kovalchuk in Atlanta and they know each other very well. He called Ilya Kovalchuk and said ‘Ilya you’re not getting a job in the NHL this year, come here and show me you can play, and show everybody you can still play,’ and basically do this for your resume. He said that Kovalchuk did that, and he said that he was great for him for the younger players.
I know in Calgary, Hartley in the interview made a passing comment, he didn’t like the way it ended in Calgary. And one of the issues there I heard was that his bluntness, some of the younger guys couldn’t handle it. So what I think is, what that says to me is, he needs veterans who he can kind of use to help him with the young players.”