Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 19, 1994 TAG: 9401190159
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jack Bogaczyk
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The Express had built up steam with early moves, and the potential for hiring a Doug Carpenter, Stephane Roy, Bob Kelly or Gregg Pilling was promising. Then, the club decided on a high school coach who had been fired or had left in controversy at his three previous stops.
As the success of the Express has displayed, Frank Anzalone was perhaps the best coach the ECHL expansion club could have hired. It wasn't because he had coached an NCAA championship team or a New Jersey high school titlist or because he knew the ECHL from one forgettable season in Nashville.
He was a last-chance coach joining a last-chance franchise.
"When I talked to people about Frank, they told me he was a great coach and a great recruiter, but he was a little bit different," said Pierre Paiement, the Express' general manager. "There's nothing wrong with different."
When the rookie French Canadian general manager and the Brooklyn Italian met, they weren't exactly speaking the same language. Paiement questioned whether Anzalone could use his well-known disciplinary style on himself. Anzalone, 38, questioned whether Roanoke was going to give something other than a cold shoulder to hockey.
The answers are in the numbers. Not only has the Express played above .500 - and would be even higher in the standings had the goaltending been better early in the season - but the club is averaging more than 4,000 spectators per game at the Roanoke Civic Center, where Tuesday night the Express lost 6-2 to the Johnstown Chiefs.
Anzalone still isn't comfortable playing the numbers, but he's been on thin ice enough in the past five years to know what counts. He's tough - he was a good baseball catcher in high school - thorough, enthusiastic, fair and candid. He's been around enough to admit he may have been wrong at times, so he's playing different percentages.
"Everything in pro sports is wins and losses," Anzalone said. "I don't think that's correct, but I acknowledge that it's true. In pro sports, losing means something's wrong. In pro hockey, losing is panic.
"In the good organizations, that doesn't happen. When a Montreal loses three or four in a row, they step back and take a look at what's happened. They don't panic. They study why something's not working. That's what IBM does. That's what a Lee Iacocca does. In pro sports, most teams . . . they don't do that."
Anzalone is a builder. That's what he did at Lake Superior State, eventually winning the 1988 NCAA Division I hockey title before he was fired in '90. His pro coaching experiences at Newmarket in the American Hockey League and at Nashville in the ECHL were meltdowns, partly fueled by Anzalone's fire.
"I approach all jobs in a sense that I'm building," Anzalone said. "I have learned a lot from my experiences. I've done a lot of reading and a lot of self-evaluation in recent years, and 75 percent of my ideas were correct. On the other 25 percent, I was severely wrong. I've had to make corrections.
"I understand winning is important, but building is important, too. When you're coaching in college and your team is 8-24, you can say you're recruiting and improving the team. When you're doing this, people don't want to hear you're building when they shell out $8 to get in."
After leaving Nashville, Anzalone coached Toms River North to the New Jersey state high school championship last season. He says he learned there "that young people still want discipline, they just don't want you to know that they want it."
His current team isn't any different. He still demands, but where he used to accomplish that by intimidation, now he tries influence.
"I think I've become more flexible with that," Anzalone said. "I think I handle people a little better."
Anzalone's players call him "The Book" - because that's what he goes by.
For starters, Anzalone impressed with his recruiting. He got about 40 percent of the players he wanted. He persuaded Paiement that signing three talented Russians from a Boston tryout camp could turn on fans as well as red lights. The Express also has prospered despite not seeing much personnel benefit from its affiliation with the NHL's San Jose Sharks.
Give Anzalone a hard-working team, a VCR to study tapes of opponents, some quality time with his wife and 5-year-old son and he's happy. He doesn't drink. The only thing he really wants on ice is hard work.
"With my reputation, everyone assumes I'm a taskmaster, a Hitler, a guy you can't play for," Anzalone said. "If I were like that, I wouldn't be able to get recruits, but I do. I'm sure there are days when I'm not the easiest guy to get along with."
When that happens, the coach is just being Frank.
"Frank's personality . . . he can give you the wrong impression some times," Paiement said. "He's a very intense fellow, very disciplined. He can come across as being not flexible. He can seem a little distant, a little cold. Once you get to know him, you see he's not that kind of guy.
"He was exactly what we needed. He's positive. He's professional."
He's winning, too.
by CNB