Wild: Lemaire has had grand time behind the bench

Tonight Jacques Lemaire will coach his 1,000th NHL regular season game. But it's a milestone he might not have reached had a labor dispute not shut down the league for the 2004-05 season.

"That year I realized that I am missing something," Lemaire said Monday.

Lemaire, the only coach in Wild history, had been thinking of retirement. He'd spent his life in the game, but maybe it was time for more of a life away from it. He had won eight Stanley Cups as a Hall of Fame player in Montreal, had won two more while a member of the Canadiens' front office and his 11th while coaching in New Jersey.

Maybe, he thought, it was time. And then the league gave him a year off to think about it.

"You're going through and you're thinking, 'Well, one day I'm going to stop,'" Lemaire said. "And then that day came. There was no hockey. After a while, you're missing something."

Lemaire was missing hockey more than he could have imagined. The pressure and competition of game day. The joy of coaching a team into top form. The pleasure of teaching the game, particularly to young players.

So when the NHL returned, so did Lemaire -- for the long term. And tonight he'll become the 14th man to coach 1,000 games.

And that begs the question: Has Lemaire had more impact as a player or as a coach? Lemaire played 12 seasons with Montreal. Including playoffs, he played in 998 games, totaling 974 points.

"I'm probably the wrong guy to ask, because I can see it in both cases," said Wild GM Doug Risebrough, who was Lemaire's teammate in Montreal for five seasons. "I guess it depends on your time frame. Your younger players probably don't realize how good a player he was. ... He was the best two-way player I've ever seen play. Not of my time, but ever. He was the centerman who could pass, he had a great shot, he was smart. He played with two good players [Steve Shutt and Guy Lafleur] because he was so good defensively."

However, Risebrough thinks Lemaire's greatest legacy is as a coach. But he's not talking about Lemaire's .546 winning percentage, ninth best among the coaches with 999 or more games coached. "He has had more of a chance to influence more players," Risebrough said. "To me, you can add up the wins, the success. Then there is the intangibles. How many players did he teach the game?"

One is Brian Rolston, who was a rookie in New Jersey when the Devils won their Stanley Cup under Lemaire.

"I was a young offensive player when I got to New Jersey, and he taught me the defensive game," Rolston said.

Rolston said players sometimes don't realize all they've learned from Lemaire until later -- sometimes years later. "Sometimes you get the young guys going. 'What is he talking about?' But then they realize, down the road, how important what he was saying was. It extended my career having played for him at an early age."

Risebrough thinks Lemaire's biggest strength is adapting his coaching to the personnel he has. Early on with the Wild he had a bunch of hard-working players who struggled to score, so Lemaire coached them to play hard, play together and play defensively.

"There are certain things he won't accept," Risebrough said. "Certain situations, a guy has to play hard, he has to play well for his team. In certain situations a guy has to play well defensively because that's how you win games. But he's a lot less intense about the priorities defensively now, especially with our skill players, than he was. Because he knows they need more freedom."

But some things haven't changed.

"He is a passionate person," said Wild assistant coach Mario Tremblay, who also played with Lemaire in Montreal. "He's 62 years old and he enjoys hockey, enjoys what he does."

For the near future, Lemaire doesn't see that changing. A year off will do that to you.

"Retiring from coaching? I'll do it," Lemaire said. "I don't know when, but I'll do it. But now, I always have in the back of my mind, am I going to miss it? Will I miss that pressure, the great feeling that you get when guys are playing well?"