Randy Carlyle either shook hands with or hugged the first 10 people he encountered on his first day back at work at the Honda Center -- beginning with the guy handling security at the door -- because they were each friends or coworkers he’d known for years.
That’s what happens when your coaching career takes you full circle.
Roughly 11 years and seven weeks ago, Carlyle was hired by then-GM Brian Burke to coach the Anaheim Ducks.
To plot Carlyle’s coaching path since then on a chart would involve lots of steep lines upward, along with the odd sharp line downward. But to imagine that line would ultimately curve back to the Honda Center -- well, that’s something most hockey people didn’t see coming. But that’s what happened on Tuesday, when GM Bob Murray -- the man who fired Carlyle 24 games into the 2011-12 season -- announced Carlyle would replace Bruce Boudreau as coach of a team that should begin next season among those favored to go deep in the playoffs next spring.
Of course, those expectations -- and the failure of the Ducks to meet them under Boudreau -- were what led to the vacancy Carlyle is filling. And there’s no shortage of irony that it was Boudreau who had replaced Carlyle in Anaheim back in 2012, shortly after Boudreau had been relieved of his duties in Washington. Carlyle was let go then because he had not been able to get the Ducks back to the heights they’d reached when he had guided them to the franchise's lone Stanley Cup championship, in 2007.
Not long after he was fired in Anaheim, Carlyle joined Burke in Toronto, where he spent parts of four tumultuous seasons that featured one playoff berth, two missed postseasons and a monumental flameout in Game 7 of the first round against Boston in 2013. Carlyle was fired midway through the 2014-15 season. Since then, Carlyle has devoted himself to staying current on the goings-on of the game, creating his own coaching handbook and figuring out how he might win the whole thing if he got another chance.
He moved his family back to the San Diego area and attended Ducks games on a regular basis, often sitting with the pro scouts in the press box. While those scouts observed individual players, Carlyle examined the coaching staffs and how they prepared for and executed their game plans. And he watched the game itself evolve before his eyes.
“I was prescouting for myself on what I wanted to see and what I wanted to learn,” Carlyle said in an interview shortly after he settled back into his old digs in Anaheim.
What he saw was a game that was markedly faster than when he left it. “There's real speed,” he said. “One pass through the neutral zone. The game is played at a much higher pace, and Pittsburgh proved that.”
While he was watching the games, he would sometimes run into Murray. They would chat. There were no hard feelings -- just as there was no awkwardness when Murray picked up the phone and the two started chatting about Carlyle returning to the Ducks’ bench.
“Time heals,” Carlyle said.
If the digs are the same, Carlyle appears to be markedly different.
He is 60 years old and said he feels honored to be trusted to take over a deep, talented team like the Ducks a second time.
Four players remain from his previous stint in Anaheim, including stars Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf. (Andrew Cogliano and Cam Fowler are the others.) He also coached current Ducks Ryan Kesler and Kevin Bieksa when all three were with the Vancouver Canucks’ AHL affiliate in Manitoba before Carlyle graduated to the Ducks in 2005-06.
Several of those players have reached out to Carlyle already to say they are looking forward to proving to the hockey world they are better than the team that struggled out of the gate during the regular season and then bowed out in the first round.
The term "mellow" came up a number of times Tuesday as Carlyle was reintroduced in Anaheim, and he said he believes he is a different person and will be a different person behind the bench than he was the last time around.
“I’ve learned to control my emotions,” Carlyle said. “I write it on my coaching card: 'Calm down.'"
He’s also come to terms with the fact that people are going to be critical -- something that came sharply into focus when he coached in the mega-media market that follows every burp and whisper emanating from the Toronto Maple Leafs. That seemed to take a toll on Carlyle toward the end.
“Toronto brings it to light because you’re in a situation where there’s a lot of passion in the market,” he said. And that huge media contingent gives voice to both the criticisms and the accolades.
At the end of the day, though, “You have to stay committed to your beliefs,” he said.
However it ended in Toronto -- the Leafs were actually 21-16-3 when he was dismissed -- he always wanted back in.
“I think my desire never waned once from wanting to get back,” he said.
Carlyle, who has been involved in the NHL in various capacities since he was 20, said he believes very much that in spite of the previous ups and downs, this is exactly what he’s supposed to be doing. It’s just kind of funny that he’s getting a chance to do it again back where this NHL coaching journey began.