Express coach gives his team a fighting chance
Want to know what kind of a hockey player Chicago Express coach Steve Martinson was?
Check out the YouTube clip from the 1991-92 season when Martinson, then with the IHL’s San Diego Gulls, goes at it with Milwaukee’s Shawn Antoski ... in the penalty box, after Antoski climbed over the glass to engage.
“He was lucky there because I beat the tar out of him in San Diego,” Martinson said of the fight in Milwaukee. “The linesman grabbed my arm just as he was jumping in, so I kind of got a slow start on that one.”
Martinson brings the same passion he showed on the ice to the bench. And this year it will be on display at the Sears Centre Arena in Hoffman Estates as he guides the ECHL’s Chicago Express through its inaugural season.
The Daily Herald recently talked with Martinson, who has never failed to reach the postseason as a coach.
Q. How do you explain never missing the playoffs in your 15 years in coaching?
A. That’s a simple one: good players. I’ve always had pretty good players and pretty good teams.
Q. Think you’ll keep the streak alive this year?
A. Yeah, for sure. We have a good team.
Q. What makes the Express a good team?
A. I try to have a good mix between skill, speed, size and toughness. Not too much of one or the other, but a good mix of it. And I think we’ve got a pretty good mix right now.
Q. What style of play do you prefer?
A. The way I explain it to my players is that we’re going to play very aggressively. Our system is aggressive, but that doesn’t mean you can cheat defensively. You’ve got to be solid defensively to win.
The problem is you have a lot of players in the ECHL that want to move up to the AHL and then the NHL. So, what I ask as a trade-off is that we’re not going to trap (defensively) in the third period, we’re going to keep the pedal on the floor, but you’ve got to be responsible defensively.
Players have to learn that you have to do more than just score points to move up.
Q. What is the makeup of your team right now?
A. We have a lot of first-year guys — maybe 8 or 9 rookies — and then we have a whole group of established guys. We don’t have a lot of guys in the middle tier — second and third-year pros.
Q. So that only adds to the value of a player like defenseman and captain Nathan Lutz, right?
A. He plays the style of play that I like to coach in that he’s good offensively, he’s good defensively, he’s very physical, very strong — he’s a hard guy to play against. Players don’t like playing against Lutz.
Q. Are there a few guys on the team that fans should keep an eye out for this season?
A. We’ve got Tyler Donati, who has had the highest point total in the league over the last 12 years. He’s very skilled, very entertaining.
And then we’ve got three 220-pound, 20-goal scoring wingers who are all tough as nails. They can hit and skate and fight and score.
On Saturday night I’ll have two of them on the same line — which I don’t always do — bodies will be flying when those guys are out there. That one is called the “keep your head up” line.