His pro career began in 1981 with New Brunswick of the American Hockey League and ended in 1993 in Austria. In all that time, Steve Ludzik never met a coach he didn’t like.
Not even Orval Tessier?
“Orval is one of my favorite guys,” said Ludzik, who was Tessier’s top center when New Brunswick won the 1982 Calder Cup and then went with Mt. Orval to the Blackhawks. “He wore his heart on his sleeve, and he could get a franchise going in a hurry. He’d give you all kinds of crap on Saturday night and he’d take you out to breakfast on Sunday.”
Bob Pulford?
“Pully was like a father figure to us guys,” Ludzik said. “After every game–win, lose or draw–he’d smoke those five, six cigarettes and then he’d go to the locker room and try to be positive. You’d have a terrible game and he’d come in and tap you on the helmet to pick you up, and you’d feel bad you lost when you had a coach like that. I don’t find it unusual that so many of his players have gone into coaching.”
Mike Keenan?
“Very, very good technical coach,” Ludzik said. “I got a lot out of playing for him.”
Now, at age 35, Ludzik has become a prime candidate to join Keenan in the NHL coaching ranks.
Ludzik is the coach of the International Hockey League’s defending Turner Cup champion Detroit Vipers. Saturday night the Vipers visit the Horizon to play the Wolves, whose early-season efforts suggest they have what it takes to do what Detroit did last year.
Like Ludzik, Wolves coach John Anderson is an alumnus of the Colonial Hockey League. Ludzik’s Muskegon teams established franchise records for victories in each of his two seasons and he was the league’s coach of the year in 1993-94, while Anderson won regular-season and playoff championships with Quad City last season.
“It’s obvious John can coach,” Ludzik said. “He has a very well-disciplined team, one with a high talent level and a high character level.”
But Detroit knows how to melt home-ice advantages. Last year the Vipers prefaced their successful quest for the Turner Cup by taking the IHL’s regular-season title, racking up a 31-7-3 record on the road. It was a better record than they had at home in the Palace where they led the league in attendance, averaging 12,506 a game.
This season Ludzik’s team again leads the IHL in attendance but has slipped to second in the Northeast Division.
For Ludzik, the trip to Chicago means more than trying to make headway in the regular-season race. It’s also a sentimental journey he will share with one of his two sons, 11-year-old Stephen.
“I grew up in Toronto always wanting to play for the Blackhawks,” he reminisces. “And when you leave Chicago you realize what a great city it is.
“I wore that Indian head with so much pride. When Darryl Sutter was coaching the Blackhawks, he took me to the new building to show me around. In the locker room I got up to the Blackhawk logo on the carpet and I walked around it. My subconscious wouldn’t let me step on that logo.”
