A Word about the Iowa Wild’s Coach
Ask Kurt Kleinendorst which word Iowa Wild players are likely to hear most often from him this season and you’ll get a bit of a surprise.
“But.”
Kleinendorst’s monosyllabic answer came just after Jim Mill, the Iowa Wild’s general manager, introduced the 52-year-old coach at a news conference last week. “As in, we just played a great first period, but we can do these things even better in the second period.”
It’s clear that Kleinendorst not only likes challenges, but thrives on change–an essential quality for a professional minor league coach where daily adjustment is a major part of the job.
Consider:
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In 2011, Kleinendorst guided the Binghamton Senators to its first AHL Calder Cup championship, but only after barely qualifying for the playoffs as the seventh seed of eight in the conference. To win the title, the club won an AHL record 10 road games and lost only four of the last 19 to win the cup. Ironically, the Senators, (the top affiliate of Ottawa), defeated the Houston Aeros—the team now known as the Iowa Wild—for the title.
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In 2012, Kleinendorst walked away as Binghamton’s coach after the team finished last in the AHL’s Eastern Conference with an abysmal 29-40-5 record but had contract extensions offered to him the previous season. Early that season, Kleinendorst caused a bit of stir when the frustration of a season-opening eight-game losing streak got the better of him. “We’re not anywhere close to where we need to be,” Kleinendorst told a reporter. “As far as development goes, guys playing on the third or fourth line here would develop just as well in Elmira, to be quite honest with you.”
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Later that year, Kleinendorst took on one of the toughest challenges any coach would want. He accepted an interim coaching job at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, where one president had tried to drop the sport but his successor decided to keep it. The team went 3-21-4, but Kleinendorst played a key role in helping save the program by recruiting several top young players and to get it into the prestigious Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), according to E.J. Brophy, the school’s athletic director.
“It certainly helped to have a first-class professional coach who had won championships like the Calder Cup on our staff when the WCHA came calling,” Brophy told me last week. “Kurt is a thinker, not a screamer. In many ways his calm manner helped us get through a very difficult time. We wish him the best with Iowa.”
Jim Mill, Iowa’s general manager, said those characteristics make Kleinendorst well-prepared to lead the AHL Wild in the 2013-14 season. Mill should know—he played for Kleinendorst for one season with the Raleigh IceCaps of the ECHL in 1992-93 and the two have kept in contact through the years.
“It’s his ability to motivate a team.” Mill said. “Instead of yelling and screaming, he insists you prepare for each game. If you aren’t or don’t perform at the level that the team needs at the time, he will make you feel guilty about letting down the players sitting next to you.”
Kleinendorst compared his coaching odyssey over the last three years to what he expects from the players who will make up his roster this season.
“It’s a process where you go to work every day and get better at what you do every day,” he said. “You own your mistakes and learn from them. I always say I am never too old to learn a lesson.”
In particular, Kleinendorst said his decision to coach college hockey for a year after years in professional hockey might seem puzzling, but there were simple reasons. One was the NHL lockout that ate up about half of the 2012-13 season.
“First, I was pretty sure there was going to be an extended lockout,” he said. “Then in September when I was sitting around without work and I got the opportunity, I just felt that it wasn’t going to be healthy for me to sit around and do nothing.”
Now as Iowa Wild head coach, Kleinendorst’s job is to prepare his players to play NHL hockey the way Minnesota plays NHL hockey.
Mill said that the AHL Wild players and staff “absolutely” will be expected to mirror the parent club’s philosophies “in every single aspect on and off the ice. We are going to have success together.”
Of the task before him, Kleinendorst acknowledged his biggest job will be to teach young players patience and commitment to the task of becoming a professional hockey player. That’s an all-encompassing process ranging from nutrition to physical conditioning to community service to practicing as hard as possible.
“They have to learn what it takes to be a pro,” he said. “A lot of times young players think they have a pretty good idea of what that is, but then they find out they are a long way from where they need to be.”
He also said that each player, as well as each staff member, should be held accountable for what they do and what they say.
His rare outburst in Binghamton provided his own lesson.
“I own those comments,” Kleinendorst said, adding that he apologized to his team and to Ottawa’s front office the next day. “Frustration can’t be part our game, and I can’t preach it to my players and not honor it as a coach. I own everything about my decision to leave and everything that has happened since.”
But, as Kleinendorst would say, it has resulted in landing a top job with an organization recognized as one of the best in the NHL.
“I landed on my feet in Des Moines with the Minnesota Wild. It was somewhat of a gamble, but it turned out that it paid off.”
Tom Witosky, who spent 33 years as a reporter for the Des Moines Register specializing in investigative reporting in sports, politics, and business, is now a freelance writer. He also was the beat writer for the Iowa Barnstormers during the days of Kurt Warner. He began his love of hockey playing on Lake Minnetonka and fondly remembers the days of Danny Grant and J.P. Parise with the Minnesota North Stars. His blog on All Things Iowa Wild will appear weekly.
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